The 1954 “Could-Have-Been” Motorama Dream Corvettes
Back in ‘09 when General Motors was getting more negative publicity than they ever dreamed, I received a few emails from car pals with images of the 1954 Motorama Corvette variants – the Pontiac Bonneville, the Olds F-88, and the Buick Wildcat II. The gist of the emails was this, “Look at how GM screwed up! The 6-banger Corvette “could have been” a powerful V8, classic ‘50s beauty.” Bla, bla, bla.
While it is true that the above mentioned cars were beauties, there’s no way they would have made it into production. The ‘53 and ‘54 Corvette already had Cadillac prices. The Pontiac, Buick, and Olds versions would have cost even more. But it was an interesting look back, as it turned out that the ‘54 Motorama had numerous delicious concept cars.
In my Illustrated Corvette Series No. 178, I covered the “Chevy/Corvette” concept cars, the Corvette Coupe, the Corvair Fastback, and the Nomad. (The Pontiac, Olds, and Buick concept cars were covered in a later column) Keeping in mind that “concept cars” are three dimensional canvases for designers to try out new ideas, it’s always fun to look back to see what ideas made it into production and where they were used.
The Civilized Grand Sport Corvette Replica – Sort of…
Today you can go to your local Chevrolet dealer today and buy a Grand Sport Corvette to your liking. Almost 50 years ago, there were only five Grand Sport Corvettes in existence and they were NOT for sale. “Unrealized potential,” “the ultimate could’a been Corvette” and many other expressions tell the original Grand Sport Corvette story. Unlike today’s C6 Grand Sports, the originals were all-out racing Corvettes, designed to give the Cobras a good run for it.
But GM had a completely different attitude about racing back then that can be nicely described as “backward.” Fortunately, all five original Grand Sports are still around. Along the way, there have been numerous companies that offered Grand Sport replicas – some, better than others. But today there is only one “officially licensed” by GM, Grand Sport replica, and that is the Duntov Motors Grand Sports.
Lucky for us, GM design chief, Bill Mitchell had a fish fetish. Or should we say, a shark obsession. I once read an amusing story about Mitchell and his “shark thing.” He was talking with someone about the Mako Shark-I show car and he said, (sorry for the paraphrasing) “Look at the open mouth in that grille area. You can just see the blood dripping from the opening!” Yea, he was “into it.”
The story goes that Mitchell caught a big shark off the coast of Bimini and had it stuffed and mounted. It must have been his muse because he obviously picked up on three design elements.
1. The real shark’s side gills. On the car they show up just ahead of the front wheel wells and just behind the rear wheel wells. 2. The real shark’s open mouth snout. Gee Bill, no teeth for the car? I think over the years, a few show car Corvettes have been seen with shark’s teeth. 3. The real shark’s light underbelly and dark blue top. This became the signature “Mako Shark” paint job with lots of variations.
Every so often a car design comes along that is “perfect.” It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, you end up stopped dead in your tracks. You find yourself almost unable to STOP looking at the car’s shape. For me, the 1959 Stingray Racer is such a car. The 1959 Stingray Racer was an outgrowth of the dead-on-arrival 1957 Q-Corvette, which never made it past the full-size clay model stage. But the pint-sized concept had a nuclear-powered punch because it set in motion a design process that is still with us today. Consider the lineage…
Q-Corvette leads to… 1959 Stingray Racer leads to… Mako Shark I show car leads to… 1963-1967 Sting Ray leads to… Mako Shark-II-inspired C3 “shark” Corvette… that leads to… C6 Corvette (look closely at the front and rear fenders of the C6 – there’s a C2 Sting Ray in there).
Back to the timeless ‘59 Stingray. Clearly, Bill Mitchell wasn’t done with the design of the proposed Q-Corvette. So, with a borrowed chassis from the aborted ‘57 Corvette SS racer (1957 was a VERY GOOD year for the Corvette!), Mitchell designed a roadster version of the interesting Q-Corvette around the small, lightweight birdcage tube chassis from the mule version of the Corvette SS project. Continue reading “Vette Videos: The STUNNING Corvette Classic 1959 Stingray Racer”→
Dave MacDonald: Corvette Racer… Corvette Man… Family Man
Here’s Dave MacDonald next to his purpose-built MacDonald/Simpson 1961 Corvette Special, looking a lot like Johnny Unitas, the pro football quarterback great.
Could there have been a more exciting time and place to be into cars than Southern California in the 1950s? Probably not. It was postwar America, California only had about 1/3 its current population, Rock’n Roll was in its infancy, and the car culture was revving up. El Monte was just a semi-rural community in Los Angeles County, the perfect place for young Dave MacDonald and legions of other guys to pour their hearts and souls into cars. What’a time!
MacDonald’s Professional Racing Career
Dave’s first car was a fast 1953 Cadillac. But when Chevy put the small-block 265 into the ‘55 Corvette, 19-year old MacDonald had to have one. He saved his money and a year later, bought his first Corvette, a Gypsy Red ‘55 Corvette. The Caddy was fast and Dave did some street racing with the car, but it was the Corvette that got him into drag racing and eventually road racing. In February 1960, MacDonald had his first official “ride” as team driver for Don Steves Chevrolet at Willow Springs Raceway, and won the Sunday main event. In his first year, Dave entered 15 regional races, taking 1st place in three events, three second place wins, and 4 third place wins. Very impressive for his rookie year.
MacDonald’s ‘53 Cadillac Sixty-Two Coupe de Ville hardtop. This was Dave’s first car, bought in ‘54.
1961, was even better. MacDonald entered 20 races, won 13 victories, and three second place finishes. Dave’s last win of the year was in his purpose-built, tube frame, lightweight Corvette Special. This car is a story unto itself. 1962 was the year the spotlight really shown on MacDonald. While he didn’t totally dominate the year, he did finish on the podium in 16 races, including 10 victories. It’s also worth noting that MacDonald won every race entered from early February to June – seven wins in a row. The first three wins were with the lightweight Corvette Special. After that, the lightweight car only raced two more times. MacDonald had one race behind the wheel of another lightweight tube frame car, a Devin Corvette that provided Dave with a second place win. Continue reading “Corvette Legends – The Great, Dave MacDonald – Part 1”→
As groovy as the new C3 1968 Corvette looked to most Vette fans, for some, it wasn’t what they were expecting. What they were expecting was what they’d been drooling over since ‘65 – a production version of the “Mako Shark” show cars. They didn’t want to hear a lot of bunk about what can or can’t be manufactured or that the Mako’s front fender humps were too tall. They wanted the Mako Shark-II, period!
While some grumped and grumbled, one man did something about it. He made his own Mako Shark-II. And to prevent GM from crashing down on his head, he called it the “Maco Shark.” John Silva produced the first total body kit for the late model, C3 Corvette. The only part of the exterior body that was production Corvette was the windshield. While the completed kit wasn’t a 100% dead ringer for Bill Mitchell’s Mako Shark-II, it was close enough for many. But what put the Silva Maco on the map was the guy from Long Island that was already building Chevy supercars and could make sure the Maco had gobs of grunt. Yes, Joel Rosen.
Joel Rosen, along with PR master, Marty Schorr, editor of CARS Magazine, were already in the thick of things with their Baldwin-Motion Phase-III Supercars. Their line of turn-key, bad-ass Super Chevys was called, “The Fantastic Five.” You can get a heap’n help’n of Baldwin-Motion dishes at our sister blog site, www.BaldwinMotionReport.com. While the sales of Phase-III Supercars was cooking along in 1969, Rosen was thinking ahead and working out the details of his Phase-III GT Corvette. Rosen’s plan was to offer a true GT (Grand Touring) version of his Phase-III Corvette. The classic GT car configuration used a stout frame and chassis, plenty of power, excellent brakes, creature comforts, and room for travel bags. GT cars were essentially a sport coupe that you would use for a long trip – a “grand” “tour.” In other words, a “big trip.” C3 Corvette Coupes are short on usable space, so Rosen created a fastback rear window to open up the back storage area to hold those small travel bags for his customer’s, “Grand Tour.”
So, around the same time Rosen started offering his Phase-III GT Corvette, John Silva was making his own version of the Mako Shark, marketed under the name “Maco Shark.” The two men worked out a deal and Motion Performance started offering their own turn-key Motion Macos and Maco body kits. Here’s where things get a little muddy. Removing the complete production Corvette body and replacing it with the Maco was VERY labor intensive and expensive. So, very few Motion-built Macos were produced.
This Maco Shark was a barn find car! It's a real beauty today.
However, lots of body kits were sold and if you’ve ever been involved in the kit car hobby, you know that most kits are not completed. For the cars that were completed, some were better than others and depended on Continue reading “Mako Shark Attack Week!!! The Motion / Silva Macos”→
Bill Mitchell’s longer, lower, louder, sleeker Mako Shark
Bill Mitchell and his design team cranked out an amazing number of concept and show cars through the ‘60s. The ‘69 Manta Ray was the end of the line for Mitchell’s shark theme that started in ‘61, and was somewhat overlooked for a time. Those were heady days between the new production Corvette, Chevy and other exciting muscle cars, and tremendous advances in all kinds of race cars. The Mako Shark-II-based Manta Ray was kind of, “been there, done that” by 1969. Designers often have concept ideas that they just want to try out in full size, and it seems that the Manta Ray was such a car.
Perhaps the most unfortunate part of the whole Mako Shark-II story is the fact that the configuration of the the running Mako Shark-II is gone! When Mitchell decided to try out a few more design elements for the Shark Corvette, the quickest way to get there was to start with the ‘66 running Mako Shark-II. The running Mako Shark-II was a stunningly beautiful car, so can you imagine what it might have been like for the designers and builders that were tasked with the job of CUTTING THE CAR UP to make the Manta Ray? Oh, that first cut must have been painful! It must have felt like sacrilege taking a zip saw to such a beauty. Continue reading “Mako Shark Attack Week!!! Vette Video – The 1969 Manta Ray Corvette Show Car”→
While Zora never got a custom Corvette, he still had some very cool Corvette toys!
Zora Arkus-Duntov Birthday Weekend continues here at CorvetteReport.com. Over the last few months we told you about several of the customized Corvettes that were built for Chevrolet executives. But to the best of my knowing, the man that found the Corvette’s Mojo never got a full-out Chevrolet styling department customized Corvette. He did buy a ‘74 Corvette coupe upon his retirement and by all accounts it didn’t have any performance enhancements, but it did get a unique stripe paint job.
So, Why didn’t Duntov get a custom Corvette? Maybe he wasn’t high enough up on in the GM corporate food chain. We’ll probably never know. Not that Zora didn’t have his toys. Zora’s Corvette toys were often all-out racing optioned Corvettes. Along the way of developing his various “racer kit” packages,he built an interesting array of mule Corvettes. These were cobbled together cars that were never taken out of the Chevrolet R&D center or test track.
Duntov’s Thoughts Pertaining To Youth, Hot Rodders, and Chevrolet
Chevrolet engineer and Duntov co-worker, Gib Hufstader, managed to save one of Duntov's DOHC experimental engines from the scrap heap! It might have been one of the above engines. Too bad they all weren't saved!
Zora Arkus-Duntov started working at General Motors on May 1, 1953. His first few months were a little bumpy, plowing through some junky assignments, such as sorting out why a prototype car with a heavy rear end wouldn’t handle right and solving a driveline vibration on a GM bus. A few weeks after Zora started, his immediate supervisor, the very capable senior engineer Maurice Olley, suggested that Duntov quit because he didn’t like Zora’s non-engineering solution to the prototype’s handling problem. And Duntov actually considered it! (for a very short time)
Mega Horsepower! Racing on Street Tires! And Blazing Stars & Stripes!
(Check out the slide show at the bottom of this post.)
Here’s a sweet little bench racing, Corvette day dream for ya! Imagine if you have a Corvette restoration shop and you had ALL THREE Greenwood BF Goodrich Corvette race cars in for restoration work. Yes, I know – open headered, old-school, hard-ass Corvette racing machines. Could you stand it? Well, Kevin Mackay and the Corvette Repair team could and it was no bench racing fantasy.
Mackay’s Valley Stream, New York shop has been doing top level C1, C2, and C3 Corvette restoration work on production Corvettes for over 25 years and has developed a nitch for Corvette race car restoration work. Kevin and his team of craftsmen have brought back to life some of the most famous early model Corvette race cars and Chevrolet Engineering experimentals to ever wear a set of Corvette cross flags. It’s not uncommon for race cars to be thoroughly beat when a team decides to unload a machine. Once gone, most teams rarely if ever keep track of the car’s new owners. So, part of what makes Corvette Repair’s work so interesting is the car’s back story of what happened after a high-profile team sold the old war horse off. Some are well maintained and enjoyed on the track. Some are even converted BACK to street cars, such as the Cunningham Le Mans class-winning 1960 Corvette. And others aren’t so fortunate and are pretty much are one hoof away from the glue factory. Continue reading “The John & Burt Greenwood BF Goodrich Trifecta at Corvette Repair”→
The Frank Winchell rear-engine Corvette gets the Corvette Repair treatment.
The XP-819 was once a genuime basket case.Literally. The purpose of the car was to prove a point. There was a bit of a pissing contest going on in ‘64 between Zora Arkus-Duntov and co-engineer Frank Winchell. Winchell was part of the Corvair team and had a different religion as to the path to handling glory. Winchell said, “Hang it out the back! It works for Porsche and VW.” Duntov said, “No, the engine needs to be in the middle to keep the car balanced.”
When the topic of mid-engine Corvettes come up, the name “Zora Arkus-Duntov” is almost unanimously, and immediately connecter to the subject. But there was “another guy” that championed mid AND rear-engine Corvettes. That would be, Frank Winchell. I’ve covered the XP-819 and Winchell’s Corvettes in my Illustrated Corvette Series VETTE Magazine column. Most of the Corvette blogs are talking about the newly restored XP-819 by by Kevin Mackay and his team at Corvette Repair. I thought it would be interesting and different to share with you the Frank Winchell / XP-819 story.
What I like about this car is that it kind’a-sort’a is cool. It was a very interesting design idea, and the back story between Duntov and Winchell is interesting as well. When researching my stories, I learned that the two engineers with strong personalities, had totally different management styles. Many of Duntov’s coworkers are on record saying that because of his passion of high performance cars and his almost boundless enthusiasm, he was wonderful to work WITH. You worked hard, but Zora made things exciting. (Duntov was such a misfit in General Motors!)
What I learned about Winchell was very insightful. So as to not seem “harsh or bias,” let me first say that Duntov was on record saying the Winchell was a fine engineer and very smart. It should also be mentioned that Winchell was the Chevrolet go-to guy in the early years of Jim Hall’s amazing Chaparral race cars – the pre- Chaparral 2J ”sucker-car” days. Continue reading “The XP-819 REAR ENGINE Corvette Will Get Its Day”→
A Look Back at the Last Time Chevy Went Prototype Racing With a Corvette
It’s been well over 20 years since Chevrolet got into prototype racing, but it’s good to see them back. The Daytona Prototype Corvette is nicely dressed in exotic material with some very stylish styling points that are very “C6.” I’m surprised they didn’t name the car “Grand Sport,” after all, the front fenders ARE wearing C6 Grand Sport fender vents. But, let’s not pick. The Corvette community wishes them the best and we’ll all enjoy watching the latest round of Corvette racing history in the making.
So, I thought it would be fun to look back at the last time Chevrolet went prototype racing with a Corvette. I covered the 1989 GTP Corvette back in October ‘03 in The Illustrated Corvette Series. The short article and illustrations are below. I see some feature “comparison” stories coming up. It’ll be fun to examine 20-plus years of prototype development. Below is the story,“GTP Corvette Racer – Unrealized Potential.”Continue reading “Corvette Race Car Files: C4 1989 GTP Corvette Racer”→
Back in ‘09 when General Motors was getting more negative publicity than they ever dreamed, I received a few emails from car pals with images of the 1954 Motorama Corvette variants – the Pontiac Bonneville, the Olds F-88, and the Buick Wildcat II. The gist of the emails was this, “Look at how GM screwed up! The 6-banger Corvette “could have been” a powerful V8, classic ‘50s beauty.” Bla, bla, bla.
While it is true that the above mentioned cars were beauties, there’s no way they would have made it into production. The ‘53 and ‘54 Corvette already had Cadillac prices. The Pontiac, Buick, and Olds versions would have cost even more. But it was an interesting look back, as it turned out that the ‘54 Motorama had numerous delicious concept cars.
In my Illustrated Corvette Series No. 178, I covered the “Chevy/Corvette” concept cars, the Corvette Coupe, the Corvair Fastback, and the Nomad. (The Pontiac, Olds, and Buick concept cars were covered in a later column) Keeping in mind that “concept cars” are three dimensional canvases for designers to try out new ideas, it’s always fun to look back to see what ideas made it into production and where they were used.
