Apart, perhaps, from the VW Beetle, I cannot think of a single model line that has lasted continuously for over 50 years, and still remains as successful today. The Corvette is certainly a unique sports car in that respect. Its origins date from1952, when GM’s Chevrolet division started work on a low volume two-seater concept, most likely as a response to the increasing number of continental imported sports cars lead by the Jaguar XK120. It was a toe in the water, to see if there was enough volume in the market to make it worthwhile producing a home-grown product, which met the demand for a two-seater recreational vehicle but reflected more about the American psyche and, crucially, used as many components from Chevrolet’s own parts bin as it could muster. At the end of 1952 the concept was shown at the GM Motorama party at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York. Harley Earl’s styling proved sufficiently popular for the ‘go’ button to be pressed immediately.
GM was clearly still very nervous about investing in the project, which is no doubt part of the reason it chose glass fibre for the body construction (over a shortened 2615mm Chev passenger car frame), and only made the car available in one colour, Polo White.
Makeshift
The Corvette was initially hand-built on a makeshift production line in Flint, Michigan, and the company’s lack of commitment was nearly the undoing of the Corvette before the model got on to its feet. Of the 300 built in 1953, only a miserable 183 found buyers that year.
Harley Earl’s styling was on the nail, but the Corvette cost more than a Caddy or the Jaguar – and couldn’t out-perform either of them.
Only one engine specification was available, a mildly tuned 3851cc (235ci) stock Chevy motor – the Blue Flame Special. The engine work-over for the Corvette included a high-lift cam, special alloy-steel valves with double springs, an 8.0:1 compression ratio and triple Carter downdraft carburettors on a cast aluminium intake manifold, with dual extractors. The 112kW (150bhp) straight-six could only be ordered with a two-speed Powerglide automatic. Supporting the chassis the Corvette’s conventional coil spring and wishbone front suspension, and four-leaf semi-elliptical springs made the car handle reasonably well by American standards of the day. These 300 white 1953 cars, all with red interiors, represent the rarest and most collectible Corvette – a stunning 255 of them can still be accounted for.
Duntov
The Corvette concept car made a huge impression on a young Belgian-born research and development engineer hired by GM that year.
Already famous for his Ardun (ARkus-DUNtov) tuning parts for flat-head Fords, young Zora Arkus-Duntov would come to be credited with the resurrection and subsequent success of the Corvette. His engineering know-how and European circuit racing background gave him the insight which his employers lacked; he helped Chevrolet realise that a sports car needed appropriate performance in order to sell well.
Harley Earl’s orphan stumbled into 1954 with three new colours but little else to shout about. GM moved production to St Louis, Missouri, where the plant had been refurbished especially to produce 10,000 Corvettes per year.
In the event 3640 were produced, but over a third of them remained unsold. Had Ford not shown the Thunderbird two-seat convertible at the Detroit show, many of GM’s management would have given the slow-selling sportster the chop. But they needed a competitor to the new Ford, and were too far down the road to develop something entirely new.
V8 power
Conveniently, Ed Cole and Harry Barr were working on a new 4343cc (265ci) V8, which generated 145kW (195bhp), and Duntov made sure it went into the Corvette, along with a three-speed manual transmission. Suitable publicity was needed to unleash the car’s potential to the public and company shareholders, so Duntov arranged to drive the V8 Corvette to break the Daytona measured mile speed record, which it did at just over 240kph (150mph).
GM management caved in to Duntov’s well written treatise on what was wrong with the Corvette and spent up big, giving the two-seater an extreme makeover with the now famous side cove, two-tone paint, roll-up windows, external door handles, seat belts, a factory hard top and a ‘transistorised’ radio. Dual four-barrel carburettors were available as an option, and the American public got what it wanted – a sports car like the Europeans, but without their austerity and with lots of American glitz.
1957 Corvette
Our featured car represents the year the Corvette really got to its feet, and is generally recognised as the most attractive body style for the C1 Corvette: 1957 was also the year Zora Arkus-Duntov officially became chief of Corvette.
Production.
Duntov kept piling on more power and better options; and that year you could order fuel injection (a real ‘racing’ novelty at the time) and a four-speed manual gearbox. A new bored-out 4636cc (283ci) V8 became available in four versions – a 164kW (220bhp) single four-barrel; a 186kW (250bhp) fuel-injected unit; a dual four-barrel rated at 201kW (270bhp); and the king of the hill – the advanced, fuel-injected injection ‘fuelie’, which made 211kW (283bhp). Now Chevrolet could claim 0-60mph in less than six seconds, and the quarter in the low 14-second range at over 161kph – 100mph in the old money. With a power hike to one horse power per cubic inch and, at last, some success on the race track, sales doubled over the previous year.
Race Proven
Duntov and his engineers even developed option packages on top of that; RPO 579E was a cold-air induction option, and included a tachometer strapped to the steering column. Now that Corvettes were regulars on the race track, the feedback was used to develop a ‘beat the Jag’ package. Quicker steering, a Positraction rear axle, heavy-duty suspension with a sway bar and metallic brake shoes were specified, but RPO684 was sold only for use on the race track. A ban on works-assisted motor racing prevented Duntov from developing the Corvette’s performance on track, but that did not stop him planting extreme option packages on the specification table to keep it competitive. Corvettes won the Sebring 12 Hour and two sports car championships which, as Duntov predicted, lead to success in the showroom.
The Corvette finally fulfilled its obligation to its designers, customers and the GM shareholders when in 1958 the project broke even.
With money under the table, serious sums could be spent on the body, which received a double- headlight front end in 1958. When production finally met the 10,000 per annum target in 1960 the grille lost its toothy grin; the neat, faired-in rear lights disappeared in favour of four round ones; and the rear began to look more like the Corvette Sting Ray that was to follow. The last Corvette C1 left the production line in 1962, and with it went the last live axle-equipped Corvette. However, the tradition of building the GM sports car with a glass fibre body would continue to the present day – as would those double rear lights.
Pete Briton’s ’57 Vette
Pete Briton bought his 1957 Corvette from New Zealand’s Corvette guru, Duncan Fox, seven years ago. The car has never had a complete restoration and proudly shows the patina of many years’ enthusiastic use and care. Although it was sold originally in the USA, the car spent much of its life in Australia’s Northern Territory, surviving Cyclone Tracy intact.
Even though it is basically standard, and never had the ‘fuelie’ Rochester fuel injection system available to 1957 buyers, Pete’s car has been uprated with a Duntov solid lift camshaft – which releases an additional 22kW.
The GRP body was crazed when he bought the car, but rather than give it a complete restoration with modern two-pack paints, Pete decided it would be more fitting to cover the car in something closer to its original finish. So he painted it with Venetian Red Dulon, so it would look tidier overall, while retaining its aged look.
As far as he is aware the body has never been separated from the chassis, and he would like to keep it looking just like it has for years, but without the cracks. Whilst we can share the passion that some owners invest into a top notch Concours restoration, there is something about a totally unspoilt car – that has a story in every scratch and patch – which takes it into a different plane of appreciation. We loved it.
Effortless Performance
Pete’s ’57 drives beautifully, and ticks over so slowly that you think it is going to chuff out, but it never does. Remarkable. The V8 pulls really well and the gearbox, with its dog-leg first, is a joy to use, although the car has so much torque the lever is not used very often. The old V8 smacks away with a very distinct beat, shrugging off hills and overtaking manoeuvres with easy disdain.
There isn’t much room in the Corvette – you slide tightly under the steering wheel and sit with your legs both sides and your chest right up against it, crouching as if to reduce the car’s frontal area. The seats are superbly separated by the bodywork – a timeless piece of styling integration.
The Legacy and the Heritage
Arkus-Duntov would become the spiritual father of the Corvette through its many iterations, before handing over the reigns to the current chief, Dave Hill.
The C2 Sting Ray, which included the famous split rear window coupé, served through the early ’60s, while the Coke bottle C3 brought in the Targa roof style and suffered the indignity of emissions and safety strangleholds on performance and aesthetics throughout the ’70s, and went on for far too long.
We almost thought we had seen the end of the line, but when the fabulous slab-shaped C4 brought in huge tyres, incredible lateral grip, lots of light weight aluminium hardware and, later, the infamous quad-cam Lotus engine, the marque was resurrected once again.
Into the new millennium the curvy but slightly odd-shaped C5 continued the weight-saving regime, and blasted into new performance standards with a lightweight powertrain.
In With The New
The new C6 Corvette features exposed headlamps, the first time since 1962 that a production Corvette has not had a mechanism to conceal the lamps when not in use. The Xenon High-Intensity Discharge lamps integrate seamlessly into the design and aerodynamics of the car.
“The C6 represents a comprehensive upgrade to the Corvette,” said Dave Hill, chief engineer of the Corvette. “Our goal is to create a Corvette that does more things well than any performance car. We’ve thoroughly improved performance, and developed new features and capabilities in many areas, while at the same time systematically searching out and destroying every imperfection we could find.
“The development of the C6 intends to not only replace the outgoing C5 Corvette (1997-2004), but also to create a 21st Century Corvette that both thrills the legions of traditional loyalists and captures the imagination of a new generation of performance enthusiasts. The formula from the C5 era remains: extremely high performance capabilities in a car that offers great style, value and quality, with surprising comfort for daily driving. The C6 builds on that foundation and reaches beyond with dramatic increases in performance and refinement, wrapped in a passionate new design.”
Taut
Hill has pretty much kept his promise. Five inches – or 128mm – shorter than the current car, the 2005 Corvette cuts a tighter, more taut profile, with virtually no loss of usable space. The new dimensions make the car more agile, and with a 0.28 coefficient of drag, the C6 is the most aerodynamically efficient Corvette ever produced and has downforce characteristics for improved high-speed stability and confidence.
“The C6 is more competition-influenced – given our championship experience with Corvette Racing – than any previous Corvette,” Hill says.
“Our goal was a performance car at home in virtually any environment. That means more than just raw performance. It calls for improved ride comfort, a precisely-built and technically-sophisticated interior, and a sleek new body that is fresh and contemporary, while still instantly recognized as the new Corvette.”
A new LS2 6.0-litre small-block V8 is the standard engine in the 2005 Corvette C6. It’s based on GM’s new Gen IV small-block family of engines, producing, like the Quad Cam C4, 298kW and 542Nm of torque (400bhp and 400lb/ft). Major revisions to the manual and automatic transmissions provide this Corvette with significant improvements geared towards performance driving. The Tremec six-speed manual gearbox is available with two sets of ratios, one reserved for Corvette’s Z51 Performance Package that emulates the performance of the C5’s landmark Z06 model. The LS2 gives the Corvette power in the range of exotic cars that cost tens of thousands more, combined with fuel efficiency better than some family sedans.
A central element of the 2005 Corvette is an all-new interior that includes greatly improved materials, craftsmanship and functionality, continuing the dual cockpit design theme that has been a Corvette hallmark. C6 also contains many new electronic technologies including Keyless Access with push-button start, and optional features such as a reconfigurable head-up display.
Light
While the chassis design philosophy continues from the C5 Corvette – with low weight, high strength, cored composite floors, an enclosed centre tunnel, rear axle-mounted transmission and aluminium cockpit structure – it has been extensively revised to enhance structural integrity, feel, refinement and quietness. Overall vehicle weight is projected to mirror the C5, despite mass-increasing features such as larger wheels and tyres, more robust brakes and increased body acoustics.
None of the suspension bits has been carried over from C5. The short-long arm and transverse leaf spring independent suspension configuration remains, but the cradles, control arms, knuckles, springs, dampers, bushings, stabiliser bars, and steering gear are all redesigned.
Extended Mobility Tires (EMT) also are new, taking advantage of the latest sidewall design and compound technology for run-flat capabilities. They play a critical role in the tuning of the suspension for excellent handling and comfortable ride, but also achieve greater lateral acceleration, more body control, less noise transmitted from the road, and better traction and stability in corners. Geometry is optimised for better handling and ride and general poise. The optional F55 Magnetic Selective Ride Control suspension features magneto-rheological dampers able to detect road surfaces and adjust the damping rates to those surfaces almost instantly, for optimal ride and body control. GM says it is the world’s fastest reacting suspension, replacing mechanical valves with nearly instantaneous reactions of magneto-rheological fluid. The system has been improved for the C6, allowing drivers more differentiation in character between the system’s two settings, Tour and Sport.
NZ’s Bunce Z0-6
George Bunce, on Auckland’s North Shore, has brought in two of the latest generation C6 Z0-6 Corvettes. The first is stripped down in his Glenfield workshops, where it’s the prototype for conversion to right-hand-drive – an operation George has performed on hundreds of GM products (mainly trucks), providing local ambulance services and bow-tie enthusiasts with NZ-legal American muscle. The second car is the one we are driving alongside the ’57 C1, and whilst they share four wheels, round rear lights and a V8 engine, they couldn’t have been more different.
George will know more once he has finished the prototype, but he reckons he should be able to deliver you a 2005 Z0-6 in right hand drive for around NZ$160,000. From our brief drive in the left-hand-drive car, I can tell you that it will be worth it.
I have known of George’s conversion work for many years, and it is so professional you would be very hard pressed to tell the vehicle wasn’t supplied as RHD new from the factory.His job is even harder on the new Z06 because, unlike Corvettes from previous generations, it is beautifully put together, exuding real quality, without a single rattle or squeak and with shut lines and door gaps that could have come from Japan. Whilst previous Corvettes certainly had get up and go, many of the components got up and went as soon as they left the production line – production engineering and build quality was pretty weak, something that was accentuated by a rock hard ride from those massive tyres. It meant that a Corvette was very much an enthusiast’s car, and when you drove one you were aware that cost saving was an integral part of the design portfolio. There was no question that you got a big bang for your buck, but the old Corvette was never in the same class as most of its European competition when fit and finish were concerned.
Conversion
Whilst this new generation offers lots of go for your dollar – its performance is quite stunning – and the charisma of a great muscle car, GM has made sure you do not feel as if you have just got into a sporty Astra. Everywhere you look there are blasts from the Corvette’s mighty past, with styling features that mirror Corvettes from the last 50 years.
The car has incredible performance and character, but with fabulous build quality to match its gutsy image and a pleasant ride quality that won’t adjust your dental-ware. The Tremec six-speed gearbox makes it easy to use the performance that is there, and the massive tyres put the power down firmly, with all the electronic safety gizmos to protect you from yourself if you exceed the tenacious grip of that fat rubber.
The interior is classy and comfortable, and with Bunce’s conversion you will get a mirror image of the US spec car, replicated so well that you won’t know the difference.
It seems that with the 2005 model year the Corvette has finally matured into a sports car that can exceed your expectations in every respect, even to the extent that when you walk up to the car with your keys in your pocket your vehicle will recognise you and unlock the door – in fact the doors are unlatched from inside and out by electronics, very weird and a little unnerving until you get used to it, and realise that there is a mechanical linkage for emergencies. For a glimpse of this new supercar, or to enquire about any left to right-hand-drive conversions, whether for Chevy Suburbans, Hummers or Corvettes, visit Bunce Motor Co at Wairau Road, Glenfield.
* Our thanks to Neil Kimpton of North Shore Aero Club
| 1957 CHEVROLET CORVETTE
Engine V8, cast-iron block Capacity 4638cc (283ci) Bore/stroke 99 x 77mm (3.87 x 3.00) Valves ohv Max power 201kW (270bhp) at 4800 rpm C/R 10.5:1 Fuel system Two, four-barrel WCBF Carter carburettors Transmission Close-ratio three-speed manual Suspension Front: Independent by unequallength A-arms; coil springs, tube shocks Rear: Live axle, leaf springs, anti-roll bar, tubular shocks Steering Saginaw worm-and-ball Rear axle Hypoid semi-floating, 3.70:1 Brakes Drum/drum Tyres 6.70 x 15 DIMENSIONS Length 4267mm Height 1318mm Wheelbase 2591mm Weight 1238kg (2730lb) PERFORMANCE Max speed 200kph 0-96kph 7 seconds Standing 1/4 14.3 seconds C1 Production total 2934 Price New US$3176 |
| 2005 CORVETTE
Engine LS2 V8 SFI Capacity 6.0 litre Max power 298kW (400bhp) at 6000rpm Max torque 542Nm (400lb/ft) at 4400rpm Suspension Four-wheel independent doublewishbone suspension, includes Brakes Disc/disc, ABS Tyres P245/40ZR18 front, P285/35ZR19 rear DIMENSIONS Length 4435mm Width 1844mm Height 1245mm Wheelbase 2686mm Weight 1442kg PERFORMANCE Max speed 300kph 0-96kph 4.2 seconds Standing 1/4 12.6 seconds |
Loading ...
