1968 Chevrolet Corvette

To Be OFFERED AT AUCTION at RM Sothebys The Monterey Auction event, 13 - 15 August 2026.
$750,000 - $1,100,000 USD

• Built by Toye Englishs RED team as the successor to their legendary Rebel Corvette
• Raced by Dave Heinz and Bob Johnson in the 1972 24 Hours of Le Mans on the invitation of Luigi Chinettis North American Racing Team (NART), finishing 15th overall and 1st in Group 4: GT Special over 5000 cc class
• Just the fourth Chevrolet Corvette to finish the 24 Hours of Le Mans
• Finished 3rd overall at the 1973 24 Hours of Daytona, the highest finish for a Corvette in international endurance competition at the time and the best finish for Corvette at Daytona until 2001
• Comprehensively restored to its 1972 Le Mans NART livery by Corvette expert Kevin Mackay of Corvette Repair in Valley Stream, New York
• Includes a bevy of fascinating documentation and history including original correspondence and testimony from RED team members
• Bloomington Gold Special Collection XIV (1998) participant and inducted into the Bloomington Gold Corvette Hall of Fame in 2001
• Shown three times at The Amelia Island Concours dElegance; awarded the Grand Sport trophy in 2018 by current GM President Mark Reuss
• Part of the Rolex Monterey Motorsport Reunion celebrating 70 years of the Corvette
• Displayed in the National Corvette Museum since March 2025

Among the worlds legendary races, one stands out as the most grueling of them all: the 24 Hours of Le Mans. For 24 hours, the race pushes the worlds best drivers and machines to their limits, blurring day into night and night into day, forging motorsports most hallowed legacies along the way. It is the worlds oldest endurance race and remains the most unforgiving. For decades, it showed little mercy to American entrants.

The Chevrolet Corvette debuted at Le Mans in 1960 with three entries by the legendary Briggs Cunningham and one by Camoradi. Just two of the cars finished the race, with one of Cunninghams cars placing 8th overall. Corvettes would return to Circuit de la Sarthe as privateer entries in 1962, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, and 1971; each entry frustratingly ended in DNFs with the exception of the 1970 Ecurie Greder Racing Corvette, which completed the race but did not receive official classification due to insufficient distance covered. Fords GT40s famously humbled Ferrari, but beyond those brief years, American machinery and particularly Corvettes had found the French countryside an unwelcome place.

PUT SOME ENGLISH ON IT

By the early 1970s, Florida-based Dana English had earned a reputation as one of the premier racing mechanics in the American South, a hotbed of grassroots and professional racing. When racer Orlando Or Costanzo, for whom Dana English was working at the time, decided to step away from competition, he and his father Tampa, Florida, Chevrolet dealer Toye English acquired Costanzos fearsome factory-built, lightweight, L88-powered 1969 Chevrolet Corvette. This marked the founding of Race Engineering & Development (RED).

Joined by drivers Dave Heinz and Robert Marietta Bob Johnson, and with input from engineers like Don Yenko, they campaigned the 1969 Corvette under their RED banner typically racing as #57 a tongue-in-cheek nod to the ketchup brand sharing Dave Heinzs surname. Wrapped in a bold Stars & Bars livery, the design was a pointed jab at rival, and well-known Corvette tuner and racer, John Greenwoods nationally known Stars & Stripes Corvettes of the period. The unique RED livery was a move to generate both controversy and attention. The visual provocation stuck, earning the 1969 Chevrolet Corvette its enduring nickname: The Rebel Corvette.

Working nights and weekends while holding day jobs, the Florida-based team quickly made its mark on American GT racing, capturing the 1971 IMSA Championship in the over-2.5-liter class and scoring top-10 finishes at numerous high-profile events including back-to-back class wins at Daytona and Sebring all with a two-year-old, non-sponsored Corvette. While that kind of success would satisfy most, the fiercely competitive Dave Heinz had his sights set on fulfilling a dream on motorings biggest stage: the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

THE LITTLE TEAM THAT COULD AND THE BIRTH OF THE RED/NART LE MANS CORVETTE

Success on the track soon brought attention off it, with sponsorship offers from big names such as Trans World Airlines (TWA), Mot, and the Goodyear Tire Company. Leveraging their growing notoriety and powerful new friends, including Zora Arkus-Duntov himself, the RED team eventually got their application in front of the officials at Le Mans who promptly rejected them. The usual bureaucracy was at play: their 1969 Rebel Corvette was too powerful, its livery too bold, its drivers unknown.

Unwilling to be denied, the team contacted Goodyears Director of Racing, Larry Truesdale, who in turn contacted Luigi Chinetti, the legendary Ferrari importer for North America and then owner of the famed Ferrari-backed North American Racing Team (NART). Chinetti, himself a three-time champion of Le Mans as a driver, had also won in 1965 as the NART team owner. Chinetti was also sponsored by Goodyear and had been allotted four entries at Le Mans for 1972. With a little persuasion, Chinetti agreed to give his reserve entry to the RED team so long as their Corvette wore the same NART livery as his Ferraris.

With their entry secured, the team faced a new obstacle: FIA rules required all GT cars to be nearly street-legal, complete with roll-up windows and a passenger seat. Their 1969 Chevrolet Corvette, the #57 Rebel affectionately dubbed Scrappy for how many of its original parts had ended up in the scrap heap was far from compliant. Rather than retrofit it, the team decided it made more sense to build a new Corvette in accordance with FIA rules.

Toye English quickly sourced a wrecked 1968 Chevrolet Corvette roadster, dispensed with most of its body, frame, and original 327-cubic-inch V-8 engine, and promptly built a new Corvette: The Corvette now offered here. A new frame was acquired and seam-welded for strength before being fitted with new race-spec suspension, brakes, M22 Rock Crusher transmission, rear end, and axle components all reportedly sent directly from Chevrolet with Zora Arkus-Duntovs blessing.

The Corvettes small block was replaced by a blueprinted Chevrolet L88 engine. This near-mythical 427-cubic-inch big-block V-8, with its 12.5:1 compression ratio, massive Holley carburetor, forged internals, radical cams, and special aluminum heads and headers, was effectively a racing engine for the street, designed to run on 103-octane gasoline. According to team member Walt Thurn, the L88 engine was actually detuned for this motorsport application with a milder cam, lower-compression pistons, and a reduced 5,800-rpm redline, emphasizing the teams strategy of durability over power.

The finished 1968 Corvette donned the #4 and was dressed in Chinettis distinctive NART livery, complete with the teams Cavallino Rampante shield gracing both doors. The build was completed in just eight weeks and promptly loaded onto the plane for France. Its first race would be the 24 Hours of Le Mans, a true trial by fire.

THE 24 HOURS OF LE MANS AND THE #4 RED/NART CORVETTE

Just prior to FIA inspection, the team realized a spare tire was required to pass class requirements. Thinking quickly, they borrowed the spare from their Peugeot rental car an expedient addition that remains with the car today. Then, the Corvette took to the circuit for practice. Drivers Dave Heinz and Marietta Bob Johnson quickly learned the nuances of the famed Circuit de la Sarthe.

Near the end of practice, Johnson skidded on a plastic banner that had blown onto the track and crashed at 100 mph. He was unhurt, but the Corvette sustained significant front-end damage. Ever resourceful, the team stripped off the damaged fiberglass, pop-riveted aluminum sheet metal in its place, disassembled a shipping crate for wooden support struts, and covered the whole assembly with duct tape. When incredulous race officials questioned the improvised front ends ability to sustain the stresses of an endurance race, one team member responded by jumping up and down on the new nose, proving its durability.

Despite the accident the team remained in the race and cautiously partook in qualifying the next day. The accident, however, led TWA to withdraw its sponsorship. The team luckily secured BP sponsorship just prior to the race and simply applied BP decals over the TWA globes that had already been put on the car.

The #4 NART Corvette would start the race in 51st position, 5th from last, ahead of a Porsche 911 S, a fellow C3 Chevrolet Corvette, Ligier JS2 Maserati, and NARTs Ferrari Dino 246 GT. Despite the start at the back of the field, in just the first hour of the race the team impressively climbed into 28th position. As the race progressed, the team encountered challenges with refueling; the crash in practice had kinked the overflow fuel line, which forced the team to refuel twice as often as planned. Nonetheless, they kept at it.

Rain during the race brought on treacherous conditions on the famed Circuit de La Sarthe, specifically the high-speed Mulsanne Straight. In Terry ONeills N.A.R.T. A Concise History of the North American Racing Team 1957 to 1983, Heinz recalled his own harrowing exper