Back in 2018, we showed you the reunion between Gary Gove and the 1966 Corvette coupe he had raced more than 50 years earlier. He was even caught on video signing a valve cover.
Now that historic car is being offered for sale through Bring a Trailer, where the current bid is $50,000, with eight more days left in the auction.
Tracing its roots back to Alan Green Chevrolet of Burien, Washington, this car was pulled off the dealership lot, outfitted with a pre-production 427 L88 V8 engine, and immediately headed to the race track with Gove behind the wheel.
Gove competed successfully in the car for one year up and down the West Coast in SCCA A Production, from Riverside to Seattle to Canada, he recalled in 2018.
Pulling 170 mph down the back straightaway at Riverside “made getting into Turn 9 a really fearful event, because your eyes were right at the end of their stalks,” Gove said. “And the best way was to turn the car and let it slide because if you just tried to use the brakes, it was just too much for the brakes. I love this car – it was fun to race. If you put it in fourth gear, it just started breathing air, and it ran!”
Originally delivered to Appleway Motors in Dishman, Washington, the car was soon acquired by Alan Green Chevrolet and turned into a race car by Gove and mechanic Bud Weiser (who designed and installed a rear end cooling deflector and added headers and side-exit exhaust midway through the first season – the idea of Harold Daigh). Green, who campaigned many race cars in the Northwest during the 1960s, had been granted access to L88 components before the high-compression, heavy-duty engine was introduced to the public in 1967.
That engine turned out to be the first of three L88s used during the 1966 season alone, with the car winning at Westwood, Deerpark, Shelton, and Newport, Oregon. Dale Samuelson bought the car that year minus an engine and competed with it until the 1980s, with his family still owning it through 2016.
At that time, the new owners undertook an extensive rotisserie restoration at The Bowtie Shop in Billerica, Massachusetts – with the car dismantled and repainted in its original yellow and green livery. They also redid the black interior, overhauled the J56 brakes and F41 suspension, and installed another engine with an L88-spec engine block, camshaft, and pistons, aluminum intake manifold, and cast-iron cylinder heads. The completed car – including Gove’s signature on the valve cover – earned an American Heritage award at the NCRS National Convention in 2018 and was even featured in Motor Trend.
How much do you think this rolling piece of Corvette history should bring at this week’s auction?
Source:
Bring a Trailer
Related:
Corvettes for Sale: 20K-Mile 1996 Corvette Collector’s Edition with an LT4 on BaT
Corvettes for Sale: 1959 Corvette Racer Offered on Facebook Marketplace
Corvettes for Sale: Cars & Bids Finally Adds Classics Like this ’63 Corvette
Subscribe Now: