One of Two Greenwood IMSA SuperVettes Pops Up For Sale

In the days before Pratt & Miller, the Greenwood brothers showed the world what a Corvette could do on a race track.

When it comes to off-the-wall C3 Corvettes, widebody Greenwood cars are at the top of the list. Back in the 1970s, the Greenwood brothers extensively modified Corvettes and took them racing at events around the world.

The Greenwoods proved that Corvettes could hang with exotic machinery on the track. Off the track, replicas of their extreme widebody kits found their way onto the wildest custom C3s on the street.

This car, offered for sale by Canepa, is easily the wildest Greenwood creation of all. Dubbed the SuperVette, this radical big block, tube frame Corvette was built to compete in the 1978 IMSA season.

The SuperVette also stands as one of the most incredible Corvette race cars of all time. Every detail was designed to make this brutal monster a deadly competitor to the likes of Porsche, BMW, and Ferrari.

The SuperVette’s aerodynamics were certainly helped by the new-for-1978 bubble rear window. However, similarities to the production Corvette shape more or less end there.

Over the Top

IMSA competitors in this era adhered to FIA Group 5 rules, which allowed for extreme body modifications like the ones seen here. The cars in this class are traditionally known as “silhouette” race cars, as they bear only a passing resemblance to their production counterparts.

Every detail is extreme, from the snow shovel front spoiler to the massive rear wing. The enormous side air scoops on the doors are perhaps the biggest we’ve ever seen. Under the hood, the SuperVette is equally over-the-top.

The SuperVette is powered by an all-aluminum big-block built by Don Nichols of Shadow Racing. Shadow is, of course, best known for their Can-Am efforts earlier in the decade. Fed by Kinsler mechanical fuel injection, the engine was capable of over 750 horsepower and 800 lb/ft of torque.

This SuperVette was campaigned for just one season by John Paul Sr., with its best finish — second place at Hallett — coming early in the season. By the end of the season, this SuperVette had racked up two podiums and three top-fives. The SuperVette pushed the limits of what was previously thought possible in a Corvette race car, and its legacy lives on today in racing machines like the C8.R.

Photos: Canepa

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