by Steve Holmes » Mon Sep 05, 2011 10:30 pm
The concept that John Bishop came up with and sold to GM was really clever when you think about it. Surely the Monza, built by DeKon and the various others companies for IMSA, must have been the first turn-key race car designed to allow privateers (granted, with deep pockets) to go racing without having to build their own car from scratch, or purchase last years race car off a pro team.
It was a bit easier in the early days of the Trans-Am for privateers, because they could pick up an old or wrecked Camaro or Mustang and bend and weld some exhaust tube for a roll cage, add some race bits, and go racing. But IMSA was more specialised than the Trans-Am had been, and so this wasn't quite so easy, even though many guys still did just this.
The Can-Am and F5000 had companies that specialised in building customer chassis'. You buy the chassi, drop your Chevy in the back, and go racing. The majority of fields were made up of these cars, but the Trans-Am never really had this that I can think of, other than the small number of Mustangs built by Shelby during 1966 and '67.
So the Chevy Monza built for IMSA was a bit of a ground breaking car in US sedan racing in many ways.
The concept that John Bishop came up with and sold to GM was really clever when you think about it. Surely the Monza, built by DeKon and the various others companies for IMSA, must have been the first turn-key race car designed to allow privateers (granted, with deep pockets) to go racing without having to build their own car from scratch, or purchase last years race car off a pro team.
It was a bit easier in the early days of the Trans-Am for privateers, because they could pick up an old or wrecked Camaro or Mustang and bend and weld some exhaust tube for a roll cage, add some race bits, and go racing. But IMSA was more specialised than the Trans-Am had been, and so this wasn't quite so easy, even though many guys still did just this.
The Can-Am and F5000 had companies that specialised in building customer chassis'. You buy the chassi, drop your Chevy in the back, and go racing. The majority of fields were made up of these cars, but the Trans-Am never really had this that I can think of, other than the small number of Mustangs built by Shelby during 1966 and '67.
So the Chevy Monza built for IMSA was a bit of a ground breaking car in US sedan racing in many ways.