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Posted By:
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Frank Lemire
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Posted On:
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Tuesday November 3, 2009 at 1:40 PM
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Message:
Another untold Corvette story………
GM seemed hell bent on keeping their cars out of auto racing in the 1960s and Zora Duntov had counted on racing as a way to insure the continued existence of the Corvette. Duntov knew that the Corvette was always one bad sales year away from extinction and while instant popularity of the new “Stingray” model was keeping the bean counters from closing the doors for now, the Corvette and his job were never safe.
It had been hoped that the GS program would be a success and would be a positive sales engine. They were actually right on both counts but GM was adamant that Corvette stop building “purpose built” race cars that they saw as mocking their “NO Racing” policy that they had trumpeted before congress.
Duntov had one more car that he thought to play. Why not see if he could campaign the car in Europe where sports car racing was much more popular. If he could secure a European market for the Corvette his worries about the Corvette program being terminated would be over. He dreamed that if he was really successful with a European operation he might actually be able to move production overseas – like Ford was doing with its new Ford GT program - where he could make cars away from the ever watchful eye of the top brass.
But first he needed some privateer racing organization to run his cars. He needed his own Carroll Shelby or Allan Mann to race his Corvettes. After looking around Duntov thought he found the perfect team. They had money, were not tied to any one auto maker at the moment and seemed focused on racing the best cars they could get. Scuderia Filipinetti looked to be a perfect fit for Duntov’s plan except for one thing – they painted their cars in the national colors of Switzerland. They were afraid that the paint scheme would be unacceptable to the GM brass both in Detroit and in Europe so they searched for an alternative.
Zora decided on a bold move. He would try to convince Georges Filipinetti to run the GS in Europe and to run it painted a different color. After many days of thought they came up with a color combination that they figured Filipinetti would never reject because it was based on his own coat of arms!
They flew Filipinetti to the United States and showed him what they hoped would be his next race car.
He was impressed but the GM brass in Europe got wind of the plan and they did not want the Corvette competing with them in an already tough performance car market so the idea was cancelled. The car quietly died except for one picture of it that was taken before the Scuderia Filipinetti livery was put on. That photo fell into the hands of a shadowy figure who went by the initials of TK. He didn’t know the story but he liked the colors and made a model of the car – the rest of the story you know.
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Message thread:
 | Another untold Corvette story……… by Frank Lemire #13646
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| Wow... by Harry Schade #13646.1
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