college years I decided to get back into
Corvettes.” He did that with a ’67 coupe
that he restored at the Corvette Center
south of Colorado Springs. “It was great
because they allowed me to work on my
car as much as I wanted,” he says. He
built a new 502 crate engine as a 540.
“It put out 731 lb-ft of torque and 702
hp,” he enthuses. But it, too, was a short-
lived affair. “We needed some new sid-
ing on our house and a lot of concrete
work,” he says. “I tell people our home
is surrounded with Corvette siding and
Corvette concrete.”
But Michael’s also restless. When
he talks and moves it’s with a sense of
urgency. So when the planets realigned,
he couldn’t help pondering his next
project. Only this time he set his sights
big. Real big.
The Corvette may be his favorite
model, but his very favorite one is the
Grand Sport. And not one of those
special-edition packages of late, either.
Grand Sport as in one of the five cars
GM produced in 1963 to compete in
the Grand Touring classes. But he’s also
pragmatic. As he put it, “I was very con-
fident I couldn’t afford a five- to seven-
million-dollar car.”
Michael explored a few replica
options but none had the air of authen-
ticity that he craved. To be fair, the
things that made those cars undesirable
to him actually make them technically
better: modern chassis and suspension
and so on. But Michael was after that
experience, which means he wanted a
car more like the original. And the com-
pany building a car like that is Duntov
Motor Company (DMC) in Farmers
Branch, Texas.
For those who don’t know the story,
DMC acquired GM’s blueprints and the
molds pulled from Grand Sport #002,
the most intact of the five original cars.
What’s more—and we know some his-
torian will take us to task over this—the
DMC Grand Sport is faithful down to
its components. If plans called for an
original Corvette part, DMC uses it. If
they called for a custom-made assembly,
DMC reproduces it in every visible way.
Whereas a replica outwardly looks
faithful to the original, DMC’s is essen-
tially indiscernible from the first five
Grand Sports. What’s more, DMC has
the official blessings from General
Motors. These are the reasons why
the company can call its cars continu-
ations. As in they’re a continuation of
the original series. Michael’s is 021, the
16th continuation built. Of course, hard-
nosed purists will debate whether that
deserves any merit, but all agree—even
those purists—that a continuation is theclosest a mere mortal like us will ever
come to owning one of the five Grand
Sport Corvettes.
Judging by appearances it’s obvious
that Michael wanted to make his car his,
so to speak. Sure, he was into the power
thing but he took a different tack. He
had McCabe Motor Sports in Peyton,
Colorado, build a naturally aspirated
427, but out of a small-block. It’s all
top-shelf: Scat crank, Callies connecting
rods and Mahle pistons. The thing even
runs a dry-pump oiling system with a
Peterson pump.
Nobody’s real forthcoming about the
custom-grind Comp hydraulic roller
tappet cam but we know the hand-
ported heads started as 235cc 23-degree30 VETTE 19.09
[FEATURE]
THE SAME AS IT NEVER WAS