A car tested by history, the Corvette has been tested by time, and by the racing history of its lineage, this car has undoubtedly passed all the tests it has been through, oh yes, it had its downtime. that was called the 1980s for the Corvette, and a lot of people were wondering if it would come back, you could say it has done just that.
Every car goes through its rough patches, design flaws and revisions, the Corvette is one of the best examples of longevity any car company has ever seen, usually sports cars and muscle cars come and go, but the Corvette has never gone anywhere. however, it seems to continue to stand the test of time and evolve into an ever better car.
You might say, what about the Mustang? While you brag about cars that stand the test of time, the Corvette came out eleven years before the Mustang, just to put that theory to rest, the Mustang was introduced to compete with the Corvette, and the Corvette was simply better because in the In most respects, handling, power and most other tests it went through it outperformed the Mustang.
The Corvette has had a fantastic history. The Chevrolet motor company, in 1953, Chevrolet hired Zora Arkus Duntov to design the Corvette, and he did, he was the lead engineer on the Corvette project, and he had it do some amazing things, it would continue to keep people amazing up to the latest model.
Zora joined General Motors in 1953 after seeing the Corvette Motorama on display in New York. Perhaps it was just fate that Zora was among the thousands of people who attended the GM event. Zora found the car to be visually excellent, but she was disappointed with what was underneath. She wrote to Chevrolet chief engineer Ed Cole that she would be her complement to work on such a beautiful car; she also included a technical paper, which proposed an analytical method to determine the maximum speed of a car. Chevrolet was so impressed that engineer Maurice Olley invited him to Detroit. On May 1, 1953, Zora Arkus-Duntov started working at Chevrolet as an assistant to the plant engineer.
In 1963 Zora would launch the Gran Sport program. The original idea captured the interest and imagination of Corvette fans around the world. The idea was to create a special lightweight Corvette weighing just 1,800 pounds and compete on an international circuit not only against Cobras and other GT-Class cars, but also prototypes from Ferrari, Ford and Porsche. The Grand Sport’s power would come from an aluminum version of the small-block V8, equipped with special twin-plug cylinder heads. At 377ci, output was a projected 550 hp at 6400 RPM. But like so many times, GM policy prohibited Zora from racing, but not before five Grand Sports had been built. All five Grand Sports eventually fell into the hands of private owners and Zora somehow found a way to support them despite the official ban.
Zora retired in 1975, handing over the reins to Dave McLellan. At 81 years old, Zora Arkus-Duntov was still passionate and opinionated about his car, the Corvette. It was during the time between Zora’s retirement and his death that the legend of him grew. Whenever something happened from Corvette, Zora was there. Zora, a member of the Drag Racing Hall of Fame, Chevrolet Performance Legends and Automotive Hall of Fame, participated in the launch of the 1 millionth Corvette in Bowling Green in 1992. He also drove the bulldozer in the groundbreaking ceremonies to the National Corvette Museum in 1994. Six weeks before her death, Zora was a guest speaker at “Corvette: A Celebration of an American Dream,” an evening held at the Jack Cauley Chevrolet Detroit showrooms. There was Dave McLellen and Current Corvette Chief Engineer Dave Hill that night, but no one could argue that Zora stole the show.
In 1966 Chevrolet had a brain explosion and built a beast called the L88 Corvette, which had a factory HP rating of 435, which was a very low rating, the car was closer to 600 HP, in 1967 the Corvette did. would do one more time. prove his worth by winning the 24 hours of Lemans, against Porsche and Ferrari, this time he would gain global recognition and become a real player in the sports car world, USA was finally with the big boys. The Corvette had made quite an impression on the racing world.
This car could hold its own with the best the Europeans had to offer, it would drive sales through the roof for Chevrolet, it had been successful beyond Chevrolet’s wildest dreams, and it qualified in two categories: it was a sports car and a muscle car. car, the Corvette had done what no other American car had done before, the Corvette L88 was truly a car to behold.
And this was not the end of the amazing feats of this very special car, in 1969 a slip-up would occur at the Chevrolet manufacturing plant, at a time when they were building two very special cars for a couple of the great Chevrolet motor wigs. . division, these cars were never supposed to be released to the general public, they were built to campaign on the race track, and were actually race cars, not street cars.
The slip would allow these two cars to come out of the plant and be sold in two of Chevrolet’s showrooms, I don’t know which showrooms they were, but these cars were called ZL1 Corvettes, and there was a white one built and a Saturn. the yellow one, the yellow one was auctioned off after the government seized it in a drug bust, it sold for $500,000 at auction.
The Zl1 Corvette was rated at 450 HP from the factory but estimates put it closer to an honest 670 HP making this car the highest horsepower car ever built during that time and as you can imagine these cars are worth a lot of money. today, if i could find one, it came from the factory with a roll bar and lots of other racing gear, due to the fact that they were meant to be raced.