First, I need at least one vote to break the tie between the 1956 Packard 400 and the 1987 Buick Grand National. When each of the three contests has a winner, I will ask you to pick your favorite among the three.
The sources of these photos are listed here.
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In this post I relayed the strongly positive reaction to the new Corvette at the most recent Tokyo Auto Salon. Well, it appears the Japanese auto market is putting its money where its mouth is. In this post from motor1.com it was revealed that it took just 60 hours to sell the first 300 2020 Corvettes in Japan. If that doesn’t sound like much consider that from 1985 through 1994, inclusive, Japanese auto buyers never even purchased 200 Corvettes for an entire model year and in that period Japanese purchases of Corvettes were fewer than 100 in some years. As I wrote before, the decision by GM/Chevrolet to make the C8 Corvette the first to be offered with right-hand drive was not done on a whim.
Success in markets outside the US will help guarantee a future for the Corvette. The US is not the only car market in the world nor is it the largest. While I doubt many Corvettes will be sold in China, strong sales figures from Japan, Australia and the UK will give the C8 a good foundation.
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The long-running automotive show MotorWeek has just named the new mid-engine Corvette not only as its Best Performance Car of 2020, but also its Best of the Year overall. Barring some horrible recall or a severe economic downturn, the 2020 Corvette should easily sell all 40,000 units, if not more if Chevrolet/GM decide to increase production.
On the left is MotorWeek creator and host John Davis. The show has been aired, either on PBS or Velocity/Motor Trend, since 1981.
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One last C8 note: regular production of the car did begin at Bowling Green on Monday, February 3rd. Chevrolet is saying that initial vehicle shipments to dealers are expected to begin in late February or early March.
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This Hemmings piece gives a great look at the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Museum in Auburn, Indiana. Here is a breathtaking photo, and I don’t mean that in a Seinfeld kind of way, from the article:
This is a 1932 V-12 Auburn 12-160A. According to the article only four of these are known to exist. From registration figures it is estimated that Auburn produced about 11,000 cars in total for model year 1932.
Hopefully sometime in the not too distant future, my wonderful wife and I will visit the ACD Museum.
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Disaffected Musings 
Guess I’ll take a stab at breaking the tie.
Hard choice as I, like you, am partial to orphans.
That said, the Grand National. Why? It was a trend setter in the direction modern performance cars would go. We now take forced induction high horsepower small displacement engines for granted. In 1987 the only other contender was Dodges 2.2 Turbo II engine (175 hp).
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Thanks for breaking the tie and for continuing to make meaningful comments.
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Also, in relation to your ACD museum post, if you ever have occasion to be in Tallahassee Florida I highly recommend this museum
https://tacm.com/tacm-collectibles/
Go early as you will spend all day. I had to go twice as I went around 1pm and ran out of time. Shoot, just the outboard motor collection took me an hour to get thru
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Thanks again.
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