- This 1957 Chevrolet SS one-off race car just became the most expensive Corvette ever sold
- It hammered for US$7.7 million (CDN$11 million)—double the previous auction record
- The racer was the pet project of Corvette “godfather” Zora Arkus-Duntov himself
A Chevrolet racing prototype from 1957 just blew away the record for the most expensive Corvette ever sold when it crossed the RM Sotheby’s auction block late February for over US$7.7 million (CDN$11 million). The record was previously held by a rare L88-trim 1967 ‘Vette that was sold by Barrett-Jackson in 2014 for US$3.85 million, but if ever a Corvette was going to take that title, it’d be this car, the Chevrolet Corvette SS race car, internally known as Project XP-64 and personally developed by and for Zora Arkus-Duntov, the “godfather of the Corvette.”
Not all may recall that when Chevrolet birthed the Corvette in 1953, it did so with a humble straight-six engine under the hood. That never sat well with Duntov, who, besides being the Corvette’s chief engineer, was also a former race-car driver.
He started toying with a V8-powered Corvette mule in 1954, which he pushed to more than 150 mph (242 km/h); and it’s rumoured that shortly after Chevy vice-president Harley Earl bought a Jaguar D-Type racer, purportedly for his development team to drop a Chevrolet small-block V8 into, but more to goad other execs into approve a full-on Corvette racing effort.
A half-dozen modified Corvettes competed in the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1956, but in 1957, Chevrolet was proud to pull up to the line in this car, the Corvette SS, which it’d dubbed “Project XP-64” during development. The car saw a magnesium body wrapped around a tube-frame chassis; and a fuel-injected 283-cubic-inch V8 backed by a four-speed gearbox.
The automaker made two, a test mule and this racer, and while it set a lap record at Sebring with guest driver Juan Manuel Fangio at the wheel ahead of the race proper, Chevrolet team drivers John Fitch and Piero Taruffi didn’t fare so well in actual competition, with a failed rear bushing leading them to a did-not-finish (DNF) after 23 laps.
An industry-wide racing ban in the late ’50s meant the world wouldn’t see another factory-backed Corvette race car until the C5-R of 1999, though Duntov did pilot Project XP-64 to a blazing 183 mph (294 km/h) at GM’s Mesa Proving Ground in Arizona just for fun.
Ontario, Canada-headquartered RM Sotheby’s auctioned off the ’57 Corvette SS at its Miami sale, held February 27 and 28 this year. The car came out of the collection of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum, which had been its caretaker since 1967; the museum is downsizing big-time this year, and in November saw another record sale when it let go of its 1954 Mercedes-Benz W 196 R ‘Stromlinienwagen’ for US$77 million.
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