Today, the true believer in


Corvette greatness must be won- dering what happened to all those neat Corvette Grand Sports. #001, the Sunoco blue roadster Penske car, was recently sold by Rob Wal- ton of Walmart for about $1.5-1.8 million. Hugh Ridgley, the new owner who managed the car for years during its career, lives in Illi- nois. Jim Jaeger of Cincinnati, OH,


owns car #002, and this Corvette Grand Sport apparently lives in the National Corvette Museum these days.


Car #003 is owned by a couple of


Corvette fanciers and classic car collectors in Washington State. Owner Tom Armstrong races his Grand Sport and his wife races a Z06. Tey have even taken their Grand Sport overseas to the Good- wood speed event in England. Te Collier Museum in Florida


is home to car #004 and can be viewed only by appointment. No one has seen that particular car out- side the museum for many years. However, Wayne Ellwood, chroni- cler and historian of all Corvettes, says that it is raced in New Jersey vintage events.


10 varac.ca


Bill Tower of Lake City, FL,


owns car #005 and has since 1978. He says he will be buried in the car and won’t sell it for any price, de- spite being offered over $5,000,000 for it. Bill retired from GM years ago and was one of the original en- gineers working with Zora Arkus Duntov when they invented the 1967 L-88 big block Stingray pro- totypes. John Cordts, a Canadian driver


of some note in the late and lamented CanAm series, drove a 1963-67 era Corvette sponsored by the ever-present Gorries Toronto dealership against the best that the Comstock Shelby GT-350 team had to offer. And they had to offer drivers Craig Fisher (who later co- drove with Mark Donohue for Roger Penske), Walt MacKay (six decades of racing experience in Canadian road racing ) and Eppie Wietzes ( former Canadian Cham- pion and winner in the ultra-com- petitive Formula A series). Te battles among these people had spectators on the edge of their fences at Mosport, Harewood and St. Jovite as it was a take no prison- ers type of battling which had the fans coming back for more.Te ef-


forts of Corvette enthusiasts, both amateur and professional, resulted in some potentially superior racing cars, such as the John Greenwood Corvettes of the late 1970s and early 80s with wild bodywork and even wilder American flag paint jobs. Tese fiercesome iterations of America’s favourite sport car tore up the tracks at many venues such as Mosport in Canada, Watkins Glen, VIR and other tracks, but they did not appear to have the en- durance to stick it out at the major European tracks. Nonetheless, these Corvettes continued to fly the flag for one of the fastest sports cars around, regardless of the money spent.


Ten, there was a hiatus in the 1980s in racing production Corvettes on an international scale. Tis time period seemed to be the dark ages of production - and to a certain extent, of prototype racing. However, in the late 1980s, there appeared the incredible IMSA GTP Corvettes, which had the po- tential to reach speeds of 200 mph by virtue of their 1200 horsepower turbocharged Chevrolet V-8 en- gines.Manufacturers had other things on their minds, and perhaps


just surviving might have been one of them. Tis is the time period which Paul Ingrassia and Joseph White, authors of Comeback Te Fall and Rise of the American Automobile Industry, describe in these terms, “… the entire US car industry seemed to be on the brink of ex- tinction.” It seemed almost incon- ceivable that in such a situation, US automakers would even think about something as frivolous as racing. Yet, they did.


Into the 1990s, U.S. car firms seemed to be returning to the mode of thinking that what won on Sun- day, would sell on Monday. And, in particular, the racing division of GM, after seemingly years of skulk- ing in the dark alleys of the racing business, was out in the open and apparently loving it. While some executives thought fun should be banned, others thought “What the hey? Let’s go racing and see what happens.” Corvette Racers Today I personally saw people at GM having fun in August of 2000 when I paid a visit to Mosport in the middle of the week to take a one day course at the John Powell School of Advanced Driving.


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