The Found Corvette of Le Mans

A decade ago, I wrote an article about the trio of Corvettes that Briggs Cunningham fielded at the 1960 24-Hours of Le Mans. I had been sent some original footage of these cars in a package with no return address and only one clue as to where it came from – a USPS source stamp that mentioned Dallas, TX.

After digitizing and featuring this footage, I got pretty nasty feedback from a gentleman in Dallas (weird, right?) that claimed to own one of the three cars and, therefore, the footage that I posted. At the time, I blew it off and didn’t respond. I knew that the #2 and #3 cars still existed and, in fact, knew their owners. The #1 car had long since been lost and I figured that my detractor was simply a loon of some sort.

Then, last night I got a note from Anderson with this link. What you see before you is the #1 car.

I’ve spent most of the morning on the phone trying to get as much information as I could. Turns out, the car was found in a garage in Florida and there was some controversy over who the owner was. After a court battle, it was decided that the car should be sold and the proceeds split. The car sold in May for somewhere around $750K – which actually seems cheap to me given the world in which this car lives.

Anyway, all of this got me hunting for the shitty email I got back in 2011. Since I never replied, I haven’t been able to search it out. Most likely, it was filtered as spam and dumped. I do, however, seem to remember the guy mentioning he was from Florida, but now living in Texas?

Regardless, if he’s out there… and he’s reading this… I would love to talk to him. About what?

I want to know the history of the car after Le Mans. The #1 car crashed out early and hasn’t been heard from since. And now, it shows up after being both customized and neglected. It’s sort of a miracle this car made it back to North America at all. The fact that not only did it make the boat, but ended up getting customized is crazy to think about.

Even crazier – no one knew it still existed. Meaning, whoever customized this car wasn’t sitting at some car show somewhere bragging about its Le Mans history and its importance to the history of American Sports Car manufacturing.

Something doesn’t feel right about any of this.