Corvette Magazine

Our job was to resuscitate Corvette’s high-performance reputation. And to do it without alarm bells going off in the top echelons of GM. I never understood it completely. But I think Dave simply placed a higher priority on Corvette’s performance capabilities than some of his bosses.
     Basically, I was a supplier. I got paid to produce test results. I raised my own funds to buy cars and put them to work as rolling test beds. To drive I hired some of the best road racers in America. And for a Georgia cracker, I wasn’t too bad myself.
     The idea was to stress parts to the breaking point, replace them with stronger parts and try to break them. We were successful beyond expectation. The production Corvettes of the late ‘80s and ‘90s are much the better because we thrashed them unmercifully. It’s really true that you can put more wear and tear on a Corvette in a non-stop 24-hour test at racing speeds than you can in 100,000 miles of proving grounds driving.
     But McLellan couldn’t pay us to race. That’s where Goodyear and EDS and especially Mobil came in. They and a bunch of other wonderful companies paid the racing bills.
     The Mobil 1 team got to be pretty good at the long-distance races. Actually, we were good from the get-go. We won the first 24-hour race we entered - Mid-Ohio 1984 - and I think we won 10 more over the next 10 years.
     But the thing I’m proudest about is the Fort Stockton world record run. Given our budget and the concern within GM that this would be an