Rare Corvettes · 53 and 12 built

ZR1 & ZR2 (1970–72)

By 1970 the racing ban was long gone, but Zora Arkus-Duntov's favorite trick lived on: hide a race car in the option book. The ZR1 and ZR2 were the last and rarest of those order-sheet specials — two race packages so uncompromising, and so expensive, that almost nobody bought them.

The small-block: ZR1

The ZR1 wasn't a model — it was a bundle of parts aimed squarely at the race track. Order it and you got the solid-lifter LT1 350 small-block (370 horsepower, 11:1 compression, a big Holley four-barrel), the M22 “Rock Crusher” four-speed, a heavy-duty aluminum radiator, transistor ignition, power-brake-free heavy-duty brakes, and the stiff F41 suspension. What you could not add was almost as telling: no radio, no power steering, no power windows, no air conditioning, no automatic. The package was built to win races, not to be comfortable, and Chevrolet priced it to keep the merely curious away — roughly $1,010 on top of the car.

It worked, in the sense that hardly anyone signed up. Across three model years, just 53 ZR1 Corvettes were built — 25 in 1970 (eight of them convertibles), 8 in 1971, and 20 in 1972 — making the ZR1 one of the rarest small-block Corvettes of all time. Tightening emissions rules and thin sales killed the package at the end of 1972.

The big-block: ZR2

If the ZR1 was the scalpel, the 1971 ZR2 was the hammer. It swapped the small-block for the legendary LS6 454 big-block — 425 horsepower — wrapped in the same no-compromise race package. A one-year-only option costing a steep $1,747, it was the spiritual heir to the L88 and ZL1 that came before it. Exactly 12 were built. Twelve. That makes the ZR2 one of the rarest factory Corvettes ever to leave Bowling Green — a big-block race car you could technically drive home from the dealer, if you could find one and afford it.

The ZR1 and ZR2 close out the story that runs through Zora's whole career: the backdoor horsepower era, when the fastest Corvettes weren't advertised on TV — they were hidden three letters deep in the RPO list, waiting for the handful of buyers who knew exactly what to check. See the rest of the rare Corvettes, or how the factory finally went racing in the open in the Corvette Racing era.