VetteFacts · Rare Corvettes

Rare & One-Off Corvettes

Some Corvettes were built by the thousand. These were built by the handful — prototypes, race cars, and show one-offs, most of them made in single digits, several just once. The rarest cars carry the best stories, and a surprising number trace back to the same few names: Smokey Yunick's speed shop, Larry Shinoda's pen, Kevin Mackay's restoration bay.

The one-offs and the almost-none-made

• Show car · 1954 The Corvette Nomad Harley Earl's Motorama sports-car wagon. The crowd loved it so much its name and roofline went into production — on a different Chevrolet.
• Three built · 1956 The SR-2 Harley Earl built one for his son, one for Bill Mitchell, and one to show off. One of them became a purple SCCA legend. All three survive; one has been valued near $7 million.
• One of one · 1963 The Pininfarina Rondine Italy's greatest design house bodied a Sting Ray chassis in steel for the Paris show — then kept it in its own museum for 45 years.
• One of one · 1964 XP-819, the rear-engine Corvette The Corvette that put the engine in the wrong end, crashed into a wall, was ordered destroyed, and came back from the dead.
• 53 and 12 built · 1970–72 The ZR1 & ZR2 race packages Zora's last order-sheet race cars: the LT1 ZR1 (53 built) and the LS6 454 ZR2 — just twelve of those were ever made.
• One of one · 1968 Astro II (XP-880) GM's first working mid-engine Corvette prototype — built by Frank Winchell around a cast-off Pontiac transaxle, half a century before the C8.
• One of one · 1969 The Manta Ray (XP-830) Not a new car but the reborn Mako Shark II — longer tail, buttressed rear window, an aluminum ZL-1 427, and the last of Bill Mitchell's sea-creature Corvettes.
• Three built · 1986 The Corvette Indy A carbon-tub, mid-engine rolling laboratory — Lotus active suspension, four-wheel steering, and the LT5 that became the ZR-1's engine.
• One of one · 1990 CERV III The Corvette Indy made real: a twin-turbo LT5 making 650 hp, scissor doors, active suspension, and a 225-mph top speed — the last of the CERV line.
• One of one · 1990 The Bertone Nivola Italy's answer before the question: Bertone took the ZR-1's LT5, moved it behind the seats, and built a mid-engine Corvette thirty years before the C8. Named for Tazio Nuvolari.
• One of one · 1973–77 The Aerovette The gullwinged four-rotor beauty that was approved for 1980 production — then killed when its champions left GM. Many call it the loveliest Corvette never sold.
• One built · 1988 The Callaway Sledgehammer A street-legal, air-conditioned, 898-hp twin-turbo C4 that ran 254.76 mph — then drove home on public roads. Fastest street Corvette for eleven years.

More rare Corvettes, told elsewhere on the site

• Five built · 1963 The Grand Sport Zora's Cobra-killers. One hundred twenty-five planned, five escaped before GM pulled the plug — and they humiliated the Cobras at Nassau anyway.
• One of one · 1957 Betty Skelton's gold Corvette A one-off translucent-gold Corvette Earl and Mitchell's studio built for the "First Lady of Firsts" to pace Daytona.
• One racer + one mule · 1957 The Corvette SS (XP-64) A magnesium-bodied moonshot that ran 23 laps at Sebring before the racing ban killed it. Fangio lapped its mule quicker than the year's pole.
• One each · 1961 & 1965 Mako Shark I & II The show cars a mounted shark's paint job launched — and the shape that became the entire C3 generation.
• One built · 1959 The Stingray Racer (XP-87) Bill Mitchell's "personal" race car, built on the SS mule's chassis to dodge GM's racing ban. It won a national championship.
• One each · 1960–1976 CERV I, CERV II & the Aerovette Zora's mid-engine crusade in metal — five beautiful research cars, every one killed above his head, every one vindicated by the C8.
• Two built · 1969 The ZL1 An all-aluminum 427 that cost more than the car around it. Two production Corvettes were ever ordered with it.

Help us grow this

More one-offs are on the way — the Astro show cars, the four-rotor, the dealer-built specials, and the rear- and mid-engine experiments. Know of a rare Corvette we should add, or own one of these? Send us the story.