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What Ever Happened to the Regular Guy?

Are you a regular guy? By that I mean are you one of the many thousands of Corvette fans that have worked hard all their life and have always had or dreamed of having a Vette in the garage?
I mean a Corvette, not an expensive out of reach exotic. Well if you are maybe this byline will ring a cord with you.
It seems that every time I open a Corvette magazine or read something about a Corvette the only thing that is referred to is the famous ZO6. The nomenclature of ZO6 has made its way into our very language. When non-vette people ask about your car they don't ask what year it is anymore, they ask "is it a ZO6"?
Almost every tech article written about a Vette in recent history features the ZO6 as the mule car. Hey don't get me wrong the new ZO6 is probably the finest piece of craftsmanship that GM has put out to date. What I am saying is that the ZO6 is not exactly what you would call a regular guy's car.
At $70k plus the ZO6 is the stuff that dreams are made out of to most of the regular Corvette guy's out there. It is a very nice car to fantasize about owning but unfortunately only a handful of enthusiasts will be able to afford.

The 2005 to 2007 production numbers may bear this out. According to G.M. there were a total of 111,954 C6's produced between these years. Out of that run 14,431 were given the honors of the ZO6. The Z06 for all its fame and glory only represents about 12% of the C6 population out there. If we include the C3,C4 and C5 population the percentage drops to a fraction of one percent. Those numbers are a joy for the few of us fortunate enough to own this incredible machine but it sort of leaves the rest of the pack with a bittersweet taste.

This fascination with America's only exotic has been engineered by the slick marketing people at our good friends at GM. They constantly need to hype up sales of the corporate flagship so they created this mystical aura around a magical machine, voila the Z06. The magazine publishers eat this up and so does the after market industry. Take a look in one of the many Corvette publications that find themselves on the newsstands every month. ZO6 featured ads and articles completely overshadow the run of the mill Corvettes.

The ZO6 fascination will very shortly come to an abrupt end. The marketing guru's at GM have announced the arrival of the new king of the hill. The new king will sport the new LS9, a 6.2 liter Root's supercharged V8 that will have 620 ponies at your disposal. That's 115 more horses than the current ZO6. The car will sport some minor styling upgrades that will include a peek-a-boo lexan panel in the hood, give me a break.

The name for the new king is ZR-1, where have I heard that one before. Talk about planned obsolescence. Hey the latest Z06 had a good run, two years. The after market, magazines and forums will now shift attention to the new king. The price for the ZR-1 will be in the hundred thousand dollar range.

GM and the magazines will tell you at a hundred grand it's a bargain. They will compare it to Ferrari's and Lamborghini's that only Saudi Sheiks can afford. The test data will amaze you as the new ZR-1 roars into a few select showrooms and into the driveways of the rich and famous.

Very nice but as for myself and most of the other Corvette gear heads out there, we still will not be able to afford one. Most of the Corvette guy's I know are still trying to fit a C5 Z06 into their budget. You can pick up a low mileage 03 or 04 C5 ZO6 for about $30k right now.
I know a guy who is selling a mint 04 ZO6 that has a ton of mods. He is asking $35k, sounds like a better deal than $75K for the soon to be out of vogue current version.
Better yet why not just retrofit your base C5 with a supercharger. ProCharger has a very neat blower package that can get your stock C5 into ZR-1 territory for well under ten grand.

Remember all the hype that surrounded the C5 ZO6? That car lost its glory virtually overnight when the 400 horse C6 made its debut.

Hey maybe prices of that now underpowered C6 ZO6 will drop to reasonable levels as the auto paparazzi shifts its focus to America's new darling. In any event most of the regular guy Corvette people will still be out there turning wrenches on a Saturday afternoon long after the latest American exotic has faded away.