'67 'Vette L-88 - NHRA A/Sports Champion

[Alan Roehrich]

Originally Posted by Dwight Southerland

An interesting basis for an NHRA political history lesson. There were actually three of these cars in competition during the 1967-1969 era in NHRA sports classes. The combination was in the classification guide from 1968 on. It lay dormant until 1988 when Scott Wilcox built one to compete in SS/A. There was also an original black car from the Bowling Green area that had raced for several years ( Tony ?) but had not been as competitive. As soon as Scott's car began threatening the Hemis, a group of the MoFear racers claimed the "not enough produced" caveat (50 minimum) and NHRA told Scott he couldn't race that car any more. There is even a note in the Classification Guide to justify the deletion of the combination from the guide. I believe Scott's car is the one Jimmy Bridges races now. Of course it does not matter that the combination was a regular production option (RPO) for Chevrolet and that the Hemi cars were purpose built cars that were sold only if you had inside connections. Anyone could have walked into a Chevrolet dealer and ordered an L88 Corvette in 1967; just not many people did. What would the Hemi guys say if only 25 people had bought Street Hemis in 1966 and NHRA booted them out? "You can make the rules if you can buy the game."

Dwight,
Yes, Jimmy Bridges' current SS/B Corvette is indeed Scott Wilcox's old car, I got that from Jimmy himself. The black Corvette that you remember belongs to Tony Rhodes, it was Tony's car that was featured in the side bar article back in the day, about the race to the first 8 second Super Stock pass. The article focused on the Hemi cars, but then in a side bar featured Tony's car.

Scott Wilcox is a member here, and does at times go to a race or two, in fact, I get emails from him every so often.

There was in fact a time that both Tony Rhodes and Scott Wilcox raced those two cars on a regular basis at "The Hill" AKA Music City Raceway, which for years held both Combo One (no breakout) and Combo Two (dial in) races nearly every week. I think that Mike Lynch may have driven Scott's car a few times. I'm pretty sure that Jimmy and Mike worked on Tony's car at the race track a few times, and Jimmy built at least one of Tony's engines. On any given day back then, Tony's car could step up and go very fast. It was a real treat to see two SS/A 67 L-88 Corvettes go at it heads up every so often back then. But then, back then, there were well over 2 dozen wicked Stock and Super Stock cars racing nearly every weekend at "The Hill".

Tony still has his car, or at least had it until early this year, it was for sale about 3 months or so ago, for $70K. That was the first time in over 30 years that I have known the Rhodes' and known about that car, that it has ever been offered for sale.

Chevrolet documented selling a total of 36 1967 L-88 Corvettes. However, several people who would know say that several cars were sent out the back door to special people. Supposedly at least enough to make the total of cars built and sold/released to private individuals the required 50 or more. Unfortunately, the guy who was the semi official historian for Chevrolet, and could have verified this, died as a result of injuries sustained in a car accident a few years back.

The truth is, with the advent of the new paper cars that were NEVER built by an OEM, and in fact no production engine ever existed for, the case can be made that while GM may have only sold 36 of the 1967 L-88 Corvettes, more complete cars could have been built and probably were, and anyone who bought a 1967 Corvette could have purchased an L-88 service replacement engine and "built" his own 67 L-88 Corvette. That means that the 67 L-88 Corvette should be at least as legitimate as any new factory race car combination that was never actually built.