Vehicle Description
1996 GRAND SPORT: Are you looking for a corvette you can take to a meet and place 1st? This is it! MY last meet I placed 1st in C4 stock with 99.5 points (I left my sunglasses on the seat). Next meet I again took 1st 99.75 points. Mileage is in the low 18,000s, never been driven in the rain or snow. Heated garage in Chicago area and now a CA car. I talked to a corvette member who purchased a 1996 Grand Sport at the Reno auction and paid $25,000 for it,it had 89,000 miles and he had to put over $11,000 in repairs.
. CNN Money lists the Grand Sport as the 10th MOST COLLECTIBLE CORVETTE. Hagerty values a #2 Excellent condition at $48,200, up from $43,400 - the value in 2014. Detailing the under body would make this corvette #1 Contours at $78,800 which I plan on doing this August 2017 for the Monetary (AUGUEST 2015 a coup sold for $65,000). Purchase it now or wait until August 2017 to bid.
A fellow club member purchase a 1996 Grand Sport at the Reno auction August 2015 for $ 25,000, a coup with 89,000+ miles and had to spend over $11,000 in repairs already. And it's no were in the condition of this Corvette!
It's common knowledge that the first and last version of just about any noteworthy vehicle is collectible, but when the C4 Corvette was finished in 1996, General Motors sent it out with a bang. Perhaps the most collectible of all are the 1996 Grand Sport convertibles, of which only 190 were built. For sure future value, it's hard to beat performance, looks, and rarity all wrapped up in a single fiberglass package.
This one—number 678—is beautifully preserved, with original paint throughout. Clearly owned by a true Corvette fan, every inch has been lovingly buffed, polished, and waxed on a regular basis, and the mileage it has accrued over the past 19 years scarcely adds up to more than 900+ miles each summer. Perhaps the car's most memorable feature, however, are the two bright red "hash marks" on the driver's side front fender to pay tribute to the original 1963 Grand Sports where the teams placed one, two, or three stripes or tape strips on the fender instead of numbers to identify the cars.
The Grand Sport is much more than just a fancy paint job, and nowhere is that more apparent than under the hood, where the powerful LT4 small block was standard equipment. The final evolution of the original small block Chevy V8, it makes a respectable 330 horsepower and 340 pounds of torque, which were impressive numbers in 1996. It's also dressed in unique clothes, like the body, from the throttle body with special Grand Sport logos, to unique red spark plug wires with individually numbered cylinders, to the red intake manifold and Corvette logos on the plug covers. This one is exceptionally well preserved, with few signs of having been driven and clear evidence of expert care.
The only transmission available with the LT4 was the rugged and slick-shifting ZF 6-speed manual, which is an ideal traveling companion thanks to two overdrive gears that allow the LT4 to loaf along at astoundingly high speeds and still pull down great gas mileage. 3.45 gears in the pumpkin feeding the fully independent rear end feature a limited slip that does its best to apportion the power. The fully independent suspension uses composite leaf springs fore and back. Brakes were always a Corvette strong point, and the massive discs at all four corners of the Grand Sport haul it down from speed effortlessly and repeatedly and feature gloss black calipers with Corvette lettering visible through the wheel spokes. Finally, those gorgeous black 17-inch A-mold wheels wear Goodyear Eagle F1s, the only components beside the battery that aren't original to the car.
If you're going to build an extroverted car like this, you may as well go all out when you take it home. Of the 190 Grand Sport Convertibles built, only 137 came with the black leather interior. Wonderfully preserved and showing no signs of sun damage or anything beyond age-appropriate wear, the interior is fully functional. The Grand Sport embroidery on the seat headrests is still crisp and clear. The final piece of the Grand Sport equation is a bright white convertible top that stows quickly and easily beneath the hard deck, leaving no trace behind.
The Grand Sport is as close as I can possibly imagine to a sure thing in the collector car world today. In addition to their unique equipment and paint job, they also received sequential serial numbers, a policy which had been outlawed by GM following the ZR-1. Yet power train engineer John Heinricy, the godfather of the Grand Sport, managed to force it through the system and create these unique cars. The rule of thumb in car collecting is that if it's special when it's new, it will be special in the future, and the Grand Sport certainly qualifies. This convertible is not only very rare, but exceptionally well preserved. Pick this one up today, because in five years, this price is going to seem like a bargain.
