| It all goes back to one man’s passion for racing. Zora Arkus-Duntov was the only executive at GM to have raced a car at Le Mans, where he enjoyed class wins in 1954 and 1955. Duntov took his passion and experience and poured it into Chevrolet’s beauty queen, the Corvette, elevating the car to legendary status.
Duntov had the kind of expertise that only comes from putting it all on the line in a four-wheel drift. Throughout the Corvette’s development, he always had racing on his mind. Bill Mitchell called this quality “having gasoline in your veins,” and in Duntov’s case, it showed: No sooner had he stuffed the new 265 small-block into the ‘55 Vette than secret plans were hatched to build the first Corvette Le Mans racer, the Corvette SS.
It’s hard to imagine how Duntov kept the program secret from the GM brass for so long. But when the Corvette SS went public in 1957, management came down on him like an avalanche. The project was shelved, though fortunately the parts escaped the crusher. Two years later the running gear was used for Bill Mitchell’s Sting Ray racer, experiencing moderate success.
As much as Duntov wanted to build racing Vettes, he was relegated to making parts for independent racers. In 1960, with backdoor help from Duntov, privateer Briggs Cunningham built three Corvettes to race at Le Mans. He won First in his class and Eighth overall.
Then, in 1963, Duntov tried to sneak his lightweight Grand Sport Corvettes past the higher-ups. When word of the project leaked out, plans for a production Grand Sport were shelved indefinitely. Duntov spent the rest of his career improving the Vette and providing material support to private race teams.
In 1967 Dick Guldstrand and Bob Bondurant took an L88 Corvette to Le Mans. The team would ultimately drop out with mechanical problems, but not before the car had hit a top speed of 171 mph. Then, in 1972, John Greenwood and Dick Smothers raced the BFGoodrich L88 Corvette at Le Mans, dropping out after 10 hours. Greenwood was back at Le Mans in 1976 with his wild, “Batmobile” wide-body Corvette; he was sidelined after five hours.
There wasn’t another major Corvette effort at Le Mans until 1995, when Reeves Callaway’s cars grabbed Second and Third Place class wins. With the C5 selling well, and a new attitude towards racing inside GM, Corvette fans saw the first factory-supported Corvette racer in 1999, in the form of the C5-R. After two years of sorting out the car, Duntov’s dream of a Corvette winning at Le Mans came true in 2001. The C5-R repeated the feat in 2002 and 2004. The 2004 season was the best to date, with 10 First Place wins in 10 races!
To celebrate the success of the C5-R Corvettes, Chevrolet offered the Commemorative Edition option on all ’04 Corvettes - coupes, convertibles, and the Z06. The paint scheme and stripes were based on the ‘04 C5-R cars, and every available performance and luxury feature was included. This was a $3,700 option for the coupe and convertible, and a $4,335 option on the Z06. A total of 6,899 units were built, accounting for 20 percent of all ’04 Vettes.
All Commemorative Edition cars had the special Le Mans blue paint, crossed-flags embroidery on the headrests, polished Z06 wheels with unique centers, and special emblems. The Z06 version also had a carbon-fiber hood that saved 10.6 pounds. The coupe and convertible had a two-tone shale interior, while the Z06 cars had a black interior.
Commemorative Edition Corvettes can often be found parked together at Corvette shows, making for an impressive display. It may have taken 48 years to win at Le Mans, but it was worth the wait. We owe it all to one man’s vision, many years ago.
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