Meet the Fleet – Sportscars: Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport

• BODY: Johnny Lightning
• WHEELS & TIRES: Road Race Replicas

Just like on a real racing track back in the ‘60’s, a lot of C2 Corvettes race in the Vintage Sports Car series at Drag City! This, however, is a little more special than even a well race-prepped Stingray. This is not one of the extremely rare original “Grand Sport” coupes, but its also not quite right to say it’s a “fake.” It is in fact a replica in the “gentleman’s sense of the word,” a faithful recreation of the real thing built with virtually every detail accurate to the original where ever possible.

Only 5 Corvette Grand Sports were made in 1962 and 63 before GM corporate pulled the plug on the project, but fortunately all 5 have survived (2 of the original 5 coupes were decapitated and turned into roadsters).

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“Number One” here was built in 1982 by owner/driver Wayne “Wonderkid” Williams, who once worked for General Motor’s racing department back in the 1970’s and remembers the real Grand Sport fondly from his boyhood. The engine block is one of the nearly unobtainable aluminum 327 bored and stroked to 377 cu in as in the originals, and the cylinder heads, by contrast, are custom made pieces, replicas of the original “semi-hemi” design, as is the intake manifold, designed to accept 4 Ferrari-style Weber side draft carbs! The amount of work and investment that went into this car is stunning, and it performs as well it as was built!

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As an added bonus, this car has an almost exact twin in the form of a free-wheeling Johnny Lightning die-cast release, which is seen here in the infield at Drag City Mk. II and today still prowls the infield at Mk. IV, often seen in the pits for replacement tires in the heat of a sports car showdown!

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Fortunately, the legend of the Grand Sport lives on in HO scale, and down in my basement I re-enact those age old rivalries from all those decades ago: the Corvettes against the Cobras against the Jaguar E-Types against the Ferrari 250 GTOs. The action is as exciting today as it was back then…and its damn near as exciting at 1:64 as it is at 1:1!