Saving a Low-Mileage C5 Z06 With a Wonky Backstory

C5 Z06 Corvette with somewhere under 1,000 original miles needed a serious detail to get back to its showroom condition.

It’s a hard thing for a car enthusiast to know how to feel about so-called “time capsule” cars. AKA, minty cars with ultra-low mileage. On one hand, it’s cool to see a basically factory-fresh example of a vehicle that’s over two decades old. On the other hand, we’re looking at a sports car that was built to be driven and enjoyed… That was left to sit its whole life. Such is the case with this C5 Z06. No matter which side of the fence you stand on, though, we can all agree that this thing needed a good cleaning.

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We found this (now) gorgeous C5 Z06 in a Facebook post in a group called Low Miles No Miles. It’s a group where you’ll find all sorts of clean and low-mileage classics. The poster, Michael Scott, says he was called to detail this Corvette with”only 300 miles” on the odometer. That, though, is where things get a little bit hairy. We’ll dig into the mileage discrepancy here in a bit. First, let’s take a look at the results of the detail.

Looking Factory Fresh After…All Those Years? 

One thing nobody can argue is that Scott did an excellent job on the detail. This 23-year-old Corvette is looking as clean as the day it left the showroom. Inside and out, you’d be hard-pressed to find a cleaner example of a C5 Z06. Scott says the detail took about an hour and he didn’t do anything too in-depth. Just a nice proper wash and a solid polish brought this thing back to life. You’d start to believe that the car has only 300 miles on the odometer. However, you might not want to believe everything you read or hear.

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In Scott’s original post, the detailer stated that his customer’s father “accidentally purchased” the C5 Z06 one night on an internet auction “after having one too many glasses arrived.” Scott was then told that the man was so stunned when he found out what he had purchased that he sent the 300-mile Corvette to an “outside covered rv /car park” where it sat for six years until Scott arrived to save it.

Which is a pretty wild story. A modern-day barn find (RV storage find?) if you will.

But the folks over at Low Miles No Miles Facebook group weren’t buying the story that Scott’s customer was selling. So they set out using the visible VIN to learn more about this lovely (now saved) Z06 and were quick to get to the bottom of it.

A Little More Mileage, A Little Less Storage Time

One Facebook user searched the VIN and found that it was for sale in November 2014 with an odometer rating of 612 miles. Still a remarkably low mileage, of course. However, assuming that was the last sale, the owner would have had to have it in storage for 10 years at this point. Moreover, inputting the VIN into the Vehicle History database shows a more recent sale date of October 9th, 2022. That sale date also displays a mileage reading of 705. However, the report does not indicate any odometer tampering.

Ultimately, there’s no definitive way to know the mileage without turning the key and looking at the odometer. Perhaps the owner misspoke and meant 3,000 miles after having enjoyed 2,300 miles behind the wheel since October 2022. Although, if you’re willing to bend the truth enough to add an extra five years of ownership, you might not hesitate to exaggerate the mileage, too. We’re just speculating, of course, we’re making no accusations.

What we don’t have to speculate on, though, is the fact that this Z06 sat in a terrible place for far too long, the mileage is probably still insanely low for this model year, and Michael Scott did a killer detail job on it.

At the end of the day, we’re happy to see this Z get back to its true self. And we hope the new owner actually gets to enjoy it.

Photos: Michael Scott/Facebook