Friend looking for best C4 year to buy - Any Opini

[Peter B.]

Hey everyone. I have a C3. My friend is looking for a C4 and is asking for which to look at and which to stay away from. Any recommendations?

[Mike M.]

Re: Friend looking for best C4 year to buy - Any O

90 thru 95 ZR1 . mike

[William C.]

Re: Friend looking for best C4 year to buy - Any O

"Best" is a relative term depenging on personal tastes as well as available funds. Generally the newer the better as a general statement.

[Rodney#40542]

Re: Friend looking for best C4 year to buy - Any O

I have a 96 Collector Edition vert with the LT4 engine. Love it, rides great on trips and with the 6 speed gets very good gas mileage. I bought it from Kerbeck Corvettes in Atlantic City, NJ. and drove her back to my home near Birmingham, Al in just under 15 hrs. That included one hr in first gear going around D.C. The car averaged 29.7 mpg. I wasn't even tired from the drive the car rode so well. Much better ride than I was used to from my 78 model. I have owned the car for 3 years and haven't had to do any mtce other than oil changes.

[Joe L.]

Re: Friend looking for best C4 year to buy - Any O

Peter------

A 1996 is the best bet of the C4 edition. Like most Corvette "generations", the last of any particular one is usually the most refined and the first year of the successor generation the most problematic.

For C4s I would say that desirability follows the year model in a straight descending order. In other words, the best is going to be a 1996, 1995 second best, 1994 third best, and so on. The power increase that came with the second generation LT1 for 1992 is something that creates a significant gap with respect to 92-up and 91-down.

The supposed "Achille's heel" of LT1 Corvettes is the Opti-Spark distributor. In that regard, the design change that occurred for the 1995 model year eliminated much of the problem. My 1992 distributor failed when the car had only 3,000 miles on it. That distributor, as well as those in the other first 5,000, or so, 1992s, was replaced with the modified "1st design" distributor and has been trouble-free ever since. The "2nd design" distributor came out in 1995 and was used for 1995-96.

As a footnote to the above, the same basic "Gen II small block" was also used in 1993-96 Chevrolet Caprices used for police cars. Before I retired I asked our fleet manager what their experience had been with the 93-94 police car distributors as opposed to the 95-96 cars equipped with the "2nd design". He told me that they didn't have much distributor trouble with any of them, but that failures they did have were about the same with either 1st or 2nd design units. These are cars which piled up hundreds of thousands of miles. In fact, the City kept them longer than the typical period for police cars since they were so popular and reliable. I'm told that at shift change, the old Caprices always were "snapped up" first, even though there might be brand new Crown Victorias available.