historic-imsa-yenko-thompson-corvette

This bad boy is being offered September 18-19 at client Saratoga Motorcar Auction's LIVE auction in upstate New York.

Call it a barn find, time capsule or race ready piece of American produced race car history, there is no question this one off Corvette is the most documented vintage race car being offered in some time. With just one owner since the purchase from Jerry Thompson and Don Yenko in 1976, the year after its participation in the 24 hours of Daytona where it ran as high as third against the likes of Peter Gregg, Brian Redman, and Al Holbert in their factory Porsches and BMWs. The Corvette now stands as it rolled off the trailer in 1975, with meticulous detail paid to the preparation on that day.

Jerry Thompson, a noted Corvette racer from the early 1960s and driver of the famous Owens-Corning Corvettes of the late 1960s as well as Don Yenko, the legendary Chevrolet dealer of high-performance street cars, combined on the project to build this “skunk works” version of the racing model. Thompson, a General Motors engineer and Yenko, who supplied the motors through his high-performance connections at GM, constructed the car with the help of the GM tech center in Detroit.

With the assistance of GM design engineer, Randy Wittine, who created the unique “boxed” flares to accommodate the newly approved wider tires, the Corvette provide a silhouette never seen in a production racing Corvettes. Wittine's flares were the second set produced, as the first set went to the factory supported John Greenwood IMSA Corvette.

Power was supplied by a 454 cubic inch engine bored 60 over to produce over 650 horsepower. The engines came directly from Chevrolet's performance department and dyno'd at the factory. The Corvette now has an all new 454 bored and prepared to the exact specifications for which it ran in Daytona in 1974. More details https://www.saratogaautoauction.org/vehicles/1162/historic-imsa-yenko-thompson-corvette