The Koch Chevy Special was the D-MOD National Champion at the 1967 American Road Race of Champions at Daytona, driven by Wayne Koch. When SCCA abolished D-Mod in 1968, this one-and-only mid-engined sportsracer was retired, set aside, and forgotten. It is now restored and most notably competed in the 2017 60th Rolex Monterey Historic Reunion, Group 7a. It has a fully refreshed race engine with less than 60 minutes of break-in racing. Short clip from Texas World Speedway: https://youtu.be/I-x-L1g6Z_A?t=524
Retired for years, the Koch was discovered in the early 80’s at Can-Am Cars, Ltd. where it was resurrected, restored, and then raced sporting a Porsche 2.0L six engine and 901 transaxle and maintained by Black Forest Racing. In the early 90’s it was sold to Waren Mosler, owner of Mosler Automotive (supercar builder), where it was restored to its unique original configuration with the Chevy II-based 4 cylinder engine and Porsche 356 swingaxle for authentic historic racing. At this time, the chassis was upgraded and set up by Consulier Engineering and raced by Chet Fillip, their head of engineering and factory driver, “I drove the car once at the West Palm Beach street race with SVRA. I started in the back and won. It was a fun car to drive. It had good brakes and I received some complaints about my ‘Late Braking’ “.
The current owner has owned the racer since January of 2014. Since that time the Porsche swingaxle has been upgraded to a 356C LSD along with necessary race modifications completed by 356 Enterprises. The engine has been recently rebuilt by Nickens Brothers Racing Engines and the car is now fully sorted resulting in a very competitive and fast car! When it runs in SVRA, it competes in the group with GT40s, Chevron B16s, Lotus 23s, Porsche 910s, Porsche Carrera 6, Porsche 908s, Elvas, Bobsys, etc. It is an eclectic, exciting group! A track incident in 2016 at Texas World Speedway provided an opportunity for a complete restoration prior to its debut at the 2017 Rolex Monterrey Reunion.