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Evening With A Legend: The Camoradi Corvette · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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Evening with a Legend is a series of presentations exclusive to
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Legends of the Famous 24 Hours of Le Mans, giving us an opportunity
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to bring a piece of Le Mans to you.
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By sharing stories and highlights of the big event, you get a chance
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to become part of the legend of Le Mans, with guests from different
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eras of over 100 years of racing.
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Please stay tuned to the end of this presentation for additional information
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that pertains to the contents of this episode from our sponsors, The
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Motor Chain and Carnexion Advisors.
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Tonight, we have an opportunity to bring a piece of Le Mans to you.
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Sharing in the legend of Le Mans with guests from different eras
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of over 100 years of racing.
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And as your host, I'm delighted to introduce, not a driver, but a unique car.
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The Camaradi USA Racing's 1960 Corvette.
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It was built for international competition under the auspices of
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Chevrolet General Manager Ed Cole and Chief Engineer Zora Duntov.
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It went on to race successfully in Havana, Daytona, Sebring, the Nürburgring, Sweden.
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Subs And at Le Mans.
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The only thing more amazing than this car's creation and
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its race record is its survival.
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On the way to Britain's famed Goodwood Circuit in August of 1960, it was
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crashed hard and left for dead.
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But miraculously, the shattered remains were preserved and discovered some
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30 years later by Loren Lundberg.
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And tonight we have a panel here to talk about the Camerati Corvettes history.
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This includes Richard Prince, author and official photographer for the GM
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Corvette race team, Dominic Testa, the current owner of the car and
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Chuck Schroedel, who was a member of the Camerati team at Le Mans in 1960.
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And with that, I'm your host, crew chief, Eric, from the motoring podcast network.
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Welcoming everyone to this evening with a legend.
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And with that, gentlemen, welcome to the show.
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Yes, sir.
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Thank you.
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Hello, Eric.
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Let me just start by saying thank you to the International Motor
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Racing Research Center in Watkins Glen and to the ACO for supporting
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us and making this evening possible.
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Take us back to 1960.
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And if I recall, this story starts with a gentleman named Lloyd Lucky Kastner.
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And it's a story about how the team sort of came together in a not so orthodox way.
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Richard, why don't you kick us off and kind of bring us up to
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speed about the Camerati Corvette?
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Yeah, Lloyd Lucky Kastner was one of those epic characters
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who cut his own path in life.
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Some would describe him as one of the world's great con men.
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He was a racing enthusiast and had big dreams about racing around
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the world in the biggest sports car racing events, including, of
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course, the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
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He just didn't have the funds to do it, but he had a gift
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for convincing other people.
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To bend to his will and support his racing and that's exactly what he did.
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He formed camaraderie, which was an acronym or, or a, uh, conglomeration.
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It stood for Tasna motor racing research division formed the team.
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He invited.
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Anybody and everybody who wanted to pitch in a little bit of money to join
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his team was off and running in a 1960 with a pair of Corvettes that he intended
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to take to Europe and again, racing the biggest races of the season, including.
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Memory serves, there were two Camerati Corvettes and only one remains.
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What happened to number five?
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Well, that's an interesting but a sad story.
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Both cars were built together.
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They were equally equipped with all of the road racing options
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that Chevrolet then offered as well as a few special components.
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That Chevrolet engineering supply to the top level racers of the era.
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Both cars went to Sebring.
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They had a star driver lineup led by Jim Jeffords, who was a national
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champion and one of the best road racers of his era, Jim Jeffords car.
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One of the Camarotti Corvettes got damaged early in the race.
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It was probably over rev and it had likely some valve train damage that
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prevented it from revving past 5, 000 RPM.
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The other car was being driven by Fred Gamble, who was the team manager, and
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he wasn't even slated to drive there.
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He was on the entry list.
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He put himself down on the entry list because he was the team manager.
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He told me he did that just for a laugh, just so his name would
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appear in the program, and he could send a copy home to his family.
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But one of the team's contracted drivers, a guy named Skip Hudson, And instead
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of withdrawing the car, they, uh, said, well, you're on the entry list.
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Go ahead and drive it.
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Fred started the race.
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He had never turned a practice lap at Sebring.
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Never ever drove the course.
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He just got in the car at the start and went.
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Within an hour, he was called in because again, Jim Jeffords
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car had some engine damage.
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Much to his dismay, he was ordered to give the car up.
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to Jim Jeffords.
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Lee Lilly, the team's head mechanic, said to Fred, seeing how dejected he was,
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well, the other car is still running.
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If you want to get in it and, you know, kind of lumber around until
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the engine blows up, be my guest.
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So Fred got in that car and ultimately after 12 hours, he entered the history
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books as one of only two drivers to ever complete the 12 hours of Sebring driving.
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All by himself.
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He, uh, respected a self imposed low red line to keep the engine alive, managed
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to actually turn some respectable laps.
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Toward the end, he lost gears 1 through 3 in the transmission, so he finished the
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race with a damaged engine and a damaged transmission, but finish it indeed.
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One of the, uh, problems the car had toward the end was a fuel line broke, as
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it was effectively a production car, they were able to borrow a fuel line from a
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car that was parked in the spectator area.
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They installed that, it cost quite a bit of time, but it worked
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and the car finished the race.
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When it finished, they returned that fuel line to the man who owned it.
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And unfortunately, the next morning, one of the team's mechanics got
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in that car, the car that Fred had driven solo for the entire 12 hours.
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He got in it, tried to start it, to move it, not knowing
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that the fuel line was missing.
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Fuel sprayed all over the place and it was an ignition source.
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The car caught fire and unfortunately it burned to the ground.
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After Sebring, the Camaradi Corvette team was comprised of only one
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car, and that's the car that we're talking about here this evening.
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Number four was not the first Corvette ever entered.
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At Lamar and even when it was at Lamar, it was partnered with the Cunningham
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Corvettes and similarly prepared.
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Its significance is that it was one of the few Corvettes to ever finish the race.
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So what was Corvette's track record up until that point, up until Camerati
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and Cunningham showed up in 1960?
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By the mid 1950s, by 1956, Corvette was already establishing
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a reputation as a force to be reckoned with in production class.
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Sports car racing.
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The first serious effort was at Sebring in 56.
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Four car team led by John Fitch was entered there and they
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came away with two class wins.
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That really launched Corvette's success in production class sports car
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racing and it just grew from there.
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1960 was actually the first time that Corvettes appeared at Le Mans.
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So the four cars, the three Cunningham cars and the Camerati car marked
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Corvettes first appearance at Le Mans.
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Dominic, since you have the car and it's gone through its restoration, one of our
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audience members asked ahead of time, if you could discuss the engine, the
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car's modifications from stock, estimated power levels, any other details about
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the setup of the Camerati Corvette.
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And if there are any differences you've discovered between it.
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and the Cunningham cars.
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That car raced in the GT class.
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So they were essentially production cars with a few modifications, such as
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there was some other seatbelts added.
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There was a roll bar, the engine and, um, the fuel injection from what I
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understand is essentially what would have been available on a production vehicle.
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Now, the one big difference was during testing.
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And I think they test at that track in April.
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They determined that the big tank that was optioned with that car didn't
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make the required number of laps with the capacity that was in that tank.
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So Chevrolet had to come up with some way to get it so that it
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would make it to the next fueling.
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That car has a 37 gallon tank.
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You can see where they molded in to the tank an extra part of the
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tank to increase the capacity.
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And that was one of the things after the car was wrecked and it was found
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in Sweden, they knew it was something special because nobody had ever
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seen a fuel tank like that before.
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And we do have some production work orders and things from Chevrolet where they were
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told create these extra capacity tanks.
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Other than that, essentially it's a production car.
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Springs, shocks, brakes, all those kinds of things are the same as the
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production Corvette at the time.
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It was the, the big brake, heavy suspension options that would
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have been available to anybody that, that ordered those items.
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And power output of the motor, that was a V8 at that point, they had
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gotten rid of the six cylinder.
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Yeah, 283, and they call it 290 horsepower.
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There may have been, you know, some other modifications done to the
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engine that weren't disclosed or whatever, you know, uh, in a number
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of conversations with Fred Gamble, he never really said one way or the other.
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At that point, they were called 283 290s.
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Have you ever had the ca does a C one race prepped weighs about 2800.
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Okay power to weight ratio for the camaraderie corvette
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Well, I think that had something to do, and Richard probably would know
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this better, it had something to do with the way they were numbered.
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I believe it was either cubic inches or horsepower relative to the
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weight, and that's how they ended up with 1, because they were the
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largest cubic inch and heaviest cars.
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The engine displacement was the single most important variable back
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then in how the cars were classified.
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So the Corvette didn't actually have a lot of competitors because there were
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very few sports cars in the world at that time that had relatively large
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displacement V8 engines, but there were much larger, let's say, Ferraris
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with V12s and things like that, because thinking about like the Mille Miglia,
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the way they number the cars, then that was about their starting time.
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Like 451 is when you took off, you know, from Brescia and then did the race.
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So that's really interesting that Le Mans incorporated a similar
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system in the car numbering.
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Based on power to weight.
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That's actually really cool.
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That's a very interesting bit of history there that I don't
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think many of us probably knew.
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You talked about who drove the car at Sebring leading up to Le Mans
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and the other races that it did like the Nürburgring and so on, and we've
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heard in previous conversations about the race in Havana and its
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significance and things like that, the Camerati Corvette had a multitude of
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different drivers who drove the car.
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At Le Mans was, uh, Fred Gamble and Lee Lilly, and they
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were the drivers of Le Mans.
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So two guys drove for 24 hours.
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That's gotta be absolutely exhausting.
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Nowadays we do that with four drivers on many of the teams.
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Minimum drive times and all those kinds of things.
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Who drove the longest out of the two of them?
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Was it Fred?
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Was it because of Sebring?
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He was so used to it?
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I had an opportunity to speak with Fred a number of times on the telephone,
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and, uh, I never asked him that.
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And, uh, that's a really good question and it never came up in a conversation.
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I never, I never really thought about that.
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Now with the larger fuel tank, how often did they have to stop?
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Do you have any idea how long they could go with that special fuel
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tank that they designed for the car?
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They're allowed to stop every 25 laps to add fluids.
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The way the car was originally set up, it didn't make the 25 laps.
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That's when they added the extra capacity to the tank so that they
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would be able to get to the next.
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point where they could refuel.
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Do you have any idea of what their lap times were like?
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How close were Fred and Lee Lilly in terms of, you know, their consistency?
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Most of the conversations with Fred at the time that we spoke was about 90.
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He passed away this past March at 92.
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He liked telling stories.
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You know, he really enjoyed talking about some of the antics
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that went on back in the time.
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And I don't know if it was because he didn't remember a lot of the details or
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just enjoyed speaking about, you know, the camaraderie and that kind of stuff.
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But the lap times and stuff like that, in comparison between Fred and
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Lee, that it never really came up.
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There is a lot of documentation that's available from that race.
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And with a little bit of research, we probably could figure it out.
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Right now.
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I don't know what that the answer to that is.
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Well, we know they placed 10th overall, which, you know, it's not podium, but
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it's nothing to sneeze at either for basically a self made team with some
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sketchy sponsorship, as Richard has alluded to in previous conversations.
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So I'd say that's a fair finish, regardless of lap
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times or otherwise, right?
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Something to be proud of.
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Right.
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The number three Cunningham car won the GT class and came in 8th overall.
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The Camerati number four car came in two places behind, 10th.
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So it was the second place GT finisher of the four cars.
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The one car went out at about, uh, lap 20 and the two car went
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out at a lap about lap 200.
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The camaraderie car did the entire 24 hours and completed 275 laps.
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You mentioned the antics of being there in 1960 and talking to someone who was there.
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Well, let's turn to Chuck Schrode for a moment.
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Somebody who was there, somebody who was in the pits with the car.
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Chuck, tell us how you went about getting involved in all this.
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How did you go from fan to spectator, enthusiast, to suddenly
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finding yourself in the pits?
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Well, first of all, I can't believe it's 64 years ago this all happened.
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And thanks to Dom, this has kind of reopened a lot of my past.
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I hadn't thought about LeMans until I got that very first call from
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Lauren Lundberg saying, are you Chuck Schroedel that was at LeMans, et cetera.
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And I said, yes.
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And he told me what he was doing and he actually called me and wrote me letters,
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sent me pictures of the finished product.
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But the way I got involved at Le Mans, I went into the military in 1958 as an MP
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and I ended up being shipped to Orléans.
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At that particular point, my dream was to become a racer, motorcycles,
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because I had started in high school with Triumph Thunderbirds, thanks
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to uh, The movie with Marlon Brando, et cetera, on duty in the sedan.
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I pulled the Colonel over who was driving a 56 Corvette.
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And I walked up to the car, I popped my salute, and he looked
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up and he said, What did I do?
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What did I do?
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And I said, Colonel, you didn't do anything.
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I'm just curious, would you be interested in selling your car?
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And he said, well, as a matter of fact, I would because I just
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remarried and I inherited two kids.
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And there's not room in this car for two kids.
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Three weeks later, I own the car.
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And the car actually started his life at a dealership in North
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Carolina owned by his brother.
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So I got a 1956 Corvette that had the two four barrels, Malry ignition,
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twin point in the distributor.
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And that got me started into cars.
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And the very first event that I went to was only a one day deal in April.
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I bought the car in 59.
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Le Mans had already passed, Rennes, France had already passed, so I had
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one event the next spring to go to, which was the test session in April.
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One of the first people I bumped into was Briggs Cunningham.
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Ginned up a conversation, etc.
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And they were kidding, saying, Well, you know, if we blow one of these
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engines, we can always take this one.
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And one of the head mechanics says, Briggs, it's a 256, it's not a 283.
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So that got a laugh.
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So I hung with them for the day and did gopher stuff like I did with Camerati.
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But when the day was over, Briggs wanted to give me a set of racing tires.
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And of course, the traveling secretary said, No, we can't do
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that because of import taxes, etc.
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What we came into the country with, we have to leave with.
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So I lost my chance there for getting a set of racing tires.
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So time passed to June and I went to Le Mans.
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The first people I bumped into was Camerati.
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And the first real person I bumped into was a guy named Ed Van Hove, H O E F.
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He was the former president of the Corvette Club.
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And at that point, he made me an honorary member of the Corvette Club.
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He gave me a badge and a deal for my jacket.
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So now, we're getting closer to camaraderie acceptance.
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He said, listen, I know what you're doing, you're kind of working with
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camaraderie, would you do us one favor?
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And I have a picture of him.
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The French photographer had done the movie Gigi in 1958,
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and he wanted to film the track.
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They said, could you take him around in your Corvette?
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I said, well, we could put them in the trunk, but why don't we take
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the hard top off and he can stand up and take all the pictures he wants.
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If he wants to be closer to the ground, he can sit in the trunk and
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having a 56 Corvette at Lamont in 1960 is almost like having a pass.
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You don't have to tell anybody anything.
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Cause if you come in and you say, well, I'm with the camaraderie team.
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I, oh, fine.
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Go ahead.
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So at that particular point is when I kind of became a gopher.
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And the names of the drivers in 1960, they weren't anybody really big back
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then, but just to name a few of what I was exposed to, the soldier being
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stationed there, Olivier Jeannabien, believe it or not, Jimmy Clark was
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driving, he was driving an Aston Martin.
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John Fitch, and we all know that name.
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Lee Lilly and Gamble, I met both of them.
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I was a little bit closer to Fred Gamble, and as it turns out, and I found
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about this later, because we ended up palling around together for a while,
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and then when I got out of the army, I went to the University of Florida.
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Well, it turns out that's where Fred Gamble went to school.
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And a lot of the professors were asking me, you seem to
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be very interested in racing.
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We had a fellow here by the name of Fred Gamble that was
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also very interested in racing.
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Well, that was before I had met him.
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So the two of us never got a chance to talk before he passed away, but I know
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we had the same professors, some of the other drivers that I was able to
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stand next to and listen to like Richie Ginther, Jacob Bonnier, Graham Hill.
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I just noted a few and most of you people have heard of them.
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Dan Gurney, Walt Hansken, and he was driving the Cunningham.
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And as it turns out, as an MP in Orleans, part of our responsibility was the
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army hospital at La Chapelle in France.
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And that's where they brought Walt Hansken after he had the terrible
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accident in a later April test session at Le Mans, and he passed away.
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And he passed away in the same ward that I was on my back for 16 days.
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So I kind of felt a closeness to Walt Hanskin, and then Chuck Day, and Mastin
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Gregory, Trentignon, Hans Harriman.
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All these guys were driving in the 1960 Le Mans.
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It was all new to me.
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The first thing I did when I got to France was I bought a
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cheap plastic Philips camera.
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And I love taking pictures.
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Well, I've got lots of pictures.
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They're mostly black and white.
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And one of the first pictures that I took was of the Camaradi Corvette with
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an AC Bristol behind it, which later became the Cobra, as we all know.
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And right across the way, you could see the other side of the retaining
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wall where the big accident in 1955 took place with Pierre Levesque.
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One of the officials Took me over there and gave me a tour of that area.
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And I can remember that vaguely in 55 when it happened, as far as my
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duties with the Corvette goes, I can honestly tell you that I drove.
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The Corvette at Le Mans.
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Be it only in reverse and first.
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And the people in the pits and the crews saw my Corvette, so they
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knew that I could drive a Corvette.
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So they say, Chuck, pull the car up a little bit.
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So I get in and start it.
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I back it up, now pull it in over here, which I would do,
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so I could say I did drive it.
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And as Dom says when we show the car, he's the only living person, that's a heck of a
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testimony, that drove this car at Le Mans.
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And I'll just add one other little detail.
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I was kind of a gopher.
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I go get lunch.
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I get parts.
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We need this.
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We need that.
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And one of the tasks that I was asked to do with another mechanic,
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we had to set up lights on the two doors, the hood and the trunk.
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Because they were not aware of the fact that those numbers had to be lit.
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That was one of the things I got very involved with.
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We found the wiring and the lights.
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I think we got the lights from another team because they had multiple lights.
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It was things like that that I would do.
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What drove you to go visit Le Mans?
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You know, for those of us thinking about it today, maybe we've been there once
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and we checked that off our bucket list.
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Maybe it's still a bucket list item.
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Why was Le Mans so important to you as an enthusiast?
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What made you want to go there and see the racing firsthand?
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And when you got there, what were your first impressions of the track and the
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facilities and of Le Mans in general?
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The Super Bowl in Europe at that time is Le Mans.
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And I was interested in sports cars.
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I got the old Sports Cars Illustrated magazine.
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I would read about it.
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Part of the problem in 1959, I got mono when I was in the army.
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And I was on my back, I told you, in La Chapelle, at the
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hospital where Wal Hanscom died.
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And I was on my back for 16 days, fed intravenously, et cetera.
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And my biggest disappointment, it was in June, and I couldn't go to the race.
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So, when I recovered, and stood up in bed, they said, well, you've earned
21:47
Two weeks vacation out of this.
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You can do anything you want.
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Well, that lined up with Rennes, France.
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So, I wasn't able to see the Aston Martin win Le Mans in 1959, but I went
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to Formula One race in France, and really began to meet a lot of the drivers, etc.
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And I realized, I don't want motorcycles anymore.
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I want to drive race cars.
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And I hooked up, believe it or not, with people like Phil Hill.
22:11
They were terrific.
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So that really got me started.
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I said, well, boy, I'm going to go to Le Mans next year
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with my Corvette, which I did.
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Everybody talks about Le Mans in France.
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When I got there, I was just overwhelmed to see the names and see the faces of
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people that I had been reading about.
22:28
When I ended up with Camerati, and we started in town, in Le
22:32
Mans, at a garage they had rented.
22:35
And that's where we were doing all the work before we went out to the track.
22:38
You asked me, how did I get involved in the different races?
22:41
Well, I go to the race with my Corvette.
22:44
Montlery was a big oval right near Paris, and that was kind
22:49
of the Indianapolis of its day.
22:51
And I got to go to the races there.
22:53
And that's the first time that I saw formula cars, et cetera,
22:56
which I ended up racing.
22:58
As some of you know, I, my last race was a NASCAR race at
23:02
Watkins Glen in August of 1987.
23:05
And that ended my career, but most of my racing was done in a single
23:09
seat or in formula cars in Brabham's.
23:11
The thing that really ended my racing career, we started a business
23:15
called Springdale Racing, and we were the March distributor.
23:18
The customers would go racing and I wouldn't.
23:21
And so that didn't work out too good.
23:22
But anyway, I did a lot of racing.
23:24
And so that's my story there.
23:26
I got one more question for you about the good old days of Lamar.
23:30
A lot of us try to look back through the lens of time and great way to
23:35
depict what it was like is going to watch Steve McQueen's movie Lamar,
23:39
because it's a bit of a snapshot of what it was like in those days.
23:43
I'm sure you've seen the movie, like all of us have.
23:45
Is that accurate?
23:46
You know, were the pits, the way they showed it, kind of dark and dank and dingy
23:50
and, you know, all these kinds of things.
23:51
And Le Mans stayed that way for a long time as we come to understand.
23:55
What was it like?
23:56
I've heard you tell this one other story about the Mulsanne corner at
24:00
the end of the straightaway that every car was required to have a shovel.
24:03
That's correct.
24:04
That's correct, and I have pictures from my Philips camera.
24:07
I'm looking at one of the pictures now of our pit setup
24:10
at the end of the Molson Street.
24:12
And when you go from flat out, it was what, maybe 8 miles, 7
24:15
miles along the straightaway.
24:17
And you could, obviously it was constant sounds.
24:19
I never slept, I stayed awake for the whole 24 hours with the boards.
24:23
And we were pitting next to the Camaradi Maserati team.
24:26
So I would be sitting on the pit wall.
24:29
It's a walk from where I was, like the center field in a baseball
24:32
stadium, is where the sand banks were.
24:35
And the cars would go in too fast, go wide, and into the sand, and they'd get
24:39
their shovel out and dig themselves out.
24:41
I do have pictures of our pits, and Maserati pit had a table set
24:46
up with a tablecloth and food, etc.
24:48
So, all I was supposed to do was we would get the messages on the
24:52
telephone on times, what to flash, etc., and that's what my job was.
24:57
I wanted it.
24:57
I stayed right there the whole time.
24:59
Very noisy.
25:00
Very noisy.
25:02
So Richard, he brought up a little nugget of information that I wasn't aware of.
25:06
There was a Camaradi Maserati team at the same time.
25:09
How did that deal work out?
25:10
Yeah, three cars.
25:11
Lucky Kasner had no personal affinity for Corvette in particular.
25:17
He ended up with the Corvettes because he connected with Fred Gamble.
25:22
At an SCCA race at Okalaka Naval Air Base in Florida, Fred Gamble
25:27
kind of partnered with CASNR.
25:30
Fred wrote a proposal, which he polished over a span of a couple of
25:34
weeks to kind of get Camaradi going.
25:37
It was a proposal in search of sponsorship.
25:40
Fred conceived, as his presentation evolved, that they should have
25:46
Sort of an American theme.
25:47
He kind of envisioned it as analogous to the Olympics.
25:51
An American team would field largely American drivers in an American car.
25:57
The first big sponsor they secured was Goodyear, and that led to
26:00
Chevrolet and the Corvette.
26:02
But Lucky Kasner had no particular attachment to Corvette and was
26:06
interested in racing for overall wins in addition to class wins.
26:10
Was quite fond of pretty much anything that was fast.
26:14
And the timing happened to be right for him.
26:16
Maserati was struggling were a near bankruptcy or about to enter bankruptcy.
26:22
We're struggling to field cars and to build cars and to even survive as a
26:26
company, and they were looking for a capable team to represent them, but
26:32
they didn't have a lot of money because they were struggling financially.
26:35
They ended up connecting with Lucky Kassner and Camerotti, and he became,
26:40
in addition to racing the Corvettes, he became, at the same time, the de
26:44
facto works operation for Maserati.
26:47
So at the same time, I think just about all of the races in the 1960 season,
26:52
they were fielding the Corvette, they were also fielding typically more than
26:56
one, but at least one Maserati in the sports racing class or prototype class.
27:02
For the overall win.
27:04
So yeah, the Maseratis were a big part of Camerati's operation.
27:08
So Chuck, did you ever get to meet the illustrious Lloyd Lucky Kastner?
27:12
Oh sure!
27:13
The drivers for the Maseratis were Lucky Kastner and Jim Jeffords.
27:17
They drove the number 25.
27:19
And the 24 was Maston Gregory and Chuck Day.
27:21
And Chuck Day remembered me in the Corvette from Le Mans, and
27:25
he was also driving the Scarab when we got to Rennes, France.
27:28
So that's why we kind of became friendly, because he remembered me from Le Mans.
27:32
I remember very clearly asking Fred Gamble, did he refer
27:36
to Kasna as Lloyd or Lucky?
27:40
And he said, well, lucky, of course, I thought that was kind of interesting.
27:44
And I said, no, what was he like?
27:46
And he referred to him as a bamboozling, flim flam artist.
27:50
Absolutely.
27:51
He was able to convince Dow Chemical, which is a antifreeze manufacturer, uh,
27:56
To sponsor his air cooled Porsches, Fred used to laugh about it and he would say
28:03
that he could sell anything to anybody.
28:06
But he would also say that it was impossible not to like him and it
28:10
was impossible to say no to him.
28:12
He's an epic character and I'm so fascinated in the whole
28:15
story of Lloyd Luckey Kazna.
28:18
And, uh, one of the last times that Fred and I spoke, I asked him where
28:22
Lucky came from, you know, where did the, the nickname come from?
28:26
And to the best of his recollection, when Lloyd was a young man, he ran, got
28:32
into some trouble or whatever, and his parents sent him away to military school.
28:35
Got in trouble in military school, and he ended up having to do the overnight watch.
28:40
During the Christmas, New Year's break one year, some students that
28:45
he was in school with joking around said, well, aren't you lucky?
28:48
He liked the way it sounded and he actually adopted it himself.
28:52
He gave himself the nickname Lucky Kasner.
28:56
So even at whatever, 13 years old, whatever he was in military
29:01
school, it was already the start of something big with him.
29:04
He latched right onto that Lucky Kasner thing and he just
29:08
took it for all it was worth.
29:09
And to be honest with you, the number 26 Maserati, Scarlatti is
29:14
one of the drivers and Montereau.
29:16
And I didn't know either of those people.
29:18
But yes, you know, at that age, I was only like 22.
29:21
I was just having a ball.
29:23
And a lot of these faces and people didn't mean a lot to me at that point.
29:27
And the name Lucky Kastner was not a big draw for me.
29:30
I knew he was basically the owner of the team.
29:33
He certainly was very, very involved.
29:35
Sterling Moss and Lloyd Kastner.
29:38
In 1961 won the Berg ring a thousand km in a Maserati Tippo 61.
29:46
That's true.
29:46
Later that year in 1961, in that same car, Lloyd Kasner crashed
29:52
the car at Pescara Grand Prix.
29:54
He actually suffered some, uh, third degree burns after that crash, correct.
29:59
In April of 1965.
30:02
Lloyd Kasner was driving, I think it was called a T 151,
30:06
it was a modified Maserati.
30:08
He crashed at about 160 miles an hour, and that's ultimately ended Lloyd Kasner.
30:14
At 36 years old, he crashed that Maserati.
30:17
It was on the Mulsanne Street.
30:18
Yeah.
30:19
Died from the injuries of that crash.
30:20
Talking about the speed of the Mulsanne, 165 miles an hour in the Maserati.
30:25
I thought about this before when Chuck was talking about the racing at that time.
30:29
How fast was the Camaradi Corvette down the straightaway at top speed?
30:33
Oh, geez.
30:34
Actually it's recorded.
30:35
Uh, the average speed in that race was 98 point something miles per hour.
30:40
That's the average lap speed.
30:41
What's it's recorded top speed?
30:43
134, I believe.
30:44
Okay.
30:45
You're leading right into that, Dominic.
30:47
Tell us what it's like owning a piece of Le Mans history.
30:50
As Richard alluded to in the very beginning of our talk, epic characters
30:55
that are involved in this whole story.
30:57
It just goes beyond anything that I had ever thought about.
31:01
I first got involved in the car because I thought it was a cool
31:04
race car and I heard a little bit about the story and it just seemed
31:08
like a good thing to do at the time.
31:09
But after really digging into some of the People that were involved and
31:13
having the ability to speak on a number of occasions with Fred Gamble, who
31:18
was part of the comradery race team ownership and a driver and a journalist.
31:23
And he went on to do so many more things.
31:26
He went on to become Goodyear's first director of international
31:29
race car operations.
31:31
Very prolific writer wrote magazine articles and technical
31:34
bulletins and things like that.
31:37
It's interesting that as Lloyd Kasner continued racing and at one point,
31:42
Masten Gregory, Dan Gurney, Carol Shelby, Sterling Moss, uh, you know,
31:47
the list goes on and on and on.
31:48
He just couldn't hold it together, which is part of what's so interesting about it.
31:52
He had this great idea and he had him and Fred Gamble had this
31:56
idea of the, this Olympic team.
31:58
They just couldn't hold it all together.
32:00
So.
32:00
One by one, all these notable figures, you know, they would come and go.
32:05
In around 1963, when Fred Gamble finally divorced himself from Camaradi, he
32:11
ended up at a journalist's luncheon and he runs into Carroll Shelby.
32:16
And before Fred went to work for Goodyear, Carroll Shelby made
32:20
him his first sales manager.
32:21
The small world.
32:22
Yeah.
32:23
Small world, illustrious career.
32:26
That's Chuck sitting in the Camaradi Corvette in the pits.
32:31
At Lamont, you can see there's a camera in the lower right hand side there.
32:35
That's somebody from the Chevrolet film crew was taking pictures.
32:39
There's a great video narrated by Dr.
32:42
Dick Thompson all about that 1960 race and standing in the back is Bob Wallace.
32:48
And John Olson, these were two guys from New Zealand.
32:51
Bob Wallace went on to a great career with Lamborghini.
32:55
And John Olson is credited with building with Carroll
32:59
Shelby the first Daytona Coupe.
33:01
And these two gentlemen from New Zealand, both were part of
33:05
the Camaradi team at Le Mans.
33:07
So I got a question for Chuck as you go through these pictures, kind of looking
33:10
back at that one of him in the car.
33:11
At that time, 1960, how were Americans received at Le Mans?
33:16
What was it like being with an American car there today?
33:19
It's accepted Corvette is part of the landscape along with other vehicles,
33:23
you know, especially last year, Ford back on the scene at Lamar.
33:27
What was it like to be there with Corvette?
33:29
Is it sort of like garage 56 where everybody was sort of raising
33:33
their eyebrow going, I don't think they're going to make it.
33:35
What was the vibe like at that time?
33:37
More eyes would open wide when I'd be in my 56 Corvette.
33:41
For them to see a Corvette.
33:42
I mean, that was like, what the hell is that?
33:44
I really honestly spent the whole race, the end of the Mulsanne
33:48
straight in the rain, et cetera.
33:50
And I didn't really get a feel.
33:51
I didn't notice anything in particular about the way they
33:55
felt about the American team.
33:57
I just thought that we showed ourselves very, very well.
34:00
We were polite and I love my two years in France.
34:03
I had no problem.
34:04
It was a dream come true just to be involved with that team at that time.
34:08
Because I had been reading about it all this time, so it was a thrill.
34:11
It was a thrill.
34:12
So Richard, you talked a lot about Loren Lumberg and his quest to find the car, you
34:18
know, almost in a Don Quixote sort of way.
34:21
What attracted him to the Camaradi Corvette?
34:24
Was it its beauty?
34:25
Presence at Lamar.
34:26
Was it?
34:26
It's finished.
34:27
Was it the history?
34:28
You analyzed a lot of his story.
34:30
Can you share more about what drew him to try to find the car?
34:34
Dominic mentioned that a big part of his attraction to the car is the
34:39
cast of larger than life characters that surround its story and Lauren
34:43
Lundberg's right up there with Lloyd Lucky Kastner and Chuck and some of
34:48
the other truly remarkable people.
34:50
Lauren.
34:51
Was a super passionate Corvette enthusiast.
34:56
He crossed paths with the car completely by accident.
34:59
Dominic mentioned Bob Wallace, a New Zealander who was hired on as a mechanic
35:04
for the team during the 1960s season.
35:07
When the car was going from Sweden after the Swedish Grand Prix and
35:11
after Joe Bonnier set some new Swedish national speed records
35:16
on public roads with the car.
35:18
It was next going to Great Britain and it was driven from race to race.
35:22
There was no trail or no transporter, which I think was typical of the era.
35:27
So Bob Wallace was driving the car and it was he who crashed it in Sweden.
35:32
Fred Gamble was in their support vehicle, a Ford station wagon.
35:36
Oddly enough, Bob Wallace left Camerati after the, uh, 60 season
35:42
and went to work for a Ferrari team for the next four years.
35:46
And then in 64, he went to work for Lamborghini initially as a mechanic and
35:52
up, he was slated to do a little bit of test driving, but his skill and his acumen
35:58
quickly led to his rise in the company.
36:00
He became their chief test driver and.
36:03
Was instrumental in every Lamborghini that the company
36:06
produced for the next 10 years.
36:08
When Ferruccio Lamborghini sold the company in 19, I believe, 75, Bob Wallace
36:14
didn't want to stay on with the new owner.
36:17
So he was from New Zealand.
36:18
He had lived much of the past 15 or so years in Italy.
36:23
He and his wife literally opened up a map book and decided that they were
36:27
going to move to the United States.
36:29
And they picked Phoenix, Arizona, because it was warm.
36:32
And because there was enough of a population there to support
36:36
a business, he intended to open up an independent Ferrari and a
36:40
Lamborghini repair and race prep shop.
36:43
So he and his wife moved to Phoenix and Lauren Lundberg
36:46
lived in Glendale, Arizona.
36:48
He was 10 minutes from Bob Wallace's shop by sheer coincidence.
36:52
Another Corvette enthusiast named Mike Pillsbury was on a phone call
36:56
with Loren Lundberg, and Loren was trying to convince Mike to bring
37:00
his car, one of the Cunningham team cars that Mike Pillsbury had found
37:04
and restored, to a Southwest NCRS, National Corvette Restorer Society show.
37:09
And in the course of the conversation, Mike Pillsbury said,
37:12
Hey, you're, you're near Phoenix.
37:13
You must know Bob Wallace.
37:15
And Loren Lundberg said, No, I don't know Bob Wallace.
37:18
Mike Pillsbury told him, well, he was with the Camerati team.
37:21
In 1960, and he was there at Le Mans with the car, be an interesting
37:26
guy, you ought to look him up.
37:27
So that's what started Loren Lundberg's journey with the Camerati car.
37:31
He went and visited Bob Wallace.
37:33
It was a combination of, he loved C1 Corvettes, he recognized
37:37
the intrinsic interest.
37:40
And worth and I don't mean financial worth because for
37:42
Lauren, it was never about money.
37:44
It was the historic value of a car that had not only competed at Le Mans,
37:49
which in and of itself is remarkable for the time period, but a car
37:53
that had actually finished Le Mans.
37:55
So he instantly became fascinated with the car and he wants to know, where is it?
38:01
What's happened to it?
38:02
And Bob Wallace, told him the sad story that he had crashed
38:05
the car, it rolled several times, and ended up a shattered mess.
38:09
And Lauren Lundberg didn't accept that it was just thrown away, what happened to it?
38:14
And Bob Wallace said, we assumed it was scrap.
38:17
And he pulled out a photo of the car, a crime scene photo, from the wreck,
38:21
showing exactly what the car looked like.
38:23
You know, it was an accident photo.
38:25
Bob Wallace's attitude was, look at what, you know, what was left of it.
38:30
I'm sure it was, you know, disposed of.
38:32
And Lauren Lundberg said, but you don't know for sure, do you?
38:35
And Bob Wallace acknowledged that he didn't know for sure.
38:38
He and Fred Gamble had taken what they deemed the only salvageable
38:42
parts out of the car, which was the engine and transmission.
38:45
And they gave the remains to the first Swedish policeman who had
38:48
showed up at the accident scene.
38:50
Their idea was, well, the car was sort of somewhat famous at that point,
38:55
Completed the 24 hours of Le Mans, and it had just been driven by Bonnier, who
39:00
was Sweden's first Formula One driver and first Formula One winner to some
39:05
national public road speed records.
39:07
So their idea was the policeman was nice to them, and he could probably
39:12
sell a few bits and pieces off the car as souvenirs before it went to the
39:17
scrapyard, but he didn't know for sure.
39:19
Lauren Lundberg very quickly became obsessed, and again, I think it was his.
39:24
Attachment to Corvettes, his fascination with Corvette history, and his
39:28
recognition that a Le Mans finishing Corvette from that time period was
39:33
truly a remarkable piece of machinery.
39:35
And though extraordinarily remote, if in fact this car did survive,
39:41
it was worth investigating and if possible, acquiring it.
39:45
After five years of pre internet, Old fashioned, tenacious detective work with
39:51
an incredible sequence of unrelated, incredibly intensely lucky coincidences.
39:58
Loren found the car and he was able to buy it in 1995, 35 years
40:04
after it left the United States.
40:07
He, uh, shipped it back and it came back to the west coast
40:10
to the port of Long Beach.
40:11
That quest, that journey, the car gets fully restored.
40:14
Dominic, you've got some pictures of it now.
40:16
We've seen the pictures from the center conversation.
40:18
It was on display at the IMRRC.
40:21
As Lauren got older, like in a lot of cases, especially with collector cars,
40:26
that enthusiast passes away and then the family goes, I don't know what to do with
40:29
dad's cars or grandpa's cars or whatever.
40:31
So it went up on the market.
40:33
What drew you to the Camaradi Corvette?
40:35
Was it the Le Mans story?
40:37
Was it something else?
40:38
Had you met Loren in the past and was his excitement about it that drew you in?
40:42
What made you decide you wanted to own a piece of Le Mans history?
40:46
I had never met Loren.
40:48
Shortly before I actually saw the car in a NCRS driveline ad for sale, I
40:54
had watched a movie called The Quest.
40:57
And the quest was a movie all about the number three car and
41:01
John Fitch and going back to Lamar.
41:03
And it just piqued my interest that a car like number four car was up for sale.
41:09
So I responded to the ad with the car for sale from the, you know,
41:14
that I saw the NCS driveline.
41:16
And at that point, Lauren's family, just as you said, they didn't
41:19
know what to do with the car.
41:20
The car was in the garage.
41:22
You know, I spoke with his wife a couple of times.
41:24
She advertised it, but she really didn't know what she wanted to do with it.
41:28
So, some time went by.
41:30
Eventually, we hooked back up.
41:32
Lauren had passed away.
41:33
She was selling the house that they lived in.
41:35
And, uh, she called me on a Monday, and she said, I'm moving
41:39
out of the house on Friday.
41:41
If you want the car, just make a reasonable offer.
41:45
Now, I live in New York.
41:46
The car was in Arizona.
41:47
She said, come to Arizona.
41:49
You have to be here by Friday and the car has to be out of the garage by
41:54
Friday because I'm vacating the house for the new owners to take possession.
41:59
That's Saturday.
42:00
Just so happened that it was Barrett Jackson that weekend.
42:03
So I was able to find reliable.
42:06
One of the car carriers that had a spot.
42:09
Available to get the car back to New York.
42:11
So I flew to Arizona to Lauren's house, looked at the car, car
42:16
carrier came and met us there.
42:18
We made the deal, put the car in the car carrier, got back to New York.
42:21
Funny story, we're in Lauren's garage and there's the car.
42:25
Speaking with his wife and Lauren's son actually came to the garage while
42:29
we were there finishing the deal up.
42:31
Mrs.
42:31
Lundberg said to me, you know, you bought the car and there's, there's
42:35
all this other stuff that's in the garage that belonged to Lauren.
42:39
And I don't know what any of it is, but if you don't take it,
42:41
I'm going to throw it all out.
42:42
I'm like, well, let me take a look at it and see what it is.
42:46
I mean, you know, I came for the car.
42:48
I didn't, you know, I didn't really expect anything else.
42:51
And there were file boxes of photographs and correspondences.
42:56
It was that whole five year search that Richard was just referring to, all
43:01
documented, thrown in these file boxes.
43:04
Mrs.
43:04
Lundberg's like, you're welcome to take it if you want it.
43:07
Most of it, I didn't even know what I was looking at because I,
43:10
I really honestly didn't know.
43:13
The extent of the story I knew, you know, about obviously the race and I,
43:17
you know, I learned about the four cars that went to the race, but I really
43:21
didn't have this whole back story.
43:22
So we're taking this paperwork and we're putting it inside the
43:27
car to travel back to New York.
43:29
The intake manifold was off the car and the fuel injection unit was in the trunk.
43:33
We're filling up garbage bags and we're stuffing the engine compartment with
43:37
garbage bags full of all this paperwork, haphazardly, just everything that we
43:42
could fit in the car, we fit in the car.
43:44
So I get it back and this is actually how I met Chuck.
43:48
Now I got the car back and I have these boxes and boxes and boxes of paperwork.
43:52
And it was, you know, we just kind of threw it all together.
43:54
It was in no particular order or, or anything like that.
43:58
And what I would do is every day on my way to work is I would just grab a handful.
44:02
Of stuff from the boxes and try and sort it into some kind of order, date
44:06
order or subject order or whatever.
44:08
And I mean, it was literally file boxes full of paperwork and I'm
44:13
going through this stuff 1 day and I see a handwritten note on the side
44:17
of a letter from Lauren to Chuck.
44:20
with a phone number, and it said Chuck Schroedel, a phone number,
44:24
and the town that Chuck lived in, it said Bedford, New York.
44:27
Now, my office is in Valhalla, New York, which is like 15 minutes away from
44:31
Bedford, New York, and I'm like, how could this, this can't possibly be it?
44:35
I mean, it just adds to this epic story of, like, the stuff that,
44:39
most of it's not even believable.
44:40
What's the worst that could happen?
44:42
I dial the number up, man answered the phone, The way Chuck always
44:46
answers the phone, Chuck Schroedel.
44:49
And I'm like, uh, excuse me, but, uh, you Chuck Schroedel that had something to do
44:55
with the Le Mans race in 1960 Corvette.
44:58
And he's like, yeah, that's me.
45:00
What's it to you?
45:01
And that was it.
45:02
That started the whole thing.
45:03
And I mean, ever since that day, Chuck and I, we probably talk at least once a week
45:08
or sometimes a couple of times a week.
45:11
And we've become great friends and, you know, just another
45:14
one of the epic characters that go with the camaraderie story.
45:17
You know, Dom, one of the amazing things here is, when you called, that
45:22
call was separated by a number of years from the same call I got from Lauren.
45:26
And I was stunned.
45:27
I said, you have to be kidding.
45:29
I just went through this.
45:30
And then when you explained the story, subsequently, you brought
45:33
the car to a show in Armonk, which is like five minutes from my house.
45:38
When I saw the car, I just, I had a hard time.
45:41
I couldn't believe it.
45:41
Yeah, that picture that I have up now, that is Chuck Schroedel
45:46
sitting in the car 63 years after he sat in the car in the LeMans pit.
45:53
And that was at Armonk, New York.
45:56
And what we tried to do, you know, being a bunch of goofball amateur
45:59
photographers, we tried to recreate that picture with that picture.
46:04
Well, Dominic, you've become part of this cast of characters of the Camerati
46:08
story, but it begs the question, what are some of the future plans for the car?
46:12
You're its caretaker.
46:13
You're its custodian now.
46:15
Where is it going to be shown?
46:16
Are you driving it?
46:17
What are you doing it with it?
46:19
What's the future of the car?
46:20
I do every now and again, try and take it for a little
46:22
ride, but it's not registered.
46:24
Try and keep that to a minimum.
46:26
It's a lot of fun driving the car.
46:28
It's really a lot of fun.
46:30
We're going to be at the Boston concourse up in Boston, Massachusetts with the car.
46:34
And then we're going to be at the Newport concourse.
46:37
Up in Newport, Rhode Island, maybe if everything works out, according to plan,
46:42
it may be on a long term display at pretty prestigious museum one in Kentucky.
46:49
Yeah, I think so.
46:50
Yeah.
46:50
Down down in Kentucky.
46:51
That was actually going to be my next question whether or not it
46:54
was going to end up at the National Corvette Museum or not, which would be
46:56
absolutely epic ending for this card.
46:59
Not an ending, but a resting place.
47:00
Yes.
47:01
Yes, it's actually, I could use a little bit of a rest.
47:04
We had a very hectic show season this year.
47:06
If everything comes together and all the stars are aligned and you
47:09
know, I've agreed to bring it down, it all depends on whether we could
47:13
work the details out with the museum.
47:14
Lauren and Dom have kept this thing going and thanks to Dom, I went with
47:20
him on a weekend to Watkins Glen to the museum where the car was on display.
47:24
And that's where I met Richard.
47:26
And I saw the reception of the car at the museum at Watkins Glen, and I have
47:30
to tell you, I just, I can't thank Dom enough for what he's doing with that car.
47:34
It's unbelievable.
47:35
In this crazy story of the restoration of the car and the cast of the characters,
47:40
and we've kind of glossed over some things, and I urge people to go back
47:43
and listen to a longer presentation that you guys did with the IMRRC as part of
47:48
this Summer Center conversation, where you, Richard, and Chuck go into way
47:51
more detail about even the discovery of the car and things like that.
47:54
One of the things I took away from that presentation was the original
47:58
motor is lost at sea somewhere off the coast of Australia, but I went
48:02
back to the other camaraderie Corvette when I was listening to that part
48:06
of the story when it burned to the ground and all these kinds of things.
48:09
It reminded me of other cars that have suffered from catastrophic fires.
48:13
Even last year at Car Week, there was a Ferrari that was found in a
48:16
barn that had suffered from a fire and somebody was going to put it
48:19
back together and this and that.
48:20
Has there been any talk to find the other Camerati Corvette?
48:24
Does anybody know where it is?
48:26
Does it still exist anymore or was it crushed?
48:28
What's its story?
48:29
I did ask Fred Gamble about it in 1960 after the fire at Sebring.
48:35
The best of his recollection at this point was it was, uh, it
48:37
was a total loss and, you know, discarded or scrapped or whatever.
48:42
Or maybe that lucky person still has it in a barn, just like the number four, right?
48:46
Could be.
48:47
You never know.
48:47
That's actually the reason that the Cunningham crew
48:51
was able to crew three cars.
48:53
at Le Mans is because the three car took the place of the second Camaradi car.
48:59
It was, originally it was laid out to be two Cunningham cars, the one
49:04
and two, and three and four would have been the two spots for Camaradi.
49:09
But when they lost the car at Sebring, I guess either Ed Cole
49:13
or Zora Duntov or whatever kind of got annoyed with Lloyd Luckey.
49:17
Instead of replacing a car to the Camaradi team, they worked out a third car.
49:23
to the Cunningham team, and if you look at the serial numbers of the four cars,
49:28
the one and two are kind of similar.
49:30
The four car is kind of similar, and the three car, which was the one that
49:34
replaced the Camaradi three car, is way out of sequence from, um, the other cars.
49:39
So as we move into the final piece of this, we actually have a question from
49:43
the crowd, and this is for the panel.
49:46
And Terry writes, with the focus being on this wonderful era of Corvette,
49:50
Do you gentlemen have any thoughts on Corvettes conversion or transition
49:55
to the modern day mid engine car?
49:57
Should they have continued their legacy of the front engine design that started
50:01
with cars like the Camerati Corvette?
50:03
Does it feel right to have gone in this distinctive difference that we have now?
50:07
What do you guys think about modern Le Mans and team Corvette and racing
50:10
and all those kinds of things?
50:11
And I'll start with Chuck because I know you have some opinions about this.
50:14
I can appreciate what everybody is going through that owns a Corvette,
50:17
because when I got my 56 Corvette, the only thing I could not do
50:21
was get the car into bed with me.
50:23
I was so in love with that car.
50:25
I was part of it until I sold my racing car business, and I sold the car
50:29
probably in 74, which was a big mistake.
50:32
But I loved it.
50:33
that car.
50:34
I loved everything about it.
50:35
I did everything to it.
50:37
I consider myself a past true Corvette owner, so I can appreciate.
50:42
Dominic, your thoughts on modern Corvette racing compared to the Camerati Corvette?
50:46
One of the things that we're trying to work out with the National
50:50
Corvette Museum is, uh, if I'm fortunate enough to Camerati car.
50:57
I'm trying to work out a museum delivery of a new C8.
51:01
You know, maybe we can get them both at the National Corvette Museum at the
51:04
same time the, uh, the old GT style C1 car and delivery of the new C8.
51:10
We need a Camerati Tribute car at the next Le Mans.
51:13
That's what we really need.
51:14
Somebody needs to do a livery.
51:15
Yeah, that would be cool.
51:16
Maybe we could turn the new C8 they take delivery of at the
51:19
museum into a Camerati Tribute car.
51:21
Never know.
51:22
So Richard, you're still involved with General Motors.
51:25
What are your thoughts on modern day team Corvette racing?
51:28
I could probably speak for a week on, in answering that question.
51:32
A change is often disruptive and for a lot of people it's traumatic,
51:36
especially when it pertains to something that they're super passionate about.
51:40
I've enjoyed the great privilege of working for a lot
51:43
of different car companies.
51:45
The bulk of my work has been for General Motors, but I've done photography
51:49
for just about all of the world's major car makers, including a lot of
51:54
the iconic performance brands like Aston Martin and Audi and Bentley
51:58
and Ferrari and Mercedes and Porsche.
52:02
Every brand has its enthusiasts, but I really do believe that no group is as
52:08
intense and as passionate and fiercely loyal as is the Corvette Lovers.
52:14
When people are so personally, emotionally invested and so passionate about
52:19
something, change can be a powerful tool.
52:21
a big issue.
52:22
And this has been the case all along in Corvette's history.
52:25
My Corvette journey began 50 years ago.
52:28
I can say from my own experience and even from my understanding of Corvette
52:33
history prior to that, that every major change has been disruptive and it has
52:38
caused turmoil when they went from open headlights to rotating headlights.
52:43
And then when they went from Pop up headlights back to open headlights,
52:48
even when the shape of the tail lamps changed recently, it was a
52:53
big problem for a lot of people.
52:55
Of course, some people like the change.
52:57
No change has been quite so profound.
52:59
Of course, as the change to the mid engine car, which came
53:02
with a C8 introduced in 2020.
53:05
It is a big disruptor.
53:06
It not only completely changes the architecture of the car, but it really
53:10
profoundly changes the appearance.
53:12
It goes from that traditional front engine GT look with the long nose and the
53:18
cockpit set back to a mid engine look.
53:21
The engine behind the passengers and it changes the proportions
53:24
of the cars quite dramatically.
53:26
So I understand why Some people don't like it, and I also appreciate why
53:30
some people are in love with it.
53:32
Inevitably, we can't deny the laws of physics, and it was just that.
53:36
It was the laws of physics that propelled the change, and also the
53:41
march of technology that allowed it.
53:42
AAA explored mid engine architecture as far back as the late 1950s.
53:47
And on a relatively low volume car like Corvette, it was just simply not
53:51
feasible economically, logistically, technologically feasible, but today with
53:56
computer aided design and 3D printing and incredible advances in technology,
54:02
it is feasible and the front engine architecture really reached the limits
54:06
of its performance potential with the C7.
54:09
So, it was inevitable, it was the only way forward if Corvette
54:12
is going to keep moving forward.
54:14
As far as the racing goes, I've been with the modern Corvette race program since its
54:19
inception in 1997 when they began testing.
54:23
I can say, in my opinion, the Corvette race program today is
54:27
in the best place it's ever been.
54:29
And that's simply because of the transition to the GT3 platform.
54:34
Previously, The cars that raced in one place weren't homologated to race in
54:39
another place, and it was prohibitively expensive to build two or three
54:43
different versions of the same race car.
54:46
Finally, the manufacturers and the sanctioning bodies have come together.
54:50
Now, GT3 is the specification for production based GT racing around
54:56
the world, so GT3 homologated cars, which the C8R Z06 is, Are eligible
55:03
to race in every major sports car racing series around the world.
55:07
So that together with the change in Chevrolet's business model, they've gone
55:13
from a full factory program, which is what it's been for the past 27 years.
55:18
They've gone to a customer based program.
55:20
Chevrolet is partnering with different teams.
55:23
In different series around the world and supporting those teams,
55:27
but the teams have more autonomy and are acting more independently.
55:31
That business model in conjunction with the GT3 specification and its
55:35
eligibility has resulted in more Corvettes racing in more places
55:39
around the world than ever before.
55:41
This year, that includes two different teams in IMSA, a team in WAC, a team
55:46
in the SRO, and next year, I'm not at liberty to say exactly where and
55:52
who, but I'll say that there will be even more Corvettes racing in
55:56
even more places around the world.
55:58
So if you're a Corvette race fan, putting aside preferences for the aesthetic and
56:02
so on, The good news is there are more Corvettes racing in more places than
56:07
ever before, and moving forward, that is only going to grow even further.
56:11
Wherever you are in the world, whatever race series is your favorite, you are
56:16
likely to eventually see Corvettes, and when I say eventually, it's going to be
56:20
sooner than later, racing in that series.
56:22
From my perspective, I love the fact that there are more teams racing
56:26
more Corvettes than ever before.
56:28
And on that, I want to turn the microphone over to ACO USA President David Lowe.
56:33
For some closing thoughts.
56:35
What an incredible evening.
56:36
Thank you Eric for pulling this together and to Richard and Dominique and to Chuck.
56:41
It's an honor to have you contribute to this very, very important
56:44
program for the ACO USA members.
56:46
For me, it was very enlightening.
56:48
I really enjoyed the story.
56:50
And again, I look forward to a chance to meet you all, possibly up at
56:53
Watkins Glen here in the near future.
56:55
Thank you.
56:56
Tonight's episode was brought to you in part by the International Motor
56:59
Racing Research Center, whose charter is to collect, share, and preserve
57:02
the history of motorsports and stories like those of the Camerati Corvette.
57:06
The IMRRC's collection embodies the speed, drama, and camaraderie
57:11
of amateur and professional motor racing throughout the world.
57:14
And it welcomes serious researchers and the casual fans alike to share stories of
57:18
race drivers, race series, and race cars captured on their shelves and walls and
57:22
brought to life through a regular calendar of public lectures, and special events.
57:27
To learn more, be sure to check out www.
57:30
racingarchives.
57:30
org or follow them on social media at IMRRC.
57:35
And on behalf of everyone here and those listening at home, thank you
57:38
for sharing your stories with us, and we hope you enjoyed this presentation
57:42
and look forward to more Evenings with a Legend throughout the season.
57:45
Dominic, Richard, and Chuck, thank you all for spending your evening with us
57:50
and sharing this most interesting, um, Corner of Lamont's history with us a story
57:56
that probably many haven't heard, but are going to repeat from this point forward.
58:00
And Dominic, a special hats off to you for being the continued custodian of such
58:05
an interesting piece of Lamont's history.
58:07
Thanks, Eric.
58:08
And again, thanks to the International Motor Racing Research Center at Watkins
58:12
Glen and the ACO for inviting us.
58:15
It's an honor for me.
58:16
Thank you.
58:17
Thank you very much.
58:19
Thanks a lot.
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From the awe inspiring speed demons that have graced the track to the courageous
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