Corvette Magazine

The best cars routinely sold for more than $100,000, although no one will admit to paying that much now. Mid-year Corvettes were plastered across the covers of mainstream automobile magazines like Car and Driver and Road and Track, and specialty magazines like Corvette Fever saw their popularity increase exponentially.
This excitement was not limited to a bunch of car nuts; mainstream America was caught up in it as well. Around this time rumors started to surface about a "super" Corvette that was being secretly being developed. It was nicknamed the "King of the Hill" and was supposed to literally blow the doors off anything else on the road. It was initially scheduled to debut in 1989, but its introduction was pushed back to 1990. This new supercar would be called the ZR1, and was powered by an engine built by Mercury Marine called the LT5.
In addition to the 375hp engine, the car had the usual performance upgrades, such

as bigger wheels, tires, and brakes and modified bodywork to keep them all under ‘glass. The MSRP for a ZR1 Corvette was just under $60,000, which was $27,000 more than a base Corvette, but few if any early production models sold for sticker. Most cars sold for between $80,000 and $90,000, and a few crossed the $100,000 line. Some purchasers just really wanted the car, but most viewed it as an investment. They looked at what was happening with the values of the older high-performance Corvettes and thought that they would see similar returns on their new ZR1s. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. Prices did hold onto their gains for a few months, but when potential customers realized that they could go down to the Chevrolet dealer and buy a new 1991 for sticker (or less) the bottom fell out of the ZR1 market.
Sales declined gradually for the ZR1, especially after Chevrolet announced that the 300 hp LT1 engine would be standard in the 1992