Based in Old Lyme, Connecticut, Callaway Cars Inc. is a fabled engineering firm and specialty vehicle manufacturer focusing primarily on Corvettes. In the late 1980s, Callaway would produce one of the most special Corvettes of all time, an upgraded version of their RPO B2K package ‘Vette that was built specifically to demonstrate the shop’s top-notch tuning abilities and to utterly destroy existing speed records.
Known as “Project SledgeHammer,” this 100% street-legal 1988 Corvette was powered by a handmade Callaway-prepped twin-turbocharged and intercooled 5.7L V8 engine built on a 4-bolt main bowtie block that was paired with a ZF six-speed manual transmission and squeezed out 898hp and 772ft-bs of torque. Riding on Callaway-branded Dymag magnesium wheels, Bilstein shocks, and an FX3 Selective Ride Control suspension setup, the car was also adorned in a special Callaway “AeroBody” kit and spat burnt fumes from a custom stainless-steel exhaust system culminating in a ridiculously cool quad-can Supertrapp muffler arrangement. In October of 1988, the SledgeHammer was clocked at 254.76mph, setting a world record for the fastest street-legal car which would reportedly go unbeaten for some 25 years. This immensely special Corvette has now surfaced for sale on Bring-A-Trailer with a starting price of $325,000. To give a sense of its value, this exact example went under the hammer in 2014 at Mecum’s Kissimmee auction where it fetched a cool $600,000.
