It is with a very heavy heart that we are reporting that Corvette racing legend and friend “Mr. Corvette” Dick Guldstrand has passed away.

Few people were as inexorably linked to the Corvette as Santa Monica, California-born street racer Dick Guldstrand. Like many gearheads growing up in the ’50s, he was enamored with Chevy’s fiberglass two-seater. Unlike most, however, he parlayed his interest and skill behind the wheel into a career worthy of a screenplay.

Turning lessons learned on the track racing Corvettes, Guldstrand launched his own engineering firm in 1968 on California’s (in)famous Thunder Alley, constructing race cars and building hot street machines. For the ’84 C4 Corvette, Chevrolet adopted a rear suspension very much like his advanced five-link system. In 1985, he introduced his own tunerized Corvette, called the GS 80, a C4 packing all the Guldstrand tweaks and a 375-horsepower Traco small-block. [...]