bonnet that was mated to the underside
of the Stinger hood that pulled in air
from the low-pressure area at the base
of the windshield. An aluminum cross-
flow radiator with no shroud kept things
cool at racing speeds. The L88 came
with a small-diameter flywheel and a
high-capacity clutch.
Required items included: RPO J50
Power Brakes; RPO J56 Special Heavy-
Duty Brakes; RPO K66 Transistor
Ignition; RPO F41 Special Front and
Rear Suspension; RPO G81 Positraction
Rear Axle; RPO M22 (Rock Crusher)
Four Speed and RPO C48 Radio and
Heater Delete. The total cost of an L88
Corvette was just over $6,100. Only 20
1967 L88 Corvettes were sold.
Four L88s raced at the 1967 12
Hours of Sebring with the Sunray
DX-sponsored car finishing 10th over-
all and 1st in GT. Then, in June, at Le
Mans a Dana Chevrolet and Sunray
DX-sponsored L88 qualified 10 seconds
quicker than the existing record. During
the race, Dick Guldstrand was clocked
at 171.5 mph on the Mulsanne Straight.
Unfortunately, 11 1/2 hours into the
race, the L88 threw a rod and was out.
One of Bill Tower’s many assign-
ments as a development engineer was
to help solve some of the issues on the
L88 before it was released. Tower recalls,
“For a time I was working at the GM
Proving Grounds to get the L88 ready.
Man, did it have problems. The big-
gest was the car kept overheating. We
finally fixed that with a stiffer fan clutch.
Another major problem was with all
that power on skinny, stock bias-ply
tires. The car was dangerous to drive.
“To solve the tires issue we had
the Kelsey Hayes people come to the
Proving Grounds with their truck and
wheel-making equipment. We wanted
to put the new Wide-Oval tires on the
car without trimming the inside lip
of the wheelwell. So the Kelsey Hayes
people just kept making different offsets
until we got it just right. The end result
was that the car handled much better.”
The side pipes are the most obvious
non-stock items. Tower explains, “These
are very similar to what were used on
the Grand Sport cars. The header tubes
gather together in a straight-line nar-
row collector that bends back into an
expanded 3-inch diameter side pipe.
With the 12.5:1 compression in the
L88, when we had that car out on the
test track on the high banks, everyone
stopped what they were doing to watch.
A lot of what we did, the racers would
be doing anyway; we just wanted to try
out some things. But this is not how the
cars were sold.”
Typically, when engineering is done
with test cars, the parts are stripped
and what’s left goes to the crusher, but
sometimes they get away from R&D.
Jim Rathman Chevrolet, in Melbourne,
Florida, was known as the Chevrolet
dealership to the astronauts. For a
few years, Chevrolet gifted the Apollo
Astronauts with 427 Corvettes that
came through Rathman Chevrolet.
As a “thank you” for handling theastronaut cars, Rathman was given the
Greenwood Green L88 development car.
The trouble was that the L88 had been
damaged and was not running, and was
on top of the carrier. Tower talked with
the man that unloaded the car who said
that it literally bounced from the top
row to the bottom, but luckily it stayed
on the ramps. The engine problem was
a broken valve that was repaired.
Melbourne is only 90 miles from
Daytona, so Rathman took the L88 to
the famous track to let it stretch it’s legs.
At Daytona, the L88 was clocked at 180
mph and barely avoided disaster. During
its last run, one of the Wide-Oval tires
shredded, tore off part of the fender,
severed the fuel line and started a fire.
The damage was not extensive.
Rathman was done with the car andA few months after the ’67 L88s were released to racers; the press was treated to the
debut of the new Mako Shark-styled 1968 Corvette. After that, no one was paying
much attention to the ’67 Sting Rays, let alone an obscure racer option.
Instead of an
open dome
on the under-
side of the
hood, the L88
hood had a
receptacle
that mated
with the air cleaner bonnet so that when
the hood was closed, air was pulled in
from the open part of the back of the
Stinger hood. At high racing speed, the
low-pressure area at the base of the hood
ramcharged air into the L88.The unusual air cleaner bonnet mated
perfectly to the underside of the hood.44 VETTE 19.0 4
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