[legion]

Went and test drove a 2000 Z06 (that would make it a C5, Vash) a few months ago.

Car had been driven hard and put away wet. It was out of alignment and one of the calipers was seized. Synchros on 2nd were toast and it wouldn't reliably go into 1st gear. Being sold by third owner who had no maintenance records and bought it from a dealership that bought it at auction. He was asking $16,500. I thought the price was high for the condition of the vehicle.

Still, the power delivery was smooth and precise. I drove my best friend's '99 hard top, (with only 8,000 miles on it), so I knew that a better example would be a better drive. It's on my list of cars to consider when I get back into sports cars. (Which looks like it may be awhile.) Even with the problems listed above, I could probably spend less than $2k and fix all of them (including the tranny problems!).

The 2000 Z06 had a relatively anemic 350 hp. I believe the Z06 has gotten a power bump every year since its introduction. Heck, even the current "base" Corvette has 450 hp now.

Besides being cheap to fix and keep running, the other advantage I saw was that there are tons of upgrades available for everything, and you don't even need to do it piecemeal. You can literally buy whole engineered performance kits that include everything--even new engine mappings. And there are a lot of them: superchargers, turbochargers, dual turbochargers, even just new cylinder heads and exhaust.