Guldstrand Nassau Corvette

Sports-car enthusiasts with a bit of red, white, and blue flowing through their veins speak the name "Grand Sport" with a reverence usually reserved for a religious deity or a person's first love. These five special lightweight road-race Corvettes were factory built in 1963 during a tense dry spell in corporate race involvement. American car companies basically had assumed the role of spectators of international motorsports in the late '50s due to a so-called ban of factory-sponsored racing by the Automobile Manufacturers Association, allowing Ferraris, Porsches, and Maseratis to capture the glory of race victories relatively unchallenged by American machines.

Despite the fact that several car companies were unofficially supplying racing teams with parts snuck out the back doors, it was an outspoken Texan, Carroll Shelby, who challenged the edict by shoehorning a Ford V-8 engine between the fenders of the small English AC roadster in 1962.

The following summer, Corvette chief engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov began work on a series of purpose-built racers to be known as Grand Sports. Although the original plan was to construct 125 of the lightweight cars, GM execs killed the program after only five had been completed.

Big horsepower from a 377-cubic-inch V-8, massive weight reduction, and serious suspension magic were the key components of the Grand Sports. While all five were built as coupes, the tops were cut off two of them to lower the center of gravity and to further reduce weight, a principle proven by Dick Guldstrand in his efforts campaigning a Sting Ray roadster. The drivers of these cars-Roger Penske, A.J. Foyt, Jim Hall, Dr. Dick Thompson, and Guldstrand-became household names, but without the cubic dollars of factory support, they failed to capture the glory envisioned by Arkus-Duntov.

In the years that followed, Guldstrand continued his tight relationship with Chevrolet by racing Corvettes and contributing greatly to the suspension engineering of the production cars. All the while, his company on the famous Thunder Alley in Culver City, California, was using lessons learned on the track to benefit street Corvettes. In the late '80s, Guldstrand produced a tuner car of his own, the Traco-powered 5.7-liter Corvette GS80.

With the introduction of the Corvette ZR-1, Guldstrand was set on building a Grand Sport of the '90s: a '60s-flavored, high-performance car with a modern level of safety, comfort, and power. With the design talents of Steve Winter, a special body was molded from composite carbon fiber to give the GS90 an attractive, distinct appearance, which hides serious engine and suspension modifications.

At the International Nassau Speedweeks in 1963, the Grand Sport defeated Shelby's Cobra. Now, more than 30 years later, this memorable venue has served as inspiration for a new series of roadsters, the Nassau, being hand built at Guldstrand Automobiles (GSA). Based on LT1- or LT4-powered '90-to-present Corvette convertibles, the Nassau offers the same swoopy design as the GS90 in a more budget-friendly package. Naturally, changes were necessary to adapt the GS90 profile to the standard-body Corvette, but the same beautiful lines remain intact.