Corvettes for Sale: Buy a Grand Sport of Every Generation to Celebrate the Reveal of the C8 Version!

There’s a new Grand Sport in town – two, actually. To say that the new, and shockingly attainable 535-horse Super ‘Vette and its ‘roid-raging hybrid sibling have people excited is, as they say, an understatement. If you find yourself so enthusiastic that you just have to buy a GS while waiting for your turn in line for a ’27, we have you covered. Here are the best examples of each of the four previous cars to earn a Grand Sport badge on the market today:

The Original (1963)

The first car that Chevy marketers crowned “Grand Sport” is the ultimate what if story for GM fans. For 1963, our guru, Zora Arkus-Duntov had his mind set on skirting his bosses’ anti-American ban on factory-backed racing by building and selling a run of 125 focused, lightweight, tube-framed C2 racecars to independent racers around the country. Just five of these monsters were able to escape before the corporate guillotine fell on the program.

Photo Credit: Hillbank Motor Corporation

If the genuine article ever surfaces at auction, it’ll surely (don’t call me surely) become the most expensive Corvette ever sold. Since that’s both a BIG IF and too rich for almost everyone’s blood, there’s always the aftermarket. The famed Cobra makers at Superformance got the OK from Chevy brass to officially licensed continuation GSs a few years back. Their builds use the original blueprints but have access to modern motivators. If that idea floats your boat, check out the one for sale today at Hillbank Motors’ Irvine location. This new build is painted in the iconic Blue/White livery and makes use of a C7 Z06-spec 650 horsepower supercharged LT4 V8, but, at $300,000, this replica is still one of the most expensive Corvettes on the market this March.

C4 Grand Sport (1996)

As they did with the 1990 ZR-1 and, later, the 2001 Z06, when the time came time to bestow a name on a special modern Corvette, GM turned back the clock to take a classic moniker off the shelf, only this time it didn’t go for an obscure RPO, it landed on one of the best names it ever – almost – used. The 1996 Grand Sport was a one-year special edition intended to 1,000 units to commemorate the changing of the guard from C4 to C5. The breakdown was 810 coupes and 190 convertibles all painted Admiral Blue with a White skunk stripe and red hashmarks on their fender. The patriotic look was accented with ahead of their time black ZR-1-style wheels and coupes got flared rear fenders to cover the upsized gatorbacks that they inherited from the King of the Hill. Inside, buyers could choose from black or red leather seats and could have any transmission they wanted as long as it was a six-speed manual. Behind the flip-up headlights rumbled the a 5.7L LT4 V8 that, like the GS was a one-year proposition of its own that made 330 HP, up 30 from the previous year’s Gen-II LT1.

Photo Credit: Classic Auto Mall

At any given time, you can usually find a couple C4 Grand Sports up for grabs, and our pick of the current litter resides halfway between Philadelphia and Corvette Meca Carlisle, PA, at the Classic Auto Mall of Morgantown. It’s a coupe wearing VIN 868 of 1,000 and it has two of the only options; the F45 suspension with Selective Real Time Damping and the Red interior, making it a 1/91. The car has Corsa exhaust, is ceramic coated, and features an unidentified signature on its LT4 that sure looks like it belongs to Corvette Racing legend Ron Fellows to our eyes. The lone discrepancy is the odometer that reads 27,000 miles but comes with a “true mileage unknown” exemption likely indicating a replacement of the digital gauge at some point. Still, with the right set of options, tasteful upgrades, and an easy pass of the all-important eye-test, $42,900 seems spot-on for one of the best Corvettes of the 1990s.

C6 Grand Sport (2010-13)

The Grand Sport went mainstream starting in 2010 with a surprisingly simple recipe: the widebody from the contemporary Z06 on top of the base car’s LS3 and steel frame with the option to have the car shift itself for the first time. Add it all up and GM struck gold with the GS accounting for 55% of all C6s sold until the changeover to C7s. From five in 1963 to 1,000 in 1996, to a whopping 28,004 between 2010 and 2013, when shopping for a C6 GS, we tend to search for unique builds, especially when it comes to exterior colors – which also grew from 1 to 13 options between C4 and C6 GSs.

Photo Credit: Classic Auto Mall

To that end, we’ll head to Jersey and the Corvette specialists at Auto Direct Cars. Among their 111 used ‘Vettes for sale lurks one of the hottest C6 Grand Sports we’ve seen in a while: a final year convertible with the must-have manual transmission and a rare high-impact paint color. The color in question is Inferno Orange Metallic, most notable as the signature hue of the wicked 2011 Z06 Carbon Special Edition for its popularity on the Fifth Gen Camaro. 974 Grand Sports were painted IOM during the hues three years of availability of those, just 278 were drop tops, and only 25 of those were ordered in 2013 before the bright orange’s early phase-out.

It was also spec’d with the high-end 3LT interior equipment group (4LT was top banana), Z06 Carbon-style black headlight buckets, ZR1-style full-length spoiler, and the “NPP” Dual Mode Performance Exhaust that helped it reach its full 436 HP potential. With just shy of 34k miles, it isn’t a spring chicken by Corvette standards, but it presents very well and, at $52,990, we think it’s still about as hard to beat performance per dollar as it was when new.

C7 Grand Sport (2017-19)

After a three-year hiatus, the Grand Sport returned for the C7 generation in 2017. It followed its predecessor’s outline to-a-tee, again dropping the engine from the base car – now a Gen-V 6.2L LT1 – into the widebody of the highest-end ‘Vettes. On top of a full menu of options, the C7 is notable for taking the GS into territory previously occupied by the Z06 with a new Z07 package that transformed it into the naturally-aspirated track star of the family with go-fast tech like carbon-ceramic brakes, Michelin Pilot Sport Cup rubber, and the Z06’s “Stage 2” aerodynamics package all supplemented by the GS’s standard MagneRide suspension.

While it lost the sales crown to the revamped base car that brought back the vaunted Stingray name, the GS nipped at its heels with an impressive final tally of 26,280. Like with the C6, the key to C7 GS hunting is finding one with the right options. For us, that puts our search in the middle of a Venn diagram with the 5,546 examples with the 7-speed manual transmission (that usually command a 10% premium) on one side, and the 2,028 with the Z07 goodies baked in on the other side.

Photo Credit: Corvette Warehouse

With those filters in mind, allow us to recommend a Corvette Racing Yellow example for your consideration. On top of the official exterior color of the dearly departed C7.R race cars, it has the Holy Grail Z07 and M7 (manual) options along with a smattering of carbon fiber, including the roof, hood, and dash. The motif continues with black wheels, and matching yellow brake calipers on its big ceramics. Interestingly, it also hails from 2018, the shortened model year that, aside from 1983, accounted for the lowest production total since 1959 with just 9,686 orders accepted. Since entering the world, this choice example has traveled just 12,500 miles and is offered by Corvette Warehouse of Dallas for a very reasonable $73,995.

Go get ’em, Corvette Nation, and Happy Grand Sport Day!

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