- Hertz commissioned a whole lot of Z06-based 2019 Corvettes as a rental-car special for its 100th birthday in late 2018.
- Now the rental-car giant is in big trouble amid the coronavirus pandemic.
- You can find some of the former rental cars on Autotrader, and probably elsewhere, priced from the high $50,000s to mid $60,000s.
Rental-car giant Hertz is on the brink of bankruptcy, Bloomberg reported earlier in May. It looks like the rental company has already started to unload some of its fleet, as it's just flooded the market with a bunch of cheap Corvette Z06s.
Originally spotted by Jalopnik, this flood of Z06s is the result of Hertz's partnership with Chevy. While the automaker has made many yellow-and-black Corvettes over the years for Hertz, they've usually been base models. But to celebrate its 100th birthday, Hertz commissioned a fleet of Corvettes based on the Z06 (albeit, inexplicably, without the aggressive front splitter). Those cars were built for 2019 only and are the most extreme Corvettes ever to be rented out by Hertz. Since specialty cars haven't been hit as hard by the decline in used car prices, Hertz probably figured these would still fetch good money.
That being said, they're still priced to go quickly. With a quick Autotrader search, you can find a couple dozen examples available. All are priced between $58,000 for the higher-mileage examples and $63,000 for the "Hertz Certified" cars. That makes them all pretty cheap for Z06s, though it's still new Corvette Stingray money. Since those are hard to come by these days, though, this might be your best way to get a mean, like-new Corvette for this price.
If Hertz is forced into bankruptcy, several hundred thousand more used cars could pour into the used car market in America. This would be bad news for automakers and used-car prices in general. It's unclear if this Z06 fire sale is due to the potential looming bankruptcy.
From: Road & Track