The 2025 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 Has This One Interesting Thing In Common With The 1953 Corvette
The 2025 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 is like no Corvette before it.
The mid-engined model is the first turbocharged Corvette and the most powerful ever, by far.
Its boosted 5.5-liter V8 is rated at 1,064 hp and good for running a quarter-mile in 9.6 seconds and hitting a 233 mph top speed.
The $174.995 ZR1’s styling is pure eighth-generation Corvette, but it does include one throwback feature. There’s a split rear window that pays homage to the one on the 1963 second-generation Corvette coupe.
Modern technology makes the form over function choice to live with this time around thanks to a video rearview mirror.
But the first Corvette that debuted a decade earlier was an entirely different animal with its fabulous 50s curvaceous body and drop-top only design. It didn’t even have a V8 engine yet, instead relying on a 150 hp straight-six.
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Aside from the name, there’s not really anything it has in common with the 2025 ZR1. Well, except for one thing.
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Just 300 1953 Corvettes were built before production ramped up the following year, making it the rarest model year. (The record was set at 53,807 in 1979, which was almost broken in 2023 during an extended production year when 53,785 were built.)
Chevrolet has no issues building lots of Corvettes these days, but since the ZR1 is launching late in the 2025 cycle, its run will be limited before the updated 2026 cars start rolling out of the Bowling Green Assembly plant.
Chevrolet hasn’t officially announced how many it plans to build, but a Chevy salesman who is a member of the Mid Engine Corvette Forum with access to the dealer allocation database allegedly discovered that the automaker has accepted just 302 orders for the car. That’s not exactly the same as the 1953 total, but it’s eerily close and will maintain the original’s claim to fame. Another difference is that Chevrolet was only able to sell 183 Corvettes during 1953, while the 2025 ZR1 is more than sold out.
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According to the forum post, the most popular color was black with 51 coupes and 40 convertibles ordered, followed by white with 38 coupes and 16 convertibles and yellow with 29 coupes and nine convertibles.
The 2026 Corvette won’t be very different from the 2025 car, but is getting an updated interior that gets new digital displays and replaces the C8’s wall of climate control buttons between the driver and passenger with more conventional controls mounted on the dashboard.