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John Greenwood's foray into road racing followed a successful career street-racing Impalas and Corvettes on the legendary Woodward Avenue near Detroit. After he found his initial competition successes at the club level at Detroit-area Waterford Hills Raceway, Greenwood turned to road racing in the late 1960s then took his Corvette racing operation nationwide, winning two consecutive Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) A/Production National Championships in 1970-71. A sponsorship deal with B.F. Goodrich in 1972 resulted in his first highly-modified Corvette racers called the 'Swing-Arm Cars' by Greenwood that were run in IMSA's Camel GT Challenge and subsequently took home 3 wins in the SCCA's Trans-Am Series in 1972 and 1973, all wearing Greenwood's trademark ZL1 flares over their shaved BFG Radial T/As.
There are not many vehicles of any stripe today – let alone from the 1970s - that could do 236 miles an hour on the back stretch at Daytona, the new record at the time, and then drift through the high-banked turns like a World of Outlaws car all fully while under control. The two cars known as the "Spirit of Sebring" built by John Greenwood in the mid-'70s represented a high water mark in the design and construction of road-racing Corvettes. These were the last cars that the legendary designer built using the production C3 Corvette frame as all his later cars featured a full-tube-chassis. During the early spring of 1975, the #75 "Spirit of Sebring" Corvette was in action in an IMSA Camel GT Challenge race at Laguna Seca. As Greenwood recalls, that race was as much a research-and-development session as it was equally a competition against the factory Porsches and BMWs in the field. "We didn't do well there," he recalled. "There was a learning curve with the car." However, once he mastered the idiosyncrasies of that challenging curve, Greenwood wound up with a car that ran in the front of the pack in IMSA Camel GT.
The opportunity to see, let alone acquire, such a vital part of American racing history does not come around but so often. More significant pieces of Corvette racing history – especially those attached to names such as John Greenwood – infrequently change hands in the public eye. This car was lost to the public for many years until having been acquired by Lance Smith, the expert on the Greenwood Corvette, who brought it back to its former glory. Introduced to competition at IMSA's Road Atlanta race in 1974, the car on offer here, then known as 'The Batmobile', was co-driven by John Greenwood and Mike Brockman at that event. It left the paddock to first qualify in second place and then go on to lead the opening laps of the race. Milt Mither drove it to victory at Talladega, a race of 200 miles over 50 laps of that circuit. By December of that year, the car was both fast and reliable enough to win the 66-lap, 250 mile IMSA Finale race at Daytona, averaging nearly 116mph qualifying on pole, finishing off even its nearest rivals by a clear lap. In 1975, Greenwood's thunderous Corvette finished 4th in the first Road Atlanta IMSA round. It achieved 11 IMSA pole positions, but the enormous power tended to hurt reliability. John refered to this car as the fastest of his customer cars.
For further inquiries about this automobile click here
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There are not many vehicles of any stripe today – let alone from the 1970s - that could do 236 miles an hour on the back stretch at Daytona, the new record at the time, and then drift through the high-banked turns like a World of Outlaws car all fully while under control. The two cars known as the "Spirit of Sebring" built by John Greenwood in the mid-'70s represented a high water mark in the design and construction of road-racing Corvettes. These were the last cars that the legendary designer built using the production C3 Corvette frame as all his later cars featured a full-tube-chassis. During the early spring of 1975, the #75 "Spirit of Sebring" Corvette was in action in an IMSA Camel GT Challenge race at Laguna Seca. As Greenwood recalls, that race was as much a research-and-development session as it was equally a competition against the factory Porsches and BMWs in the field. "We didn't do well there," he recalled. "There was a learning curve with the car." However, once he mastered the idiosyncrasies of that challenging curve, Greenwood wound up with a car that ran in the front of the pack in IMSA Camel GT.
The opportunity to see, let alone acquire, such a vital part of American racing history does not come around but so often. More significant pieces of Corvette racing history – especially those attached to names such as John Greenwood – infrequently change hands in the public eye. This car was lost to the public for many years until having been acquired by Lance Smith, the expert on the Greenwood Corvette, who brought it back to its former glory. Introduced to competition at IMSA's Road Atlanta race in 1974, the car on offer here, then known as 'The Batmobile', was co-driven by John Greenwood and Mike Brockman at that event. It left the paddock to first qualify in second place and then go on to lead the opening laps of the race. Milt Mither drove it to victory at Talladega, a race of 200 miles over 50 laps of that circuit. By December of that year, the car was both fast and reliable enough to win the 66-lap, 250 mile IMSA Finale race at Daytona, averaging nearly 116mph qualifying on pole, finishing off even its nearest rivals by a clear lap. In 1975, Greenwood's thunderous Corvette finished 4th in the first Road Atlanta IMSA round. It achieved 11 IMSA pole positions, but the enormous power tended to hurt reliability. John refered to this car as the fastest of his customer cars.
For further inquiries about this automobile click here
<< return to results
