I have to admit that at first I believed this to be a 1996 Corvette Grand Sport with a Lotus-designed 32-valve LT5 swapped in place of the (comparably) timid LT4. Looking back over the pictures, it’s obvious that this is a ZR-1 painted to look like a Grand Sport.
Tag Archives: LT5
Imperial Palace Car Collection: 1988-89 SCCA Corvette Challenge

I love C4 Corvettes.
They’re last unrefined burp of automotive machismo to wear the Fleur-de-lis/Checkered flags. They ran every bizarre type of small block that Chevy could cram into them: Crossfire, TPI, the DOHC LT-5, and even twin-turbo models (RPO B2K) from the factory.
In it’s time, the C4 handily beat many of it’s “super car” contemporaries in performance comparisons. It was the fastest, meanest, plastic-fantastic-piece-of-shit on the road. It liked to metaphorically hold it’s competitors down like an evil bully and make them smell it’s nasty, overhead valved farts and then shove them into a trashcan. On the road, where there was no authority other than the local police department, the super cars had to take their lumps and move on. On the track however, they complained to the SCCA about the C4’s utter domination. The blue-bloods of racing were sick of being pushed around like the antagonist of some Pantera song, and by 1988 they had gotten their way. Continue reading