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Originally Posted by Neutrino
yes I while I wa writing that i was remembering the problems the lotus heads had on the 2.2 chrysler common block. It seems they like to snap timing belts. But i wasn't sure how they did with the vette engine.
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The ZR1's engine (code named LT5) was a more expensive engine to produce as it incorporated the uses of forged steel rather then cast in the internals. It was also a heavy and bulky engine (it barely fit into a C4's engine bay) that had a complicated DOHC system.
At the time of the ZR1 Chevrolet simply didn’t have the facilities to build such a unique engine and so they had the engine constructed by Mercury Marine in Oklahoma. They could only produce a handful of engines a day, as it was a complicated engine to procure.
The chief of engineering at the time wanted to make all Corvettes have the LT5 engines but it was simply not possible as the inclusion of the ZR1 package increased the price of the car by almost double which would have priced them out of the market.
Initial demand of the car was high but soon tailed off. Still around 33,000 ZR1s had been made from 1991 to 1995, when the LS1 was proven to be a better engine and was earmarked for the C5 2 years later.
The Gen II and Gen III engines where made what they are now due to the jealousy of some of the Corvette engineers towards Lotus. When management decided that the next engine after the L98 would be designed by Lotus, the Corvette engine team thought, "Why didn’t they pick us? We can do it. Lets show them what were made of".
There are still a few ZR1s around and they are famous for being the best sounding Corvette ever built.