How Rare Is A Chevrolet Corvette ZR2 & How Much Are They Worth?
It's not very common that a vehicle receives a nickname, but you can bet that when one does, it's something special. In some cases, it's going to be a car so rare that only one exists, while in other instances, automakers will produce a very limited amount so that not everyone will be able to park one in their garage. The 1971 Chevrolet Corvette ZR2 is one such car. Nicknamed "Zora's Racer" after the car's chief engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov, this muscle car falls into the third generation of Corvettes and became one of the rarest.
Surprisingly, General Motors didn't market it in the same way it marketed other Corvettes, or even its other cars. Without so much as a single road test to get people excited, few consumers knew about the 1971 version of the Stingray, which included some of the best performing parts that Chevrolet could put in a car. It had an LS6 454 cubic inch engine under the hood that pumped out 425 horsepower along with an M22 Rock-Crusher four-speed manual transmission.
Buyers could choose between a hardtop or convertible model, but with only 12 ZR2s produced, only two buyers opted for the convertible trim — limited edition indeed. Furthermore, it wasn't just the small number of ZR2s produced that made it unobtainable for so many, the price also kept it out of reach.
How much is one worth?
When the ZR2 first launched, it was a rather expensive muscle car, costing around $7,000. That might sound cheap by today's standards, but in 1971, it wasn't, considering that drivers could get a Ford Torino for just under $4,000. A vehicle of such extravagant expense could easily have been considered a luxury car. With this initial price tag, coupled with its rarity, it should come as no surprise that the current cost of a Corvette ZR2 remains out of reach, even for many collectors.
One of the two convertible ZR2s, this one with only 8,796 miles on the clock — the lowest of any known ZR2 – sold at auction for $785,000 in 2023. Early predictions expected the car to sell for close to $1 million, but bids started to slow down as it neared the end. Still, it's an impressive final price, and not uncommon for the Stingray, as C3 Corvettes can be worth 90 times their original cost. The other convertible owner wasn't as lucky, and only managed to get $368,500 in 2019 at auction. While that's considerably lower than the former, it's significantly more than its original $7,000 price tag.