There are instances when a car’s legend is out of all proportion to its impact on the marketplace. 
So it is with the 1969 ZL-1-furnished Chevrolet Corvette. Over the years, the ZL-1 has taken on mythic proportions as a car and as an objet d’art. One recent retrospective on the car asserted that it had a top speed of 200 miles per hour. Another suggests that it could dash through the quarter mile in just 10 seconds. And though there is a temptation to foster the legend by repeating statistics as fact, the fact is that, while the ZL-1 Corvette was a formidable street performance car, it was not capable of accomplishing either of those numbers. Damn few street cars of any period are.
ZL-1 scarcity
Perhaps the biggest reason that the Corvette ZL-1 has achieved these mythic proportions is its sheer inaccessibility. By most accounts only two — yes, two — Corvettes with the ZL-1 engine were ever sold to the general public, and their history is cloudy and tangled. So while many have seen and actually driven a 1957 “fuelie” or a ’68 L88, real tests of box stock ZL-1-equipped Corvettes are rarer than the teeth of a rooster. Thus, in the absence of definite knowledge, legend has grown. Read more . . .
the resources, raw ability, or advantages that others have. And that is why for many years, America loved American Motors. In the 1950s, this company, forged from Nash and Hudson, was undoubtedly an underdog compared to the Big Three. Yet somehow through sheer spunk, it managed to thrive and stay afloat for more than 3 decades. Even at the end, right before it was acquired by Chrysler Corporation, its Jeep division was among the most sought-after brands in the world, yet another acknowledgment to its intrepid pursuit of the near-impossible.