The C2 Corvette Was Made By Real Car Guys And Performs As Good As It Looks - But There Is A Scandal

Car and Driver road test:
https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a15145912/1963-chevrolet-corvette-sting-ray-road-test/

First time I did a video on this car:
https://youtu.be/EVeuch0An9U
This was the first Corvette designed and built (almost) from the ground up by genuine car guys and racers. Guys like Bill Mitchell, Larry Shinoda, and of course, Zora Arkus-Duntov, who’s known as the "father of the corvette."

That’s "father," because Harley Earl, probably the most famous and extravagant designer in car history, created it after driving and falling in love with a Jaguar XK120. GM had also decided they needed a sports car, and as chief of design, Earl made it happen.

He assembled a team, and quickly cobbled a show car together for the 1953 New York Motorama, an addendum show to the NY International Auto Show put on by GM. It was a stylish and lavish event, and Project Opel - the Corvette - was a focus of it. It had a sleek design, 2 seats, and the use of a new and exotic material, fiberglass. It drew a crowd, and even inspired a production run of 300 cars in 1953 - all of them Polo White with red interior, and many were given to celebrities to promote the brand.

One guy who came to see it would have his life changed by it. Zora Arkus-Duntov fell in love with the lines, but was horrified to find the mechanicals of an ox cart underneath. Solid rear axle, anemic 6-cylinder, automatic tranny, piss poor brakes, and antiquated steering.

Arkus-Duntov was a very interesting guy - born in Belgium to Russian Parents, son of a mining engineer, and of a woman who got tired of the first mining engineer, so she married another - and they all lived together in what would certainly appear to be an awkward arrangement. Arkus-Duntov ultimately liked them both, so he took both last names and hyphenated them. He rode motorcycles, and then bought a race car, and then went to Berlin Polytechnic, and then got a job in France, where he married an exotic dancer named Elfi, and then smuggled gold in a hollowed out Mercedes. Later he escaped to the US just before the Nazis arrived, hiding out for a few days in a bordello. (cough)

He came to the us, and made some money in war munitions, and then he and his brother started a company making better cylinder heads for the flathead Ford V8. In fact, he would later argue to GM that hot rodding support would spawn interest in GM products, which led to the GM performance division that still exists today.

After seeing the corvette at the Motorama, he fired off a letter to GM saying they should hire him, and they did.

He helped get a V8 in the corvette, and a manual gearbox, and improved front suspension with somewhat better brakes, but he was encumbered by the poor underpinnings of the C1 chassis.

He wound up chest deep in the design and development of the C2, especially when Bill Mitchell bought a one-off race car used by Duntov at Sebring in the late 50s to become the basis for the next Corvette.

It would have vast mechanical improvements over the C1, most notably an independent rear suspension, a quick ratio recirculating ball steering rack, and eventually disc brakes. It was also set up for racing, with anti roll bars and stiff springs. A regular production order package (RPO) was made called the Z06, which added full on race bits for corvettes that would be used in competition.

As to the design of the car, this is where the 1938 Adler Trumpf Rennlimousine comes in. To see that part - and the scandal, you'll have to watch the video.

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