Salvage Title Corvette Z06 Goes for Pikes Peak Glory

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Salvage Title Corvette Z06 Goes for Pikes Peak Glory


Can Robb Holland of Jalopnik take a C7 Corvette Z06 from the bottom of a ditch to the top of Pikes Peak?

We’ll soon found out.

A little background: Due to the sudden sale of the last car he raced in 2016 at Pikes Peak, right when he got his first sponsor for the 2017 gig, no less, Holland says he was in a bit of a time crunch to find a replacement racer.

That’s when it hit him that a salvage car might be just the ticket, especially when he came across a 2017 Corvette Z06 with just nine miles (yes, nine miles) on the odometer.

Seems a dealership employee got a little too happy with a brand new Z06 and deployed the airbags after he wound up in a ditch. The insurance company decided to total the Corvette, despite its low mileage, and sent it to auction.

That’s where Holland found it.

“It wasn’t long before I became the proud owner of a nine-mile 2017 Corvette Z06 for way less than half of the cost of a new car,” he reports. “This was the most insane salvage car purchase ever. Or was it? I still hadn’t seen the car in person. I knew it ran on the lot, but nothing beyond that. I could have the automotive version of a five figure paperweight for all I knew.”

Fortunately, an inspection once the car arrived in person proved that the Z06 was quite the tough old bird and had suffered only minor damage that was easily repaired for not much money.

Holland and team are now in the process of turning this Z06 into a Pikes Peak challenger.

“We started with no more than 90 days to make that happen, so we’re bring in some Corvette tuning experts to help us make the car safer, lighter, more powerful, more aerodynamic and better-handling in time for this year’s race,” he says.

“The fun thing about race cars is they don’t need to follow all the same rules as their street-legal cousins. That and having access to all of the tools and equipment of a full race shop should make this otherwise-overlooked salvage title car build possible. Now we get to see if we can make it from the bottom of a ditch to the top of the Peak.”

Read more details about this “Ditch to Peak” saga at Jalopnik


Source:
Jalopnik

 



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