1969 BFG Stars & Stripes ZL1/L88 Racer Finds New Home!

by Keith Cornett
Corvette Blogger

Remember John Greenwood’s 1969 BF Goodrich Stars and Stripes ZL1/L88 racer that sold at RM’s Monterey auction for $638,000? Purchased by Terry Michaelis of Proteam Corvette, the ?69 BFG Corvette recently made its way home to the company’s Napoleon, Ohio facility. The former Le Mans race car will be the centerpiece of Proteam’s L88 collection which now numbers seven special production L88′s of the 216 produced between 1967-1969.

The BF Goodrich L88/ZL1 Greenwood race car may just be the most significant and storied of all the L88s that came from General Motors in those three years and its accomplishments in both racing and show awards are indisputable.

The #49 Stars and Stripes Corvette participated at 24 Hours of Le Mans setting a GT speed record of 215 mph on the Mulsanne straight during qualifying and ran the Daytona 24 Hour and 12 Hours of Sebring.

Show awards for the Greenwood racer include Best in Class at the Quail Motorsport ’08 event, center display for the Corvette Racing Legends event at the Petersen Museum in ’08, the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance, part of the Bloomington Gold Special Collection Grand Finale in ’09, NCRS American Heritage Award in ’09, center display at the National Corvette Museum for the Corvette Hall of Fame in ’09, and most recently invited to celebrate Corvette’s first Lemans win at the Laguna ALMS race in ’10.

Like any new Corvette owner would do, Terry took some pictures with the #49 BFG Stars and Stripes Corvette as soon as he got it home and even uploaded this video to Youtube so you can hear how good open headers sound from the ZL1 V8.

Of the 216 L88 Corvettes produced during the three-year time frame, seven can be found in Proteam’s special L88 Collection. The Stars and Stripes racer will be joining other former L88 racers like the 1 of 1 1969 L88 COPO Corvette and Tony De Lorenzo’s 1967 L88 Convertible, the first L88 ever produced.

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