Chassis 003 of the 1963 Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport crossed the block at RM Sotheby’s Monterey sale on Aug. 15, 2026, and sold for $18,705,000, buyer’s premium included. RM Sotheby’s has billed the result as the world’s most valuable Corvette.
The car is one of just five Grand Sports ever built and one of only three coupes. It raced at Nassau in 1963 and at Sebring in 1964 and 1965, with A.J. Foyt among its drivers, and the auction house describes its consignor as only the third long-term owner in half a century.
RM Sotheby’s lot page for chassis 30837X100003 lists the car as sold for $18,705,000 as Lot 341 of The Monterey Auction 2026. The catalog describes it as “one of only five Corvette Grand Sports ever constructed and one of just three coupes.” The auction house’s results release for the weekend is titled in part “the World’s Most Valuable Corvette,” and that ranking is RM Sotheby’s claim.
Zora Arkus-Duntov’s lightweight Corvette
The Grand Sport was Zora Arkus-Duntov’s answer to a problem. According to RM Sotheby’s catalog, Chevrolet’s Corvette engineer set out, “with the quiet encouragement of Chevrolet General Manager S.E. ‘Bunkie’ Knudsen,” to build “an uncompromising lightweight Corvette built expressly for international competition.” The catalog frames the car as Duntov’s bid to beat Carroll Shelby’s Cobra.
Weight was the whole idea. The catalog puts a standard 1963 Corvette at “approximately 3,200 pounds” and the Grand Sport at “roughly 1,900 pounds.” That is roughly 1,300 pounds removed.
The program did not survive corporate scrutiny. General Motors had withdrawn from organized racing years earlier, and per the catalog, GM Chairman Frederic Donner “swiftly ordered the Lightweight program terminated” once word of the project got out. “Only five chassis were ultimately constructed,” RM Sotheby’s states. Chassis 003 and its sister 004 “became the first completed coupes and were quietly loaned to trusted racers.”
Chassis 003 at Nassau and Sebring
The car earned its value on track. At the 1963 Bahamas Speed Week, in the 252-mile Nassau Trophy, “John Cannon drove chassis 003 to 2nd in class and 8th overall, while Dick Thompson captured the class victory in chassis 005,” according to the lot description.
At the 1964 Sebring 12 Hours, chassis 003 was “driven by John Cannon and the rising young superstar A.J. Foyt” and finished second in class. It returned to Sebring in 1965, shared by Delmo Johnson, Ed Sevadjian and Dave Morgan, and took third in class, RM Sotheby’s reports.
Later owners kept it intact. The catalog says Robert Paterson of Woodside, California, acquired it in 1975 and held it 14 years before selling to Tom Armstrong in 1989. The consignor bought it in 2003.
A restoration measured in years
The car that crossed the block is not the car as it last raced. RM Sotheby’s says the restoration was “entrusted to Terry Scarborough Racing (TSR) of Sonoma, California,” and spanned “more than four years, consuming well in excess of 4,000 labor hours.” It now runs “a newly constructed all-aluminum 377-cubic-inch V-8,” with output the auction house estimates at “more than 600 horsepower and over 600 pound-feet of torque.” The original engine, rebuilt, went with the sale.
How far the Corvette record moved
The previous Corvette high mark was set by another Duntov race car. RM Sotheby’s Miami 2025 lot page shows the 1957 Corvette SS Project XP-64 sold for $7,705,000. The Grand Sport more than doubled that figure.
Motor1 reported that chassis 003 “crossed the RM Sotheby’s block on August 15, opened around $5 million, then climbed in roughly $500,000 steps before hammering at $17 million.” The publication called it “the highest public-auction price ever for a Corvette.”
The Grand Sport sold on the final day of RM Sotheby’s Monterey auction, held Aug. 13–15, 2026 at the Portola Hotel and Monterey Conference Center. For now, chassis 003’s $18,705,000 is the number every Corvette at auction will be measured against.
Top image: A second-generation (C2) Chevrolet Corvette of the Grand Sport’s era. This is not Grand Sport chassis 003. Image Credit: Lothar Spurzem — CC BY-SA 2.0 DE / Wikimedia Commons
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Combat Rated editors prior to publication.