Call me names, throw rocks at me, judge me, but in front of God and everybody I’ll admit that this 1976 Greenwood GT Corvette was my favorite car out of all the incredible iron at the Lingenfelter Collection in Brighton, Michigan. Why? First off it was the first time I had ever seen or heard of one and secondly, just take a look at it! There are curves and lines, and widened fenders, and Vector wheels, and a general attitude of bad-assery that I don’t think I had ever seen in a C3 Corvette before. There was certainly a time in my car loving life that I would have openly mocked this thing but now for some reason I look at it and literally cannot stop staring.

John Greenwood is a name most BangShifters probably know from his time building and racing Corvettes in the 1970s, including the famous wide body models that spawned this street going tribute. Greenwood’s cars were known as thundering monsters and reportedly at least one of them hit 230-mph on the Mulsanne straight at Le Mans with a big block making the suds. In the middle 1970s , Greenwood got the idea to build a run of street cars that captured the ethos of the race cars. We don’t think this was done for purposes of homologation but we could be wrong. Either way, between 1975 and 1977, 22 of these cars were made, so what you are seeing here is exceptionally rare. There is no existing count (that we can find) regarding what exists today.

Believe it or not, Zora Arkus Duntov actually had input on the design of the aero wide-body kit on this car. Duntov had been obsessed with racing and aerodynamics since the 1950s through the Corvette and various other GM programs, so he was a natural for Greenwood to involve in this car. With a price of $16,000 in the middle 1970s this thing was about twice what a base Corvette sold for and for the extra money, the buyer got the body kit, a quicker ratio steering box, adjustable shocks, stiffer springs, the Vector wheels, and some VOE mufflers that were a distant pre-runner to the dual mode setup used on some factory Corvettes today. The engine? Yeah that was the bone stock 350 that was making right around 200hp on a really good day. Because the government had clamped down so hard on guys like Joel Rosen at Motion Performance and others, mechanical changes were pretty much avoided, not just by Greenwood, but anyone trying to market vehicles like this. This car has had the factory wheezing 350 replaced by a Chevrolet Performance Fast Burn small block so with about 400hp, it should be a riot to drive and it’ll kill those BFGs all day long!

As we told you in our opening collection of photos from the Lingenfelter Collection, this is a group of cars that Ken likes, not the popular flavor of the week stuff that is popular right now. It was fun quizzing Ken about the car and why he bought it. He told us he was able to score it for a song because it was in horrible shape and he knew it was rare when he grabbed it but the main thing was that he thought it was cool and interesting. There is so much Corvette history in the collection that cars like this and the Greenwood Daytona (we’ll show you that one later and if you think this one is out of control….well, just wait!) get people talking and keep people interested. It isn’t all just 427/435hp four speed cars that define the Corvette legacy. Machines like the Greenwood GT made the best of a rough situation when no one really knew what the future of the Corvette would be and where it “fit” in the performance landscape.

To you, this car may be an over the top joke, but to me it is cool defined.

SCROLL DOWN FOR A CLOSER LOOK AT THE 1976 CORVETTE GREENWOOD GT AT THE LINGENFELTER COLLECTION –