Home Corvettes C2 Corvette Throwback Thursday: Driving the No. 001 1963 Corvette Grand Sport

[VIDEO] Throwback Thursday: Driving the No. 001 1963 Corvette Grand Sport

Dec 4, 2025

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[VIDEO] Throwback Thursday: Driving the No. 001 1963 Corvette Grand Sport

It’s time again for Throwback Thursday where we feature vintage photos and videos of Corvettes.

Today’s entry comes from our friends at the Registry of Corvette Race Cars who sends emails containing some of the most remarkable photos and videos of Corvette racing action both current and vintage.

Back in the early 2000s when motorsports fans had a dedicated cable channel to watch called SPEED, one of the shows worth the watch was called Victory By Design which featured former racing driver Alain de Cadenet as your host. In the show, he would talk about history of vintage race cars and then would drive them on a track.

In this resurrected video, Alain talks about the history of the Corvette Grand Sports and how they came to be. We see the custom 377 cu inch V8 created specifically for the car and then we learned how GM brass shut the door on the Grand Sport program. That didn’t stop Zora Arkus-Duntov with the five existing cars sold out the back door to John Mecum for $5K each. In 1966, Roger Penske would acquire the car and his transition from driver to team owner would eventually lead to Penske Racing becoming one of the most successful teams in racing.

After the history lesson and walkaround, the No. 001 Corvette Grand Sport is then taken to the track where Alain gets the full experience of driving one of the legendary Grand Sport Roadsters with its iconic rollbar and the cut-down windshield.

Source:
Mackie Motley / YouTube

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2 COMMENTS

DougR Dec 4, 2025 At 12:04 pm

Great to see and hear #001 in action!
Jake Dec 4, 2025 At 9:34 pm

I miss Victory by Design. It was a great show, although I am probably biased. I knew Alain personally from a couple of tours that we did together in Europe. He was a great story teller and is missed.