General Motors captured the spotlight at the Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale Auction from January 11–18, 2009, when it released 252 cars from its Heritage Fleet for no-reserve sale. (The Heritage Fleet must be differentiated from GM’s Heritage Collection; the former are surplus or less important cars, the latter are the milestone cars […]
When the new Corvette Sting Ray was introduced in late 1962, the Corvette was almost a perennial national champion in SCCA racing, but Corvette Chief Engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov took the game to a new level by slipping an obscurely labeled Regular Production Option (RPO) into the Corvette option list—Z06. Equipment […]
Grady Davis’s Gulf Oil Racing Team purchased this Corvette in 1962 from Yenko Chevrolet, and the car was campaigned by the “Flying Dentist,” Dr. Dick Thompson, in the 1962 SCCA A-Production Class. The Corvette was sold at the end of the 1962 season to Tony Denman, who successfully raced the […]
The L88 Corvette entered its third year of production in 1969, having established itself as all-conquering in both SCCA and FIA competition. Rated at a measly 430 horsepower, the L88 pumped out an all-too-real 560 hp at its redline, and, with special heavy-duty brakes, F41 suspension, and a bullet-proof Positraction […]
Corvettes dominated SCCA racing in 1959, and Jim Jeffords took the SCCA B Production points championship with his 1959 Corvette, dubbed the Purple People Eater Mk III. Plans were laid to contest the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the FIA championship the following year. Against this frenetic backdrop, the […]
Nineteen eighty-three marked the introduction of Chevrolet’s fourth-generation Corvette, which until the mid-1990s would be improved and modified by a variety of in-house and aftermarket specialists. Of the various aftermarket tuners, one of the most impressive was Guldstrand Specialty Automobiles (GSA) out of California. Company founder Dick Guldstrand had developed […]
Inspiration for the introduction of the 1953 Chevrolet Corvette was attributable to a flood of young Americans arriving home after World War II who craved nimble, athletic sports cars. A team of General Motors engineers, under the leadership of Harley Earl, set about creating a car bodied in fiberglass, with […]
The L88 Corvette burst onto the scene with victories at Daytona and Sebring in 1966 and continued at the Le Mans Trials in April 1967, where, in near-stock trim, an L88 clocked 171.5 mph on the Mulsanne Straight. That same car led the GT class in the 1967 24 […]
In the Corvette world, three models have dominated the collector market: the 1957 with fuel injection, the 1963 Split-Window Sting Ray with fuel injection, and the 1967 Sting Ray with the top horsepower 427 engines. Other years may have offered better performance, superior features, or better styling, but this […]
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