I'm starting to get serious about my vette hunt.My biggest question is what would be the best bang for my buck?I'm needing to stay around 25k,would it be better to buy a 97 or 98 model and "pimp" it or a 02 z06(assuming in can find one around that price)?If I max out my cash at 25k the car will have to stay stock for some time.(atleast that's what i'm telling myself)

 

Well a '97 to '98 in excellent condition with low miles is going to run you in the low $20K price range anyway and with the price of Corvette modification the few thousand you have left over may not be enough to bring it the same performance level as the Z06. So if you are trying to get the most HP for the buck you might be better off trying to find a Z06 in your price range. But the only problem you may run into with that route is to find a Z06 for $25K you may be looking a some high mileage cars. To give you an idea I spent $22,700 on my car last Sept. and I have a '98 fully loaded (sports seats, power passenger seat, memory seats, adjustable suspension, dual climate, chrome Z06 wheels, Borla exhaust, Blackwing intake, short throw shifter, etc...) and best of all it only had 22,225 miles on it. Good luck.

 

Thanks for the info play!There are some good deals on ebay,but i'm kinda leary unless i can go see it in person.My big problem with finding one locally is that i live in a fairly small Oklahoma town(trucks are king).

 

I just bought my 2001 yellow 6 speed fully loaded in near perfect condition for 26,500 (50Kmi)I have been looking for about a year. I live in So CA and have a large selection of cars to choose from. There were no Z06 in the 25,000 range here. The closest would be around 29000 to 32000 for a clean Z06 in the 2001-2002 years. My personel choice is was to get the newest car I could afford. I here there were some minor refinments from the 98 models that may make a slightly more reliable car. The one thing that I did in my reserch that made a difference was to get a carfax report on the 5 cars I looked at. This revealed that the other cars had a lot of owners and on two of the cars the persons selling it had only purchased them less than 5K miles prior. This scarred me! Why would someone buy and resell so soon? One car had been to 3 owners and two dealers. The one I selected had a clean car fax. The service cost about 25 bucks for 1 month unlimited checks. Money well spent. One thing I learned on this site was that the drivers info center on the dash will give you all the codes for any problems that might be going on with the car. You could sit in a prospective car and check the code list for any problems. this might ease your mind a bit. The codes can be reset but a private party may not know about this trick. Good luck! I have been waiting for years for mine and am very excited to have finnaly got it!

 

Thanks for the info acossey,I'll definetly check the past of all the cars i'm interested in.It might take me a while to find the right one but i guess thats half the fun.

 

If you are as picky as I am it probably will take a while, like I said it took me about 3-4 months (and I'm impatient when I want something) but it was well worth it in the end.