Be Unique. Get your Grand Sport Vette car shirts at I Crave Cars. Our one of a kind selection of car shirts is a cut above the rest. Our premium fit shirts will quickly become your favorite apparel. Best of all, we offer free shipping for all of our car shirts, car mugs and coasters.
Our Grand Sport car shirt features an ink splatter drawing of the Jim Hall entry to the 1964 12 Hours of Sebring race. It was at this race that the lightweight Vettes first appeared with large fender flares, scoops, and vents. This particular car was known as Grand Sport #005. This is the most successful of the Grand Sports.
What Make the Grand Sport So Grand?
The rarest Vette in the world isn't a ZR1. It is not a version of the Z06. Nor does it have a split rear window. What is does have is the name Grand Sport written in script across the rear end and all the ingredients to be a legendary race car.
In 1963 the Grand Sport was born. These very special racers were the brainchild of Zora Arkus-Dontov, AKA the father of the Vette. Zora realized that in order to race on an international level, the vette had to be lighter, faster and better handling. So his crew set out to engineer a production race car that would stack up against the Ferraris, Jaguars and Shelby Cobras. The result was a 1908 lbs race car built with a latter tubular frame, paper-thin fiberglass, molded-in headlights, hydraulic jacking system, fender flares to allow for larger tires, and aluminum parts wherever possible. This later included an all aluminum 6.2L 377 cubic inch engine that put out 550 horsepower.
With unofficial financial assistance and the support of the blue bowtie's general manager Bunkie Knudsen, the plan was to build 125 vehicles. This meant that the GS would qualify as a production vehicle and would be able to run in FIA GT production races. With only five cars built, the cars were shipped down to Sebring where they did rather well for an untested car. Well enough that the big wigs heard about the success and sent Duntov a message telling him to shut the project down and to send the cars to the crusher. This was due to a 1957 agreement with the Automobile Manufacturers Association to place an emphasis on safe, comfortable and reliable transportation rather than on speed.
Well enough of the big wigs heard about the success and sent Duntov a message telling him to shut the project down and to send the cars to the crusher.
With only five cars built, the lightweight Grand Sports would never see their true potential as a production racing car. Lucky for race fans, instead of going to the crusher, the cars were secretly sold to privateer racing teams where they would compete against Jim Hall's Chaparral, Scarabs and other sports racers of the time. Still, they did quite well and even scored an overall victory 1963 SCCA Nationals at Watkins Glen with Dick Thompson at the wheel.
The Grand Sports would continue to be raced in both regional and national competition by the whos-who of American racing drivers. The list includes Roger Penske, A.J. Foyt, Jim Hall, Dr. Dick Thompson, Augie Pabst and so many more.
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Car Shirts
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- Machine wash cold, tumble dry low inside-out
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