Family Treasure: The 1964 Corvettes of Minnesota Slippery Slalom Trophy
My grandfather was a big rally- and ice-racing fanatic during the 1950s and 1960s, running everything from a Renault Dauphine to a Corvair in every Minnesota race he could find. Eventually, he picked up a Corvette, which he loved almost as much as his Saab 93, and the trophies started to pile up. On my trip to the Midwest last month, I managed to talk him into letting me have this one for my office.
He’s also given me some old Super 8 film from his racing days, as well as a genuine Curta “Peppermill” Calculator.
Unfortunately, the only photo of his Corvette that I could find was this scan of an entire photo album page, showing some of his race and street vehicles from the 1960s and 1970s. That’s it in the lower left corner.
A Corvettes of Minnesota/3M Sports Car Club gymkhana from January, 1964. It was probably 20 below during this event, and I’m sure you could hear the cars rusting, but Minnesotans are crazy tough.
I’m not sure what this award was actually for, because a critical plaque fell off during storage, but that doesn’t matter. I’m putting it right next to my Fastest Swedish Car award from the 2008 24 Hours of LeMons San Francisco!
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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....the trick car for those early parking lot autocrosses was the Spifire....shortest turning circle ever.....I wandered into a Porsche Club event one Sunday and won 1st place in my girlfriend's '69.......were they pissed!! Made up probably 8 seconds in the section where you take a four pylon square in all 4 directions.