As I laid the magazine back down on my desk, I looked across the room and had to laugh. I had just read an interesting news story in “AutoWeek” about the Corvette Grand Sports. The article described how most historians have believed for years that there were only five Grand Sports. However, in a recent interview with “AutoWeek,” team owner John Mecom was sure that he purchased six cars from GM and not five. A photograph and the recollections of several Mecom employees pointed to the notion that Mecom did receive what would be the sixth car for the 1964 Nassau Speed Weeks but that, subsequent to the race, it went back to GM and was never seen again. This story even piqued the interest of current GM design chief Ed Welburn, who initiated his own search for what can now be considered the “Lost Grand Sport.”
Eventually a retired GM employee was located, who was able to tell the sad tale of how he was ordered to take the sixth Grand Sport out to GM’s Military Proving Grounds, fill the cockpit with gasoline- soaked tires and burn the car to the ground. He even went so far as to describe how the many aluminum components melted under the extreme heat. So while it seems now positive that there were, in fact, six Grand Sports built, it would appear that history has now officially closed a chapter on one of them. Or has it?
