As of last Friday, the C7 Grand Sport has officially been released into the wild. When the hammer fell at Barrett-Jackson’s Palm Beach auction, the VIN 001 2017 Corvette Grand Sport sold to it’s new owner for $170,000 – every penny benefitting Detroit’s Karmanos Cancer Institute.

Since the announcement that it would sell at the Palm Beach auction, the general consensus was that avid collector Rick Hendrick would swoop in and drop ungodly amounts of money to claim it. Hendrick – the founder and owner of both the Hendrick Motorsports NASCAR team and Hendrick Automotive Group – has a pattern of spending big money at auctions for serious cars, and has developed an insane collection.

At previous auctions throughout the years, Hendrick has won an entire showroom’s-worth of “firsts”, such as the 2010 Camaro, 2011 Camaro convertible, 2014 Corvette and 2015 Corvette convertible – all VIN 001, of course. Most recently (and most notably, in our opinion), Hendrick won the jaw-dropping ’55, ’56 and ’57 VIN 001 Corvette trio, forking out a hefty $1,815,000 for all three.

Naturally, the assumption was that Hendrick’s partiality towards VIN 001 ‘Vettes would result in him taking home the first 2017 Grand Sport (and having spent a massive sum of money on it). However, such was not the case.Instead, the lucky new owner is David Flynn – another automotive group owner – and the winning bid was only a fraction of typical VIN 001 Corvette auction prices. Compared to previous first-‘Vette auction prices – such as the $1.05 million price of the VIN 001 C7, for example (also won by Rick Hendrick) – the hammer price of $170,000 for this Grand Sport can be considered quite the discount.

There’s no telling why Hendrick chose not to pull the trigger this time around, but we can imagine that Flynn is rather pleased with how things turned out. And truthfully, everyone else should be, too – now it’s only a matter of time before the rest of the Grand Sports are unsheathed, and the $170,000 this car sold for is now going towards the battle against cancer.