Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 (C7)
Why 6.8: The most powerful C7 variant, the last front-engine ZR1 and the final expression of a lineage back to the 1970 LT1. It arrived a model year before the mid-engine C8 made the architecture obsolete — which is exactly why collectors care.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Sound
The Eaton blower whistles hard over the LT5's pushrod V8, and this is among the loudest exhausts Chevrolet has ever signed off. But it is a two-valve engine to 6,600 rpm with the supercharger doing much of the talking, so it lands with the theatrical rather than the tuneful.
8-cylinder · supercharged · 6,600 rpm redline · rated 7.1 / 10 for engine sound
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €112k (2019) → €120k (2026), trending up · illustrative data
Child seats · ISOFIX
There aren't any — strict two-seater.
Same C7 tub and restraint hardware as the Z06 and Stingray — seatbelt-only install up front, no LATCH anchors, passenger sensing system handles the airbag.
Chevrolet Corvette Owner's Manual (GM, C7 shared restraint design)
The long version
Chevrolet spent years engineering the ZR1’s carbon-fibre bonnet tall enough to accommodate the supercharger, then switched to a mid-engine layout for the C8 one year later. That timing created an accidental last-of-its-kind that the buying public understood immediately: allocations sold out, dealer markups appeared, and the auction market treated the first examples like farewell laps. The 755 hp LT5 is a deeply impressive piece of machinery — the fastest car Chevrolet had ever built when it launched — and the manual gearbox version is the one serious drivers sought out. Values have settled above MSRP for clean examples and continue to appreciate slowly as C8 ownership normalises the mid-engine layout.