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| Dick Guldstrand 5/2011 |
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| Southwest Corvettes was privileged to have the timeless Dick Guldstrand (Mr. Corvette, to many) join us for our May club meeting. We recently received a once-in-a-lifetime invitation to move our meeting location and sponsorship of 20 years from Long Beach, California, across town to the new Penske Chevrolet dealership in the famed Cerritos Auto Square. One of our members, Bob Tomlin, is on pretty good terms with Mr. Guldstrand and contacted Dick to see if he’d consider visiting one of our meetings and maybe share a story or two.
Now, at 84 years young, Dick Guldstrand is still a busy man. But he also loves spending time with other Corvette lovers and an invitation to visit with a Corvette club, not to mention at a Chevy dealership bearing the legendary name of his old friend and boss Roger Penske, was enough to close the deal. You might think that he’d have one of his employees at Guldstrand Motorsports or some friend drive him out to the Saturday morning meeting, but that’s not Dick. He drove up nice and early, by himself, in one of his beautiful Guldstrand golden 50th anniversary 427 Corvettes. Within minutes, Dick was in the midst of club members and dealership personnel, chatting and admiring our collection of Corvettes sitting there in the middle of the Penske sales lot.
After knocking out the normal boilerplate business of our monthly meeting, we imposed upon Dick Guldstrand to share some of his history with the Corvette and just what is it that has flamed his love affair with the car for all these years. Dick was adamant in pointing out that it has been great stylists, engineers, racers and loyal customers that have kept the Corvette alive and vibrant. It’s because all these folks have had a passion for the car and have been willing to fight for it, when corporate logic dictated that it should be discontinued.
Listening to Dick share his personal stories, you can’t help getting caught up in his enthusiasm. He related how he first came to know and work for Roger Penske. In fact, Dick was Mr. Penske’s first professional driver. He was hired to drive a 1965 L-88-equipped Corvette which had been built without any non-race-necessary equipment, such as heater, radio, etc. Dick recalls how he picked up the car at the plant in St. Louis and proceeded to drive it cross-country to Penske’s shop in Pennsylvania, in the cold of winter. He shared how he met Roger and remembers how he would come into the shop everyday and ask him, “What do you need to win?” Money was not a problem, winning was the only target. And win they did, beating the best of the day.
Dick loves to talk about going to LeMans, France. He’d heard so many stories about how the French didn’t care much for Americans. And here he was with this loud, red-white-and-blue, fire-breathing monster of a Corvette going up against their more refined, race-proven thoroughbred brands. But then he set a track record and raised a lot of European eyebrows. In the race, Dick recounted how the Corvette was way ahead of the competition and how they thought they had the race in the bag. Easing along at part throttle, Dick said he felt the engine go soft and then……nothing. He parked the Corvette along the side of the track, opened the hood and stared down at the grass through a huge hole in the engine block. “That’s going to be hard to fix,” he thought. But he says what impressed him the most at LeMans, and to this day, is how the French fans, instead of throwing cabbage and wine bottles at him as he was walking down the pit lane, rose to their feet and began chanting, “Vive l’American”. He and the Corvette had won their hearts and respect.
So many great stories. Like being so fearful of the tremendous speeds on the banking of Daytona that he had to put his left foot on top of his right foot on the accelerator to keep himself from chickening out and lifting. Like sticking flashlights on the fenders so he could legally race at night because the rules said he couldn’t be without headlamps. Like the track official that taped a roller-skate to his rollbar, “to make it easier to pull you out of the weeds when you flip it over again”.
There’s so much about Dick Guldstrand that is fascinating and engaging, we could have kept him talking all day. Suffice it to say, Dick is very proud of where the Corvette is today. Because of the dedication of a lot of great people, he is pleased to state that the modern Corvette is a world class sports car. And it’s American! The ZR1 is unbelievable. According to Dick, “We had to put together a driving school for ZR1 buyers to keep them alive long enough to make the payments.”
Two American icons, the Corvette and Mr. Corvette, Dick Guldstrand. What a great privilege it is for us to enjoy them both.
Jim Cartwright
Former President – Southwest Corvettes
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