American Car Collector

Although the cars built from 1953 to 1955 introduced the Corvette to America, it was the 1956 second series that truly earned the title “America’s Sports Car.” The clean good looks of Harley Earl’s new body design struck a chord with the American public, and it quickly outsold the older style by three to one.…

  Introduced in 1963, the Bill Mitchell-designed Corvette Sting Ray was a quantum leap in the Corvette’s ongoing development. Equipped with a revolutionary yet simple independent rear suspension conceived by Zora Arkus-Duntov, the Corvette matured into a true sports car. Continuously improved, the Corvette featured an ever-expanding list of available engine and transmission combinations, and…

After many years in retirement, Corvette Grand Sport racer Delmo Johnson was encouraged by some Texas friends to become involved in vintage racing. He acquired this, his last race car, around 1990 from his old friend John Mecom, an equally famous Texan. The car began life in 1967 as a Sting Ray racer, and had…

This vehicle pioneered the advantages of “Active Suspension” and featured GTP Corvette race car technology. Built at the Bowling Green plant, the vehicle was developed as a prototype for a limited-edition run in the 1990 model year. This is a concept vehicle. This vehicle will be conveyed to the buyer with no manufacturer statement of…

The name John Lingenfelter has become a legend in the world of performance engineering. For over 30 years, it has been synonymous with world-class performance, taking great cars and trucks and reinventing them. Lingenfelter has twice worked his magic on this 1999 Corvette, adding twin turbochargers and beefy internals to its 346-ci LS1 and taking…

This 1962 Corvette resto-mod is powered by a 5.4-liter, 300-hp, chromed-out small-block crate engine with two four-barrel Edelbrock carbs mated to a standard four-speed transmission and nine-inch Ford differential, and is cooled by a Be Cool aluminum radiator and fans. The car features a modified Art Morrison chassis No. 2 with Corvette C4 front suspension,…

The culmination of the Corvette’s early development came in 1963 with the five Grand Sports. These were emblematic of the Corvette’s potential and fired public imagination that a production-based sports car could hold its own with European marques at Le Mans, Daytona, the Targa Florio, Sebring, and Monza. The first hint of ambitions came with…

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 included large heavy-duty drum brakes…

The C3 Corvette LT-1 has become synonymous with the idea of a high-output small-block V8, and it carried the added bonus of an almost perfect 50/50 weight distribution. First appearing in 1970, the LT-1 offered 370-horsepower and 380 ft-lb of torque in a solid-lifter 350-ci small-block, along with an 11:1 compression ratio and a 0–100…