Those awesome Z06 brake calipers!

The Last C5 - a 2004 Commemorative Z06

For years, the search for the last Corvette of a generation has been an adventure for Corvette lovers. Discovering what the last VIN number is of the last-ever Vette built on that platform has been the easy part. The hard part-finding the car that matches that VIN-makes searching for a needle in a haystack look easy. (Especially if, when found, that last-ever car is not intact, with any unique parts scattered far and wide.)

When it came time to add a "last-of" Corvette to his stable, Mike Yager went in another direction-the easiest one by far. "This car was actually given away by the National Corvette Museum, and I ended up buying it from the winner," Mike says. That's right, he purchased a car that had been identified as the last-ever Z06 C5 built.

Mike already had the last C4 Corvette in the MY Garage collection at Mid America Motorworks, so when the opportunity for a similar last-call C5 came up, he took it. "They're cool cars to have," Mike says of his last-of-the-line Vettes. "The first one of a generation is cool, but so is the last. The fact is that every C5 made came before this car. After this one, there were no more C5s."

With all that performance hardware, it seems almost criminal to let a car like this spend all its time parked in a museum. When we chatted with Mike, this car already had some 4,600 miles on it. "The travesty out there is, if you look at some of these 'last' cars, they were taken out and driven as vehicles and have virtually disappeared," Mike says.  The same can be said for the Commemorative LeMans Z06.  This is one of the fastest and probably the most fun to drive Corvette ever made and many of them just sit in garages in collections.  Most people have only seen these cars on the Internet or at car shows.  This is a Corvette that begs to be driven!!