By: Susan Cameron

Few new cars have ever caused the stir that whipped up around the 1990 Corvette ZR-1. It started with fuzzy spy photos and Detroit gossip about a high-powered, “King of the Hill” model. Chevrolet was coy, neither confirming nor denying the grist of the rumor mill.

Rumor became fact at the 1989 Geneva Auto Show, when the ZR-1 officially debuted. It was a time when performance cars were only beginning to regain some of the performance enjoyed during the heyday of the muscle car, and the ZR-1’s 375-horespower (280 kW) LT5 V-8 engine – with its DOHC configuration and four-valve heads – was an intoxicating breath of high-octane excitement.

The all-aluminum LT5 engine’s design was a collaboration of GM and Lotus Engineering, sharing only a 5.7-liter displacement with other small-block engines. The engine was built by Mercury Marine, which was renowned for its aluminum machining capability. Engineers were justifiably proud of the [...]

Last week, Corvette Chief Engineer Tadge Juechter attempted to slam the door on whispers Chevrolet is working on a mid-engine version of the Corvette. Of course, it’s going take more than reasoned argument and denial from anyone—even automotive royalty like Juechter—to extinguish one the industry’s longest running rumors. Especially given these incriminating spy shots.

Read More About the Mid-Engine Corvette from Motor Authority

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Used with permission from Motor Authority | Article by John Coyle | March 25, 21015

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Russ McLean held many different positions in his career at General Motors, but none may be as historically significant as his time in the mid-1990s working on the Corvette team.

With GM in transition, the company had decided to shut down Corvette production to focus on other more popular models.

“They told me to let the car die,” McLean, of Rochester Hills, said. “I wouldn’t do that.”

McLean recognizes the decision to discontinue the iconic sports car was strictly business and intended to strengthen the company financially.

“They weren’t thinking about five years ahead, they were thinking about survival today,” he said.

Bob Bubnis, editor of America’s Sportscar, a publication of the National Corvette Museum, confirmed the company considered ending the Corvette on multiple occasions.

“The people up top were saying ‘let’s let it die,’ ” Bubnis said. “Lots of key people who loved Corvettes kept the program going.

McLean and others worked diligently in [...]

Standing by his ’60 survivor with 11,870 miles on the odometer, Gary Skinner told us, “I rode in it when it was brand-new. The owner put it up in 1968 and didn’t drive it again.” All the while, Skinner waited for his chance. He grew up with the original owner Ed Graye, a schoolteacher from the little town of West Frankfort, Illinois.

“He ordered the car just the way he wanted it, with the big, fuel-injected 283 and three-speed manual instead of the four-speed ’cause he wanted to drag race it.” Of course, drag racing in those days didn’t translate to just the strip. “Just local stuff, out on the blacktop. We didn’t have dragstrips back then,” Skinner remarked. After about two weeks Graye realized he didn’t have the big (290-horse) fuelie. He had what Skinner called the “small fuelie,” rated at 250 horsepower. So, Graye went back to the original dealer, 30 miles [...]

“It’s a member of the family that lives in the garage” is the way David Cutler of Newport Beach describes his restored 1954 Chrysler New Yorker Deluxe convertible. And with good reason. His mother bought the car new in 1954 and it’s been in the family ever since.

“I can remember when Mother first bought it, I said ‘When you’re through with it can I have it?’” Cutler, 80, recalls.

Mom agreed to let Cutler have the car, but it took a while for him to gain possession. After his mother used it for some years, the car was loaned to a relative who used it for several more years while the odometer rolled past 100,000 miles. When Cutler finally acquired the car in 1980, it was far from the pristine show car it is today.

“It was pretty tired,” he says. “The paint was worn out and at that point it had a lot [...]