the earlier corvette posting got me to thinking about my favorite 'vette, the 1996 grand sport. i remember reading about it in the pages of car & driver. the last hurrah for the C4, the GS harkened back to chevy's racing heritage (the 1963 GS corvettes, in particular), and put some extra spice on an already hot car. there were 1000 of them produced, with unique vin numbers ranging from, yes, #0001 to #1000.the C4 cars were a creaky, squeaky bunch, starting with model year 1984 and ending in this model year, 1996. the car improved by leaps and bounds over it's production run, from a wheezy emissions-era L83 350 with 205 horsepower, rock hard suspension, and horrid interior. The L98 350 grew in power, from 230 to 250, then gave way to the popular LT1 motor with 300 hp, then finally the slick revving LT4 found in the Grand Sport, sporting 330 horses. (the Lotus-designed, Mercury Marine-built LT5 DOHC V8 in the 1990 to 1995 ZR-1 corvette is another car altogether) Besides the engine, the suspension was constantly upgraded, always using the unique transverse leaf spring design. the interior improved as well, but didn't really get good until the C5 models came along. the horrible 4+3 manual transmissions gave way to 6-speeds.
No comments:
Post a Comment