Tony de Lorenzo

Whatever you do, if you meet Tony DeLorenzo, don't get him going on the GM bankruptcy filing. Tony ain't happy. If they ever make a TV drama called GM: Generations, he's going to be in it, along with the whole DeLorenzo brood. Tony is the son of a wire-service news guy who became a vice president of communications at Buick, hired under the Harlow Curtice regime at GM. He lived the years of hegemony when GM commanded the industry. And he stands firmly today in the pantheon of great Corvette road racers. Tony D's game goes back to the playground. "Being the son of a GM VP, I got to drive a lot of cars, like Ed Cole's personal Chevy 409 when it was one of only two. I was running it up and down Woodward Avenue when the other one was out at Detroit Dragway with Don Nicholson, running in the Nationals. It was stuff like that that made my childhood delightful." His paternal uncle, Charles, was affectionately known as Uncle Biaggio, the Italian translation of his middle name, Blaise. He was also vice president of the Peter Hand Brewery in Chicago, which was sponsoring an early front- engine Chaparral under the Meister Brau brand. Uncle Biaggio took Tony to watch it race at Meadowdale Raceway in Carpentersville, Illinois; he still marvels at its exhaust note today. With that, a racer was born. In 1964, Tony and his brother, Peter, talked their father into getting a Corvette as a company car. They ordered one with all the heavy parts, sans the big tank that they didn't think they'd need, while Tony was working a summer job at Chevrolet's office that promoted the Soap Box Derby. The phone rang. "It was Zora Arkus-Duntov on the phone. That was like getting a phone call from God. He said, 'Your father has ordered a heavy-duty Corvette. Who's going to drive it?' There was silence before I said, 'Uh, I am.' When the car showed up at the house, it had a set of Goodyear Blue Streak tires on it that he'd personally scrubbed in at the Tech Center. And while I can't prove it, from the way it ran on Woodward Avenue, it sounded like the engine had come out of the Chevrolet Motor Room, which did all the hand-built stuff." Tony got his SCCA license in that car at Watkins Glen. He won his first actual race at Nelson Ledges, Ohio, driving a Corvair in 1965. Good enough to advance, he still needed backing: The first came from Hanley Dawson Chevrolet in Detroit. He met his future team driver, Jerry Thompson, when they paired up for the 1967 Glen 500. They decided to form a Corvette team, for SCCA A Production and later, the FIA GT class. Remarkably, the catalyst for forming that team came from Dolly Cole, Ed's wife, who took a DeLorenzo sponsorship proposal to New York City and a GM board meeting with Ed. She knew Curtis Le May, the retired Air Force general and sports car enthusiast who was then chairman of Owens- Corning, which was at that time a Corvette subcontractor producing body parts through its subsidiary, Molded Fiber Glass in Ashtabula, Ohio. The result was a powerhouse in American road racing, with the meanest in GM big-block power, whose history Tony interprets here through Hal Crocker's photography.

Tony de Lorenzo drove Corvettes and did it well.