YAHOO AUTOS
By Zach Doell
Stack a performance car up against its kit car likeness and the choice should be simple, you want the real thing. This, however, is no mere kit car, in fact, it has no real world counterpart. This is the Factory Five GTM, a build-it-yourself kit supercar based on the sturdy Corvette C5.
The guys at 365 Days of Cars spotted this fully-built GTM up for sale on eBay, and it’s probably the biggest supercar bargain of the day.
Factory Five Racing made a name for itself building AC Cobra replicas, in fact most of the Cobra kits you see are probably theirs. But the team wanted to push the boundaries further, and after five years of development, the GTM Supercar came to life in 2007.
The GTM kits cost around $25,000, which doesn’t include the C5 Corvette donor car or necessary Porsche manual gearbox. But for way less than the price of the brand new C7 Corvette Z06 (starting at $78,000), you could have your very own supercar with Z06 performance to match.
Factory Five supplies the space frame chassis, Koni suspension components, composite body panels, and much more, while the donor C5 bequeaths its V8 engine, dual fuel tanks, radiator, brakes, and control arms, among other things.
Depending on what type of C5 Corvette you choose as a donor car, GTM performance can range from the standard 350 horsepower LS1 V8 to the 400-horsepower LS6, or even a swapped-in 500-horsepower LS7.
According to the seller, this car features an LS6 V8 with new cams and an updated shift linkage. From face value alone, it looks remarkably well done. A few years ago, Car and Driver tested an LS7 equipped example and its performance eclipsed that of the Porsche Carrera GT and Ferrari 599GTB. This one ought to put up some strong numbers as well.
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