The long version

General Motors farmed the engine out to Lotus and had Mercury Marine build it, an odd pairing that produced a genuinely European-grade DOHC V8 wearing a shape almost nobody on the street could tell apart from a base Corvette, which was half the appeal at the time. Only a few thousand were built, and the LT5's complexity means keeping one running properly now takes a specialist, not a corner-store mechanic, nudging a good share of the survivors toward careful ownership rather than daily abuse. The manual-only, six-speed cars that do still see track days are usually driven by people who know exactly what they are protecting.