Meet the biodiesel-powered Corvette road racer: Corvegge!

GM was still making the Oldsmobile 350 diesel in 1984, so this powertrain setup could have been a factory Corvette option (maybe without the exhaust stacks).

The General has built all production Chevrolet Corvettes with gasoline-burning straight-six and V8 engines so far, though we hear the C8 might have electric motors added to the mix. Imagine, if you can, an alternate 1984: one in which Roger Smith beheld endless rows of slow-selling Oldsmobile diesel 350 V8 engines gathering dust in a Pontiac, Michigan, warehouse and decreed that the Chevrolet Division must begin selling diesel Corvettes. That vision is what crazed road-racer Mike “Spank” Spangler decided to realize when he built the legendary Corvegge.

It seemed like a really terrible idea at the time… and it was!

Spank competes in the 24 Hours of Lemons road-racing series, where I toil as the wise and fair Chief Justice of the Lemons Supreme Court, and his accomplishments have made him a towering figure among the Lemons cognoscenti. Ever thought that a Toyota Prius with Harley-Davidson Sportster engine swap would be a good race car? Spank did. How about a basket-case Citroën DS, driven from San Diego to Palm Beach for a race? A Mini-Moke converted to a backhoe, Lunar Rover, or land-speed bicycle? A dead-stock, auction-find, 50-buck Chrysler LeBaron? If it doesn’t  belong on a race track, Spank wants to build it.

Oldsmobile gold paint and the Mr. Goodwrench seal of approval on the valve cover.

As you might imagine, the Olds 350 diesel’s bad reputation— initially well-deserved, though GM eventually worked out the worst bugs— has followed it for close to 40 years, and you can pick up these engines for next to nothing. Spank grabbed one, bolted it up to a 3-speed automatic transmission, and dumped it into the engine compartment of an ugly and unwanted 1984 Corvette.

Topping off the fuel tank with generic cooking oil.

The team mostly ran waste vegetable oil (i.e., french-fry grease with the larger potato chunks strained out) in the Corvegge, but demonstrated the non-toxicity of the car’s fuel by having the drivers take swigs of cooking oil from bottles that were then emptied into the tank.

So green!

The Corvegge competed in three California races, in 2012 and 2013, and the drivers wore vegetable outfits in the paddock.

While the Corvegge was very fuel-efficient, it didn’t get around the track all that quickly.

With endurance racing, good fuel consumption can be the key to victory, and the Corvegge could stay out on the track for an incredible five hours of all-out racing between fuel stops. Unfortunately, engine power wasn’t so great: 77 dyno-verified horsepower at the wheels. In a 3,000-pound car, even one that handles as well as a C4 Corvette, 77 horses isn’t enough to keep up with Twin-Stick Dodge Colts or AMC Eagles (both of which ran away from the Corvegge). We think the idea of a veggie-oil-diesel Corvette still has merit, but forced induction and a manual transmission may be necessary for respectable performance.

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