As aggressive looking as the...
As aggressive looking as the original, Larry Weiner's Grand Sport is an impressive sight. The reproduction value of this car is amazing.
Unobtainium. That's what the Corvette Grand Sport is really made of. With only five in existence, even if one of these ultra-rare racers ever did come on the market, Bill Gates would quickly outbid you. But he'd still have to sell a jillion shares of Microsoft to pay for it.
But Grand Sports weren't always so pricey. For Corvette racer Dick Guldstrand, sharing one of those painful "If I only knew" anecdotes, had a tired-out GS back in 1967 that he'd left in the alley behind his shop. He ended up selling it for-get this-$5,000.
Of course, back then you could buy a small house for about that, so it might as well have been a multimillion-dollar car. At least that's how Larry Weiner, a minimum-wage, 17-year-old felt about it back in 1967. He had a lust for everything automotive, which would eventually lead him to found Performance West Group, a prominent builder of show cars for the major auto manufacturers. But he never forgot the Grand Sport he could never afford, and finally decided to create one himself. The good news is that this sort of project is still possible for a lot of Corvette owners today.
Larry added his own comfort...
Larry added his own comfort touches, something a bit different from Zora's original plan. Regardless, the effort is functional and fun.
First, though, a bit more background. Corvette folks already know the story of the Grand Sport, but it's worth retelling. The Shelby Cobra was just beginning to kick ass on the road-course racing circuit. In retaliation, Zora Arkus-Duntov took the then-new Corvette Sting Ray and whacked off 1,000 pounds, throwing everything that didn't contribute to speed into the dumpster. He employed a tubular chassis with aluminum reinforcements, and was rewarded with the Grand Sport, a Corvette that ate everything else on the track alive, and weighed in at a svelte 1,950 pounds. Even though there were plans to build another 100 GS's, GM management scrapped the program, and the five original Grand Sports disappeared from the track, melting into private hands.
That work stoppage didn't keep Weiner from following through on his desire for a Grand Sport. If he couldn't buy one, then why not build one from scratch? Here's where the folks at Mid America Industries entered the picture with a Grand Sport conversion called the GS-2.
Auto Meter gauges are set...
Auto Meter gauges are set in a machine-turned plate in the similar locations to the original mid-year placements.
Based on original blueprints for the chassis, Mid America's Jeff Leech produced a jig, along with molds to create the fiberglass body parts unique to the vehicle. It uses the center tub from the '63-'67 model years, so the finished vehicle is actually a modified Corvette with the original title. Prices for the GS-2 start at $5,500 for the components. A rolling chassis goes for $35,000, and turnkeys start at $80,000, but Leech says $100,000 is a more typical figure. Still, that's only a fraction of the price of what an original Grand Sport would sell for today.
In 1989, Weiner sold his 308 Ferrari, bought a Mid America chassis, and his ship set sail. He knew the project wouldn't be a precise reproduction, however. "My goal was not to end up with an exact clone," explains Weiner, "but a vehicle that took advantage of technology by integrating newer Corvette components. And it also had to be street-legal."
After obtaining a tube chassis from Mid America, it took Weiner two years to find an unmolested Corvette body tub which he discovered at the Bloomington Gold Corvette show. He shipped the central structure to the factory in Milan, Illinois, and Leech began constructing the body.