All about C4 SPECIAL EDITION Corvettes
Video Transcript [Music] hello everybody welcome back to c&s corvettes in Sarasota Florida this is Lyle and I am here to talk to you today about something that i find very interesting particularly gm's special editions of the corvettes okay sorry before we get started guys please take a moment to like and subscribe to our channel down here right right down here because that's what allows me to keep doing what i do for you guys I'm really pushing to get to 20 000 here in the next 30 days or so and we're doing really really well if you find my information valuable if you think I'm pretty whatever please hit like and subscribe so that we can get to my goal and that's going to allow me to do even more stuff and start doing some videos including cars maybe off-site uh expand the channel a bit uh the further i get with your help the further i'll be able to take you so thank you in advance let's get back to the material now they started with their first special edition with the pace car in 1978 and they've done a boatload of them since and I'm going to talk to you today about some of the cars that gm made that are special today we're going to talk about the c4 special editions right now some of which you're going to be very familiar with some of which you may have never even heard of but we're going to get started with that right now the first special edition c4 that was introduced was called the Malcolm Konnor edition in 1986 and you're probably saying to yourself man I've been a corvette guy forever I've never heard of that well you'd be right most people haven't they only made 50 of them they were a two-tone silver beige over black car and that car was made to honor the founder of Malcolm Konnor Chevrolet in new jersey who was at the time like the biggest corvette dealer in the country so 50 of those produced coupes only silver over beige if you ever see one it'll be a rare day but they do exist also in 1986 the Chevrolet corvette convertible which of course was the first convertible since 1975 in the corvette lineup was selected to be the pace car for the Indianapolis 500 race so in theory and in practice all 1986 convertibles are indie pace cars every one of them came with the decal package every one of them came with a little plaque on the ac control face saying Indianapolis pace car so there were actually 7 315 1986 convertibles produced the actual pace car was yellow and there were 732 yellow convertible pace cars produced so basically any 86 convertible is a pace car but the true pace cars if you want to get technical were yellow because that's what the real pace car was moving on to 1988 we had the 35th anniversary car that was a coupe only white on white special edition we are talking white paint on the exterior white paint on the wheels white seats white door panels even a white steering wheel that is a lot of white and I've seen many of these cars at the shop over the years keeping them clean is a nightmare but when they are clean they are brilliant they actually had numbered plaques on the shifter plate special logos all around at the front the rear on the fenders it was more than just a paint option because of how much care they put into the special emblems and the individually numbered stuff really cool car but good lord keeping it clean is the nightmare uh 1993 we had the 40th anniversary now there's here's one of the things i want to talk to you guys about because every 40th every car made in 1993 had the 40th logo embroidered on the headrest of every seat no matter what color the car was cooper convertible it said 40th so oftentimes you see these cars for sale online 40th anniversary 1993 corvette for sale but unless they are ruby red outside over ruby red inside they are not the special 40th anniversary edition now that ruby red car they made 6749 of them they were available in cooper convertible and even the convertible top on the convertibles was ruby red those centers of the wheels were ruby red in my opinion one of the most handsome cars gm ever made in fact if you look over my left shoulder i've got one sitting in the showroom right now 40th anniversary coupe those cars uh were very beautiful they've maintained their value very well for a c4 and they're kind of timeless it's not a color that people got and go oh that's dated it's still a very lovely color especially when it's well maintained and the metallic and still shine through in the paint it's also important to note that this is the only time that they made a special edition zr1 also in the ruby red ruby red configuration otherwise zr1s were just zr1 so if you want a truly special zr1 93 40th anniversary edition is one of the most rare cars you can get moving on in 1995 we had another Indianapolis pace car they made 527 of these they were dark purple on top and white on bottom two-tone paint with custom embroidery inside they also featured the five spoke zr1 style wheels that were introduced on the zr1 in 1994. you're going to see a pattern over the next couple of years that I'm talking about here special editions got the cool five spoke zr1 wheels we'll get into that in a second there were custom decals that were came on the car again only 527 ever made it is a very rare car there wasn't anything special about it in as much as engine power or drivetrain or suspension it was basically a paint and appearance package but they only made a handful of them in 1996 the last year of the c4 we had two count them two special editions the first one was called the collector edition and that was available in both coupe and convertible and it was painted Sebring silver with Sebring silver five spoke zr1 wheels see special editions the r1 wheels and it had you could get a black gray or my favorite a torch red interior with that car it was available with both the lt1 and the lt4 engine although the lt4 as in all 1996 corvettes was only available with the manual transmission that moves us on to the big boy the one that everybody loves the 1996 grand sport admiral blue with a big white stripe down the middle black five spoke zr1 wheels again and you could get black or red interior with that car both coupe and convertible convertibles had a white top and they only made a thousand of these cars there were 810 coupes and 190 convertibles the coupes were further differentiated because they actually had the true zr1 11 inch wide rims with the 315 35 zr17 tires on the back and the way that they made that look not ridiculous was if you look at the rear quarter of a grand sport coupe they actually had auxiliary fender flares on the body work which is a cool touch that really ties the car together one of the things that can be confusing all grand sports were lt 4 6 speeds all grand sports were lt4 six speeds what makes confusing is every car with an lt4 engine be it a grand sport a collector edition or just a regular red coupe had on the throttle body plate right at the front of the engine a plate that said grand sport so we go right back to that problem with like the 40th logo in the headrest where the p people say oh it's a 40th anniversary edition just like that people are selling non-grand sport sport lt4 six-speed cars that have the grand sport plate on the throttle body as grand sports please please please understand the only grand sports that were ever made were blue with a white stripe down the middle and two red hash marks on the left-hand fender I'll do an entire video about why those hash marks are there and how they've been purveyed throughout corvette history that'll be a different video but only the real grand sports were blue with white any six-speed lt4 from 1996 had a grand sport plate on the engine that does not however make it a grand sport so I'm sure that my editor has gone ahead and put up the pictures as I've talked about the cars if you have questions about these particular cars if you own any of these particular cars I'd love to hear from you you can reach me at Lyle@corvettepartscenter.com and just make sure to like and subscribe and I'll get back to you as quickly as I can and I'll be back with more special editions from the c3 c5 and the c6 talk to you soon