Steve Magnante's 1001 Corvette Facts. Steve Magnante

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СКАЧАТЬ that arrived in 1955 was likely a clean-slate restart with few links to the stillborn pre-Cole V-8 design.

      104 Only a decade after the last of 3,172 hostile German V-2 rockets landed during World War II, Chevrolet magazine ads proclaimed the 1955 265-cube small-block as the “V-8 that goes like a V-2.” Making reference to the terrifying German A-4 “vengeance weapon” (the root of its V-2 name in popular culture) likely touched a few raw nerves among military veterans, and Europeans, who’d have preferred to forget about them.

      105 Although not as highly guarded as the Coca-Cola soda formula or Kentucky Fried Chicken’s seasoning recipe, Corvette body supplier MFG perfected the ideal ingredients for its nonsteel panels: 30-percent glass fiber, 29-percent aluminum silicate filler, and 41-percent isophthalic resin. Each 340-pound 1953–1955 body shell contained 136 pounds of fiberglass, 153 pounds of resin, and 51 pounds of filler.

      106 After selling every single 1953 Corvette and sensing deep consumer demand, Chevrolet increased production twelvefold in 1954, to a total of 3,640 units. Unfortunately, a soft economy soured the plan, and by the planned start of the 1955 production cycle, 1,100 unsold 1954s remained on dealer lots. To avoid a worsening glut, Chevrolet trimmed the 1955 Corvette output to a mere 700 cars. Luckily, dealers were able to clear unsold inventory in time for the arrival of the totally restyled 1956 model. It cannot be overstated: Corvette came within inches of being discontinued in 1955.

      107 Corvettes and engine swappers have always gone hand in hand, usually with a crashed (or stolen) Corvette donating its 327 or 427 to some non-Corvette recipient in the name of quicker quarter-mile performance. But for many 1953–1954 6-cylinder models, swapping went the other way around. One of the earliest documented V-8 swaps was chronicled in the August 1953 issue of Motor Trend, where the 322 “nail head” and Dynaflow automatic from a Buick Century found a new home in a fresh 1953 Corvette. Motor Trend staffer Walt Woron reported, “From a standing start using Drive, I got to 60 mph in 10 seconds (versus 11.5 for the standard Corvette); using Low, then shifting into Drive at a relatively low 4,000 rpm, I chopped this time to 8 seconds.” Curb weight grew from 2,940 to 3,100 pounds.

      108 The same August 1953 issue of Motor Trend found Woron at the wheel of another V-8 Corvette, this one directly from Chevrolet. “The first difference I felt between the Corvette 6 and the V-8 was in the idle. The V-8 sounds more potent, somewhat like a race engine with its tough idle and exhaust tone like that from a boat. The first time I took off from a light was when I noticed a distinct difference.” The automatic test car ran 0-60–mph in 9.0 seconds and 0-80–mph in 15.8 seconds (2.6 and 4.4 seconds quicker than a typical 6).

      109 Although it was listed as an option, a radio was built into all 300 1953 Corvettes. The RPO code 102A signal-seeking radio added $145.15 to the total price and $43,545 to Chevrolet’s till for that model year.

      110 It happened again in 1954, with the RPO 102A signal-seeking radio installed in every Corvette and still priced at $145.15. But with 3,640 cars built in this second year of production, Chevrolet’s bottom line swelled by $528,346!

      111 And finally, in 1955, the RPO 102A signal-seeking radio remained a $145.15 “mandatory option.” With uncertain clouds looming overhead, Chevrolet only built 700 cars, with radio-equipment sales adding $101,605 to the bottom line. The radio’s optional status was finally realized in 1956, when 750 of the 3,467 new C2 Corvettes were built without a radio. Interestingly, that same year Chevrolet increased the price of the signal-seeking AM radio to $198.90, a hefty $53.75 jump.

      112 Heaters followed a similar pattern, listed as an option with no choice to exclude them. Retail priced at $91.40, heaters brought in an extra $27,420 in 1953 (300 cars built), $332,696 in 1954 (3,640 cars built), and $63,980 in 1955 (700 cars built). In total, 1953–1955 heater sales added $424,096 to corporate coffers. Radio sales for the same period totaled $673,496.

      113 “Bill Mitchell, director of GM styling, likes to point out that engineers have really bent over backward to help the stylist. The new V-8 engines allow lower, shorter hoods.” So wrote Motor Trend magazine’s Don MacDonald in a July 1954 story called “Behind the Styling Curtain.” At the time of his quote, Chevrolet’s small-block V-8 was still a secret, and the upright Blue Flame 6 powered the second-year Corvette. But comparing the Corvette-specific version of the 6-cylinder and its triple side-draft induction to the down draft and high-hat oil bath used on passenger cars validates Mitchell’s premise. Without the engineers’ cooperation with Corvette body stylists, the low-profile sports car wouldn’t have been possible.

      114 The April 1954 issue of Motor Trend provided further evidence that 6-cylinder Corvettes weren’t as sluggish as many assumed. “It doesn’t have a fantastic power/weight ratio (18 to 1), but [it] is still better than every stock car except [for the] Chrysler New Yorker Deluxe.” Four years later, Road & Track tested a fresh Porsche 1600 Super Speedster for its April 1958 issue. Its 88-hp flat-4 engine moved 2,110 pounds with a power/weight ratio of 24:1. Everything is relative.

      115 The December 1952 issue of Motor Trend exposed the fiber-glass-bodied sports- and kit-car craze that swept the nation. With a main cover image featuring a Glasspar roadster and the blurb “New Wonder Material: Sports Car Builders Turn to Fiberglas,” it is odd that there was zero mention of the Corvette, which debuted only weeks later in January 1953 at the Waldorf Astoria showcase in New York City (see Fact 4). Writer Jim Potter’s seven-page exposé featured 29 pictures including the Kaiser Darrin, Woodill Wildfire, Testaguzza La Saetta, Viking-Craft Skorpion and Cheetah (not to be confused with Bill Thomas’ offering a decade later), and others. The only mention of Chevrolet came in reference to using a scavenged chassis for construction of the La Saetta (page 28).

      116 Potter’s December 1952 Motor Trend exposé even said, “Although the Ford Motor Company pioneered the first all-plastics car, they dropped their announced production project after considerable money was spent on experimentation.” This refers to Henry Ford’s various pet projects from 1930 to 1941, some of which involved soy-bean-sourced resins and publicity stunts involving sledgehammers.

      117 The Motor Trend fiberglass article’s complete ignorance of the Corvette is bizarre, especially because it included no less than four pictures of a preproduction Kaiser Darrin. The article said, “Negotiations to go into production of 2,000 complete cars are, at this writing, still being worked out with the Kaiser-Frasier Motor Car Company. Price is expected to be about $2,800.” In the end, actual Darrin sales didn’t begin until 1954 (see Fact 1).

      118 One final bit of relevant trivia appearing in the December 1952 Motor Trend fiberglass story was news that a fiberglass body shell was offered to transform the 1945–1949 MG TC roadster into a sleek, slab-sided closed coupe. Atlas Fiber-Glas Inc., a partnership between Roy Kinch and a (then-unknown) 24-year-old hot rodder named Mickey Thompson, manufactured the shell. Potter wrote, “This is reported to be the first coupe body ever built out of fiber-glass.” Within a decade, Mickey Thompson set a world land speed record, was managing the famed Lions Drag Strip, and sponsored many competitive Corvette road racers, including some of the first Z06s on the West Coast. A picture of a youthful Mickey Thompson hoisting a bare coupe body with business partner Kinch appeared on page 29 of the issue. If this product was indeed the first fiberglass coupe, it’d be just one of many of “Sir Mickey firsts.”

      119 News of Corvette’s game-changing new V-8 appeared in the May 1955 issue of Motor Trend. In the “Spotlight on Detroit” column, writer Don MacDonald wrote, “A 195-hp V-8 is available as an option in the more weatherproof 1955 Corvette. The engine is basically the power-pack job which makes other Chevrolets the hot rodders’ delight this year, but it gets 15 extra horsepower from a higher-lift camshaft.” True enough, while the hottest СКАЧАТЬ