Chevrolet couldn’t make much hay out of its accomplishment because the effort had been set up by rogue employees, in defiance of a corporate ban on racing. So after the race, the cars were quietly sold off to private parties. It took until the 1990s for sleuths to figure out the cars’ secret Vehicle Identification Numbers. Two were then easy to find, were restored to their former glory, and ended up with a Corvette enthusiast, Lance Miller, of Carlisle, Pa. Mr. Miller arranged for a lavish, nostalgic return to Le Mans for a 50th anniversary Lap of Honor in 2010 for the extant two cars and one of the original winning drivers, John Fitch, then 92.
The third Corvette, as it turned out, had been bought by a South Florida amateur sports car racer, who inexplicably commissioned a crude reshaping of the Corvette’s fiberglass body into something resembling a 1950-ish Zagato Gran Turismo. A 1970s-era V8, believed to be from a Pontiac, was also installed. It then found its way to a Tampa-area drag racer who painted it purple.
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But Mr. Miller and his restoration expert, Kevin Mackay, of Valley Stream, N.Y., thought they had made the discovery of a lifetime when they responded to a newspaper ad for a “Zagato-bodied Pontiac prototype” that turned out to have the VIN of the missing Corvette. They eagerly bought the misshapen monstrosity on a bill of sale from the purported owner.