- BODY: Auto World
- WHEELS & TIRES: Road Race Replicas
After over 2 years of blogging, we’ve come to the final installment of “Meet The Fleet” for the Sportscar team! To clarify: all the “MtF” posts are cars that I had either already built by the time I started “Thunderjetheaven.com” or were added shortly after the blog started; all the cars I have added to my collection since the blog took off have been profiled as “NEW BUILDS.” But hey, isn’t it something that it took me this long to profile 72 cars?!
This dark blue Corvette Grand Sport joined my team sometime in the summer of 2020, and is the only one of the many ‘Vette “GS” models I have to retain its factory pre-printed racing number of 2. It was pure happenstance, really, since the first GS I bought was the white one with the blue stripe that had no number on it, and this was the 2nd one I acquired. Subsequent additions (the yellow one, the recently added black one) all bore the same pre-printed number, as does the red one, which I am still looking for but haven’t gotten ahold of yet. Which brings up a good point: doesn’t it seem like Auto World is being lazy here? Shouldn’t they change the number on the car if they change the body color? I mean, really…that seems obvious to me!
Well, after I got this 2nd GS with the #2, it seemed natural that the one I bought before it should become #1, so it did, but unlike the white car which actually got named “Number One,” this bad blue boy is named “Terminator.” Considering the car’s performance, its an appropriate name! Driver Dean “Quickshift” Quinten, born in Nova Scotia but raised on Long Island, spent his formative years at Watkins Glen raceway in NY and decided to be a racing driver before the age of 10. Unlike so many parental units, Quinten’s parents actually encouraged their son’s interest in a dangerous hobby, so he graduated from small British sports cars to muscle cars before finding the perfect vehicle to combine sports and muscle in the form of the rare Corvette Grand Sport. “Terminator” is not one of the original 5 Chevrolet-built cars, but it is an almost perfect tribute that was nearly 15 years in the making; Quinten built the car painstakingly over those years, studying every detail of the real thing, even obtainting original “bootleg” blue prints from a friend who once worked on the pit crew for the real car. Thus it is equipped with a 327 with quad Weber 2-jet side drafts, balanced and blueprinted and tuned within inches of its life to produce nearly 400 HP, running through a 4-speed to a full posi-trac (locked) rear axle and a stripped-for-race interior: it is a true purpose-built car which, though street legal in the strictest terms, is virtually never street driven.
“Terminator” has lived up to its name, winning countless races and taking home one tournament trophy, but one can’t help but think more are in her future; “Quickshift” has proven his dedication and “Terminator” has proven her mettle, and she always shows near the top of the upper echelons of the winner’s circle, at Drag City and at numerous other tracks across North America.
It is amazing how you have developed this amazing collection of quality and performance machines.