First off, no you wouldn't do a 383, best option ($/HP) right now is one of Pete's closed deck 391s, which will do right at 600HP. I've got one and I absolutely love it. Having had a couple of ZR-1s with various levels of mods from stock, to ~500HP to fully built 391, here's my opinion:
First off, the car in stock form is a blast, and still a lot of fun even by modern standards. No it's not going to beat everything out there, but it will still surprise a lot of people and is a hoot to drive. I bought my current one planning to take it and have a 500HP upgrade done immediately, but ended up enjoying driving it stock so much that I waited, which unfortunately/fortunately for me led to needing an engine rebuild do to a completely unexpected event (someone in the cars history dropped a foreign object in the intake track, that finally shook loose and got sucked into a combustion chamber).
Anyway, my previous ZR-1 had a ported intake and injector housing and 4.10 gears, and was a beast, and I put long tube headers on it after getting it. The car was right at 500HP, but with the 4.10s seemed even faster. To me, this is the sweet spot for ZR-1 performance, and if what I originally had planned for my current one, and what I would do if I were buying another. Plus if you look around, many of the cars that are for sale will already have some/all of these mods for a very reasonable price. (I wanted a specific color, so didn't have as much choice when I was looking.)
Next step is to build the motor, and right now Pete's 391 cubic inch closed deck motor is the absolute best deal out there. Plus if you're doing a full build, you might as well get the full top end (including heads) ported and do larger cams, giving the car a really nice lope that sounds great, but is still very drivable/streetable. Of course you'll still need the long tube headers with this, and you'll still want 4.10s (that's the next mod to mine).
There are options beyond this if you want to go crazy, Pete recently took the 391 out of his personal car and did a 441 cubic inch. To quote him:
Quote:
The 391 is freaky fast.
The 441 power feels like it's going to twist the body right off the frame
The 391 runs 132-133MPH in the 1/4 if the 441 runs a lil quicker that's fine but the price of a 441 is double of a 391.
The 391 is a perfect engine big bore short stroke plenty of power.
The 441 is almost useless for the street no traction till like 80mph.
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If you were going to go bigger than the 391, do NOT do 4.10s though, as traction would definitely be an issue.
So basically all the work that goes into a 500HP car is reused/needed for a full engine build anyway, so that's a better place to start. Not saying don't do an engine build if this is truly going to be your forever Vette (like mine is for me, although everything's for sale), just that you may be completely happy with a 500HP car.