Corvette Grand Sport: Every Gen, Every Year, Every Edition

The Overview

The Grand Sport began as a plan to beat Carroll Shelby. In 1962 Zora Arkus-Duntov set out to build 125 lightweight Sting Rays to homologate against the Cobra, with a tube frame, paper-thin fiberglass and a 377-cubic-inch all-aluminum small-block on Weber carburetors; General Motors, honoring the AMA ban on racing, stopped him at five cars in January 1963. The five went to privateers with the factory’s quiet help, embarrassed the Cobras at Nassau in December 1963 with Roger Penske, Jim Hall, Augie Pabst and Dick Thompson driving, won their class at Sebring in 1964, and have become the most valuable Corvettes ever built, Grand Sport 003 selling for $18.7 million in 2026. Their livery, blue with a white center stripe and red hash marks on the left front fender, is the one every production Grand Sport has worn.

Chevrolet revived the name in 1996 for 1,000 Admiral Blue C4s with the 330-horsepower LT4 and the ZR-1’s wheels, and then settled it into a formula: the fast Corvette’s body and chassis with the standard engine, for about $20,000 less than the Z06. The 2010–13 C6 Grand Sport put the 430-horsepower LS3 into the Z06’s wide body and became the best-selling Corvette outright, 28,004 cars and more than half of all production in 2011 and 2012; the 2017–19 C7 Grand Sport sat on the Z06’s own aluminum frame with the 460-horsepower LT1 and could be had with Z07, 26,280 cars; and the 2027 is the first mid-engine Grand Sport, the Z06’s body and chassis around Chevrolet’s new 535-horsepower 6.7-liter LS6, with the hybrid, all-wheel-drive Grand Sport X of 721 horsepower taking the E-Ray’s place above it.

This page collects everything the site knows about the Grand Sport: the history from the 1963 racers to the Grand Sport X, a spec table for the five generations, every Grand Sport, edition, show car and pace car with its picture and guide, a year-by-year table for each generation with production, prices and what changed, where it sits between the Stingray and the Z06, what the cars have sold for, the racing, then the guides, the videos and the news. The Z06 and ZR1 have their own pages; the Grand Sport is the car that borrows from both.

The History of the Corvette Grand Sport

Six chapters: the 1963 racers, the 1996 revival, the C6 best-seller, the C7 on the Z06’s chassis, the mid-engine Grand Sport and Grand Sport X, and the hash marks that tie them together.

The 1963 Grand Sport: Duntov Against the Cobra

The Sting Ray of 1963 was the best Corvette yet and Carroll Shelby’s Cobra, a Ford V-8 in a 2,000-pound English roadster, was beating it everywhere. Zora Arkus-Duntov’s answer was the Grand Sport: a Sting Ray in silhouette only, with a ladder-type tube frame, a body of fiberglass so thin it flexed, aluminum everywhere, a 36-gallon tank and a 377-cubic-inch all-aluminum small-block with hemispherical heads and four Weber carburetors that made about 550 horsepower, around a thousand pounds lighter than the production car. He meant to build 125 to homologate it as a GT and take on the Cobras and Ferraris at Sebring and Le Mans. GM’s management, enforcing the 1957 AMA ban that the Cobra program had made Chevrolet ignore for a year, killed it in January 1963 after five cars had been built, and ordered them destroyed. Duntov hid them instead.

The five went out to privateers with the factory’s quiet help: Grady Davis’s Gulf Oil team with Dick Thompson at Watkins Glen and Bridgehampton in 1963, and then John Mecom’s team at Nassau Speed Week that December, where Penske, Pabst, Hall and Thompson in three Grand Sports with new 377s and wider tires ran away from the Cobras in the Governor’s Trophy and the Nassau Trophy, the one weekend the cars were as fast as Duntov had meant them to be. GM shut the back door after that. Cars 001 and 002 were cut down into roadsters for Daytona 1964 and Sebring, where one won its class with Penske and Jim Hall; the coupes raced on through 1966 with Penske, Hall, Delmo Johnson, Jim Hall and others before they became collector cars. All five survive, the roadsters restored, and they are the most valuable Corvettes in the world: Grand Sport 003 brought $18.7 million at auction in August 2026.

1996: The First Production Grand Sport

Thirty-three years later John Heinricy, Corvette’s assistant chief engineer and a racer himself, gave the C4 its send-off by reviving the name: RPO Z16, $3,250 on the coupe and $2,880 on the convertible, with the 330-horsepower LT4 (the 1996-only hot small-block, $1,450) and the six-speed required. The car was Admiral Blue Metallic with an Arctic White center stripe and two red hash marks on the left front fender, the livery of the Mecom Grand Sports, on black five-spoke ZR-1-size wheels, 17 x 9.5 and 17 x 11 under molded rear flares on the coupe, with black calipers, embroidered headrests, black or red-and-black leather and a VIN series of its own from 600001. Exactly 1,000 were built, 810 coupes and 190 convertibles, 730 black and 270 red-and-black; Car and Driver ran one to 60 in 5.1 seconds and to 168 mph. Documented cars sell for $33,000 to $50,000 today, and the recipe, the fast car’s hardware with the base engine and the stripes, was set.

2010–2013: The C6 Grand Sport, the Best-Selling Corvette

Shown at the National Corvette Museum’s Birthday Bash in April 2009 and on sale that fall in place of the Z51 package, the C6 Grand Sport put the 430-horsepower LS3 (436 with the NPP exhaust) into the Z06’s wide body with its badged fenders, splitter, tall spoiler, brake ducts, 18 x 9.5 and 19 x 12-inch wheels and 14.0 and 13.4-inch six- and four-piston brakes, on the standard steel frame, as a lift-off-roof coupe at $55,720 or, for the first time, a convertible at $59,530. Manual coupes got a dry-sump engine, a differential cooler and a rear-mounted battery (Z52), Chevrolet claimed 1.0 g and 4.0 seconds to 60, and the Heritage Package put the hash marks back in silver, red, gray or white. It was the Corvette people wanted: 6,042 in 2010, 7,994 in 2011 (58.8 percent of production), 7,324 in 2012 (63 percent) and 6,644 in 2013, 28,004 in four years, with Magnetic Ride optional from 2011, the Centennial Edition in 2012 (1,568 Grand Sports), 26 Callaway 25th Anniversary conversions, the Carlisle Blue show car and the 60th Anniversary package in 2013, when the 427 Convertible borrowed its body for the Z06’s engine.

2017–2019: The C7 Grand Sport on the Z06’s Chassis

Revealed at Geneva on March 1, 2016 and on sale that summer at $66,445, the C7 Grand Sport was the first built on the Z06’s own chassis: the wide aluminum-framed body, 19 x 10 and 20 x 12-inch Grand Sport Cup wheels on Michelin Pilot Super Sports, Brembo six-piston brakes, Magnetic Ride with its own FE6 calibration, an electronic limited-slip differential, a dry sump and differential and transmission coolers, with the 460-horsepower LT1 and performance exhaust in place of the supercharged LT4, 3,428 pounds. For the first time a Grand Sport could have Z07 (carbon-ceramic brakes, Cup 2 tires, the carbon aero) for 1.2 g, 3.6 seconds to 60 and a Milford lap within a second of the C6 ZR1. The Heritage Package hash marks went on 3,863 cars in 2017 and the Collector Edition (Watkins Glen Gray, Tension Blue, the 1963 racer embossed in the headrests) made 935 more; 11,958 Grand Sports were built that year, 3,081 in the short 2018 (with the Carbon 65 Edition on 297 of them) and 11,241 in 2019, when the Drivers Series honored Corvette Racing’s four drivers with 95 cars: 26,280 in all. Grand Sports paced the Indianapolis 500 in 2017 with Jeffrey Dean Morgan and in 2019 with Dale Earnhardt Jr., the last front-engine Corvette to do so.

2027: The Mid-Engine Grand Sport and the LS6

Chevrolet showed the fifth Grand Sport uncamouflaged at the 12 Hours of Sebring on March 21, 2026 and revealed it five days later: the Z06’s wide body, 20 x 10 and 21 x 13-inch wheels and chassis around a new engine, the 6.7-liter LS6, a naturally aspirated pushrod V-8 built in Flint, the first of GM’s sixth-generation small-blocks, with 535 horsepower and 520 lb-ft at 13.0:1 compression, through the eight-speed dual-clutch and a 5.56 axle; Magnetic Ride is standard with a Touring calibration, the brakes are Brembo six- and four-piston, and the hash marks moved to the rear haunches, behind the engine, for the first time. “Grand Sport has always been the Corvette for drivers who want the spirit of a race car in a package they can enjoy every day,” said Chevrolet’s Scott Bell at Sebring. The $3,500 Z52 Sport package adds a stiffer tune, summer tires and the Z06’s iron brakes; the Z52 Track package adds carbon-ceramic brakes, Cup 2 R tires, the Z06-style carbon aero and a quad center-exit exhaust, the first on a pushrod C8. Admiral Blue was revived for it, and with the white stripe and red hashes the 1996 car comes back; it weighs 3,520 pounds and costs $88,495 as a 1LT coupe, $15,000 over the Stingray. Orders opened April 16, 2026, production June 8, and the Grand Sport was 35 percent of the first three weeks of 2027 production.

The Grand Sport X: 721 Horsepower, Four Driven Wheels

The Grand Sport X is what became of the E-Ray. The X, as on the ZR1X, means eAWD: the Grand Sport’s LS6 driving the rear wheels and the ZR1X’s front electric drive unit on the 1.9-kWh battery driving the fronts, 186 horsepower and 145 lb-ft, for 721 horsepower combined, 66 more than the E-Ray with the big engine’s torque beneath it. Carbon-ceramic brakes and a head-up display are standard, the drive modes are the E-Ray’s plus Endurance, Qualifying and Push-to-Pass for the track, Stealth mode runs on the motor alone to 50 mph and a new Shuttle mode to 23, and the $500 Performance Package brings summer tires and a retuned Magnetic Ride. It weighs 3,800 pounds, 280 over the Grand Sport, costs $112,195 as a 1LT coupe, $1,100 over the 2026 E-Ray, and went into production in August 2026, after the other five 2027 models.

The Hash Marks

Every production Grand Sport has carried the marks of the 1963 racers: two diagonal stripes on the left front fender, red on the 1996 car and in six colors on the Heritage Packages of the C6 and C7, and on the 2027 moved to the rear haunch because the engine is there now. They began as a Mecom team marking at Nassau, and they are the quickest way to tell a Grand Sport from the Z06 whose body it wears; the Collector Edition’s Tension Blue marks, the Drivers Series’ red ones and the Carbon 65’s carbon ones are the editions’ signatures.

MORE: THE 1963 GRAND SPORT / THE 2027 GRAND SPORT GUIDE / THE CORVETTE Z06 GUIDE