[1]For those of you who have been following RK Motors [2] of Charlotte, North Carolina long enough, you probably have come to the conclusion that building a “pro-touring” car is much more than just retrofitting new crap into an old shell. Truth be told, there are a lot of custom builders out there who throw all of that new stuff into an old platform and it works, but the final product still looks cheesed together.
From what we have seen thus far from RK, this is never the case with the kind of cars that they sell, and our featured ’59 pro-touring C1 is no exception. A 1950’s sculpture powered by an LS7 chasing a 6-speed, their full-custom platform is as close to flawless as one can possibly get.
That’s because The Winning Collection [3] of Asheville, North Carolina has made every stride possible to make their C1 into a turn-key custom that uses an original body and chrome, while not leaving too much else from the era. In fact, even the car’s chassis is a tubular platform built by Jamison’s Custom Corvette [4] of Charleston, South Carolina.
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Out of the box, a 427-cube LS from a ’12 Z06 puts out around 505 horses, but apparently Katech felt that this needed to be bumped just a little further. Consequently, they have furnished the LS7 mill with their own “Torquer” cam, high-lift springs, titanium retainers and stock heads that have been ported to 270cc on the intake side.
The result of Katech’s skilled machine work and clever use of valvetrain components has resulted in a late-model motor that puts out 600 horses with 570 feet pounds of torque, all of which chases a Tremec T56 transmission built by RPM Transmissions [10] of Anderson, Indiana.
August in particular has been a hot month for RK Motors’ inventory of clean, pro-modded ‘Vettes, but as for C1 conversions, our featured ’59 shows just what can be done with a little imagination and resources, not to mention money!
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