Rare Corvettes · Three built

The Corvette SR-2

In 1956 the boss's son wanted to go racing, so the boss built him a Corvette. Then the boss's deputy wanted one too. A third followed as a show car — and that was the entire run. Three SR-2 Corvettes, no two alike, and every one of them still exists.

A 1956 Chevrolet Corvette SR-2 racer
A 1956 Corvette SR-2 — note the headrest fairing and tall tail fin that set the racers apart from a production Corvette. Photo: Charles, Port Chester NY (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0)

Warren, Michigan — May 1956

Jerry Earl, son of GM styling czar Harley Earl, had caught the racing bug and wanted a Ferrari. His father had a better idea: if the boy was going to go racing, he'd do it in a Chevrolet. Three stock Corvettes were pulled from the St. Louis line and shipped to Earl's Styling Studio, where, under Work Shop Order 90090 dated May 29, 1956, they were rebuilt into something the catalog never offered — the SR-2, a badge usually read as “Sebring Racer.” Each got a longer nose, a headrest fairing flowing into a tall tail fin, a functional hood scoop, and serious brakes.

The three cars

  • Jerry Earl's racer — debuted at the June Sprints at Road America weeks after it was finished; Jerry spun it in practice without damage. Sold after 1957 to Jim Jeffords.
  • Bill Mitchell's racer — the hot one, sent to Smokey Yunick for drivetrain and body work; arguably the most potent SR-2 of the three.
  • The show car — wire wheels, a smaller fin, a stainless-steel removable hardtop, and mostly production hardware; built to be seen, not raced.

The purple chapter

Jerry Earl's SR-2 found its real career after he let it go. Jim Jeffords — the racer behind the legendary purple “Purple People Eater” Corvettes — took the car over and campaigned it in his signature color to serious SCCA B-Production success in 1958. The car's history is so entwined with Jeffords' purple machines that the SR-2 and the “Purple People Eater” are often spoken of in the same breath; what's certain is that in Jeffords' hands, painted purple, the little Earl SR-2 became an SCCA force.

Bill Mitchell's car took the opposite path — straight to the sharp end. Sent to Daytona mechanic Henry “Smokey” Yunick, the same tuner who would prep Betty Skelton's record-setting Corvette that winter, it emerged the fastest and most developed of the three. Mitchell, who never met a rule he couldn't route around, campaigned it at Sebring and the Bahamas Speed Weeks.

All three, still here

What makes the SR-2 story unusual among ultra-rare cars is that nothing was lost. All three survive, all three have been restored, and the values have climbed to match the rarity — the original Jerry Earl car was offered in a private sale in 2014 with an asking price around $6.8 million. Not bad for a car a father built so his son wouldn't buy a Ferrari.

The SR-2 belongs to a small club of one-off and few-off Corvettes that trace back to the same handful of people. Earl and Mitchell also conjured Betty Skelton's one-of-one gold Corvette, and Smokey Yunick's fingerprints turn up again on the rear-engine XP-819. See the rest in the rare Corvettes collection.