This Is the Most Expensive Corvette Ever Sold at Auction

As of this writing, GM has built nearly two million Corvettes of all types. Up until this week, the most expensive one to ever sell at public auction was a rare, one-of-20 L88 from 1967. It sold for $3.85M, way back in 2014. Well, that record just broke, as the famous Corvette SS racer from 1957 sold for $7,705,000 at this year’s RM Sotheby’s Miami auction.

By 1956, the Corvette had already gone from a pretty but porky six-cylinder cruiser to a proper performance car, blessed with small-block V-8 power. This was largely thanks to Zora Arkus-Duntov, the engineer who joined General Motors in 1953 and became the “father of the Corvette” in the eyes of the Corvette faithful. That year also saw the Corvette’s first major styling update, and the car scored major publicity when a specially prepared one hit 150.583 mph at Daytona Beach. Even more good press came when another factory-supported car won its class at the 12 Hours of Sebring despite persistent mechanical trouble. It finished ninth overall behind a slew of Ferraris, Jaguars, Maseratis, Porsches, and an Aston Martin.

The European cars, though, were purpose-built race cars. The American one was just a heavily modified production Corvette. In 1957 Chevrolet—and Duntov—would return to Sebring with a purpose-built sports racing car of their own.

Not all the execs at General Motors were keen on racing, but VP Harley Earl was, and he hatched a plan. The way the story goes, he bought one of the premier racing sports cars of the day—a Jaguar D-Type—and showed it to a group of Chevrolet engineers. He suggested they stuff a small-block Chevrolet V-8 into the Jag, knowing full well that this would prod their egos and have them wanting to create a new, better car on their own. It worked, and the project for a new Corvette race car got the green light, with the 1957 Sebring race as the target. Duntov and team had fewer than six months to finish it and would need to work at a lightning pace, but at least they had the resources of the world’s largest company behind them.

In a walled-off area of the Chevrolet Engineering Center, Duntov set up a mini skunk works and the Corvettte SS (Super Sport), internally known as Project XP-64, began to take shape.

Although the aforementioned Jaguar utilized monocoque construction, in the interests of time Duntov chose a tubular frame, supposedly inspired by the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL, made of chrome-molydbenum steel. Suspension was independent up front and a de Dion setup in the rear, while the braking system used finned drums (inboard at the rear) with separate vacuum assist at each end.

The engine was a 283-cubic inch small-block fitted with a hotter cam, Rochester Ramjet fuel injection, and so many lightweight components that it weighed 80 pounds less than a standard production Corvette engine. Mated to it was an aluminum close-ratio four-speed.

Meanwhile, the GM Styling department constructed a shell made out of magnesium, which is actually lighter than the Corvette’s usual fiberglass. While the proportions were somewhat similar to contemporary European sports racing cars, the Corvette SS looked undeniably American with Jet Age swoops and obvious Corvette cues like the side coves and wide shiny-toothed grille. Two Corvette SSs were completed, one development mule and one fully finished race car. They arrived just in time for their Sebring objective.

For driving duties, Chevrolet signed on John Fitch (who had also managed the Corvette racing team in 1956) and Carroll Shelby, although Shelby was unsure whether the new Corvette would arrive in time and jumped ship to co-drive a Maserati instead. Italian veteran Piero Taruffi was brought in to take his place. Duntov might have pushed to drive himself, but he had broken his back while testing a car the year before and was still recovering.

During Friday practice, Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss, both driving Maseratis and both curious about the new American car, each took a turn behind the wheel of the development mule. Fangio broke the Sebring lap record in the process, showing the Corvette’s potential.

In the race, John Fitch took the start and stayed in sixth place for the first few laps around the central Florida track. The drum brakes (always a weakness until Corvettes switched to discs) played up, but the SS was faster on the straights than the D-Types. Then, a faulty coil connection resulted in a 15-minute pit stop, and Fitch later had to swap the coil while still out on the circuit. The problems continued, as the rear suspension started chattering over bumps and the tires started rubbing against the tops of the fenders. After 23 laps, the car retired. The culprit was a rubber bushing in the rear end, but Duntov lamented that “[i]f a suspension bushing had not failed, the heat from the engine and exhaust would have soon fried the driver.” The SS’s magnesium reportedly turned the cockpit into an oven once the engine and exhaust warmed up.

Despite the failure at Sebring, the debut was promising enough that he wanted to proceed with an attempt at that summer’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, with entries requested for the French race and plans for various improvements to the car, including a switch from magnesium bodies back to fiberglass.

Things looked promising, then, but in June 1957 the infamous AMA racing ban changed everything. This agreement by the Automobile Manufacturers Association (AMA) essentially terminated all racing agreements and activities by America’s major carmakers. Duntov and Chevrolet would of course go on to covertly support others in their racing efforts, but a public-facing factory program like the Corvette SS wasn’t going to fly. After racing just once and before being fully developed, the SS had its competition career cut short, relegating it to “what if” status in the history of sports car racing. Fitch later recalled that “[i]f we had enough time, we could have made a very good race car out of it.” Unfortunately, we’ll never know.

After the ban, GM still kept the car and showed it at the 1957 Michigan State Fair. Duntov brought it back out in 1959 and lapped Daytona at 155 miles per hour. He also hit 183 in it at GM’s Mesa Proving Ground in Arizona. In 1967, it joined the collection of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum and has been consistently shown around the country since.

The museum has been selling several of its high-profile cars in recent months to support its long-term sustainability as well as the “restoration and expansion of our collection.” These have included a $53M Mercedes-Benz W196, a $36.3M Ferrari 250 LM, and a $13.2M Ford GT40.

The Corvette SS never got to live up to its potential, but it’s a one-of-a-kind, wild-looking piece of both Corvette history and American racing history in general. That it broke an 11-year-old auction record isn’t a big surprise, and it’s unlikely the bar this car has set will be cleared any time soon.