No. 20030757 From
the Street to the Race Track
That was the concept pursued by the major American automakers in the 1960s, when the first sports cars were developed: the Chevrolet Corvette and the Ford Mustang.
Let’s take a look at Chevrolet, whose latest race car from CARRERA I have right here in front of me: item number 30757, a Corvette Sting Ray 427 with start number 8 in classic blue-white-red (American) paint.
The Corvette itself is a very old acquaintance; the car was first released in 2001. In real life, something like this would actually be considered a “youngtimer”…? However, this model continues to enjoy uninterrupted popularity across the Atlantic, which is why the car appears exclusively in the U.S. lineup. Collectors, of course, know how to get their hands on this model.
As mentioned, the basic design is now 15 years old.
Its handling reflects this, and the technology no longer necessarily meets the latest standards. That said, you have to make some compromises with this vehicle anyway, since it can’t be compared to modern race cars. Narrow tires and a narrow track width mean that veering off the track is practically inevitable if you drive too aggressively. However, when compared to its direct competitors from the CARRERA lineup, it holds its own without any problems. You should always keep in mind that recreating a vehicle from the 1950s or 1960s for a slot car track naturally means that the slot racer will handle similarly to a classic car. Anyone who’s ever driven a real car from that era knows what I mean.
But actually, I wanted to write a few more sentences about the Corvette Grand Sport program.
The first Corvettes were raced as early as 1960 at the 24 Hours of Le Mans; one of them even won the largest GT displacement class and finished 8th overall.
In 1962, Zora Arkus-Duntov, the first chief engineer of the Chevrolet Corvette, built the first race cars in the Grand Sport series for the 1963 Le Mans race. The plan was to produce 125 ultra-light, high-performance cars; however, General Motors ended its racing sponsorship after only five cars had been built. The Grand Sport program came to an end before the first cars even took to the track. Despite the ban on racing, the aforementioned chief engineer provided the original vehicles to private racers (including Roger Penske and Jim Hall) in order to obtain the desired racing data for further production development. Arkus-Duntov developed high-performance brakes and larger gas tanks so that production vehicles could be used in racing. He was also responsible for the famous Big Block engine. This paved the way for motorsports successes in the years that followed, though these were always achieved by privateers, as GENERAL MOTORS still does not operate an official racing team. It wasn’t until 1999 that CORVETTE RACING celebrated its return to international motorsports with the C5-R.
Best
regards, CoMod Lotus
