Jerry Thompson and Tony DeLorenzo won 11 straight races to take the SCCA A-Production class in 1969. race tracks for almost 10 years, winning 16 SCCA national A- and B-Production titles. In the Le Mans Trials, a near-stock L88 managed 171.5-mph on the Mulsanne Straight and led the race for almost 12 hours before throwing a rod.īack home, the cars were a thunderous force on U.S. It was all a warm-up for the 1967 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race. An aluminum head, 427-cid V-8 was dropped into a Corvette coupe with big brakes and heavy duty suspension, given to Roger Penske, and sent to the 1966 Daytona 24-hour race.ĭick Gulstrand and Ben Moore won the GT class (12th overall) and repeated the trick at the 12 Hours of Sebring, when they were 9th overall. In 1966, Chief Engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov was frustrated by watching big-block Cobras run away from his Corvettes and went to the NASCAR parts bin to solve the problem. It’s always been the “800-pound gorilla” of Corvettes, because it’s explosively intractable (the real horsepower figure tops 500), and an L88 holds an irresistible fascination for every collector who hungers to master one. Chevrolet’s L88 Corvette was launched – or more properly launched itself – as a Cobra beater.
With this one beautiful exception of engineering, there was no such thing as an American sports car.
To be OFFERED AT AUCTION at Auctions America’s Santa Monica event, June 25-26, 2016.
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