The beauty about the Corvette hobby is there’s room for everybody – the careful owner who wants to treat his car like it’s the Taj Mahal and hardly ever drives it, or the raging enthusiast who takes his car to the track at every opportunity.
One such example of the latter is now being offered at no reserve on Bring a Trailer, where the current bid is $12,057 with five days left in the auction.
This 2004 Corvette Z06 has been driven more than 111,000 miles over the past couple of decades, and believe it or not, it’s still in one piece! However, photo 17 did cause me to take a double-take as the reflection of a nearby building onto the driver’s rear fender looks at first glance like a big scrape. But it was just an illusion upon closer inspection.
Despite being one of the 2,025 Commemorative Edition Z06s built to celebrate the C5-R’s class wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, this Corvette seems to have been used the way Chevy engineers intended.
And who can blame those owners?
After all, the Z06 features a 405-horsepower LS6 engine, mated to a six-speed manual transmission. This one is enhanced by the addition of a BBK cold-air intake.
That stock powerplant allowed the 2004 Z06 to become one of the few production vehicles to have broken the 8-minute barrier for lap times at the 170-turn, 12.9-mile Nurburgring circuit in Germany. It was the first Corvette to make the modern-day benchmarking list with a lap time of 7:56, and that was starting the lap from a dead stop, not like the flying laps done today.
Helping with that strong performance in a small way was a carbon fiber hood that weighed only 20½ pounds and marked the first use of such material for a painted exterior panel on a North American production vehicle. Chevy collaborated with MacLean Systems and Toray Composites to create the lightweight hood, an example of technology transferring from the racing program to the street cars. In a special production process, the carbon fibers of the panels were aligned in a single direction, allowing the exterior to be painted.
As with all CEs, this Z06 is painted Le Mans Blue with silver and red decal stripes on the roof, decklid, and carbon-fiber hood and includes special 24:00 Hours De Mans 2 GTS Wins badges and lightweight polished aluminum Z06 wheels.
Priced at an additional $4,335, the CE package was ordered with the 1SC equipment group and included Head-Up Display, power-telescopic steering column, auto-dimming mirrors, memory package, and twilight sentinel.
While coupe and convertible versions had Shale interiors similar to the 2003 50th Anniversary models, the Z06s had all-black interiors. Perhaps some of our readers can explain the red accents on the dash and door panels of this one – maybe an addition by one of the owners over the years to take care of wear and tear or just to spice up the look?
The seller purchased the car last July after it had spent time in Arizona, Nevada, and Texas with six previous owners. Might you become owner No. 8?
Source:
Bring a Trailer
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The Z06 Commemorative Edition was the best C5 of them all!!! BTW that wasn’t smart at all by sticking that big aluminum spec plate on the passenger side air bag cover. What will that plate do if the air bag goes off in a passenger’s face?
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