Steve Magnante's 1001 Corvette Facts. Steve Magnante

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       Today, the Corvette cannot be mistaken for anything else. In 1956, however, this view had Mercedes-Benz 300SL owners crying foul.

      134 At the rear of the body, Cadaret and his team took more cues from the 300SL. Although not as obvious, the rounded, humplike mound created by the deck lid positioned between the fender peaks was adapted from the Mercedes-Benz design. The major difference between the two was Corvette’s glass-fiber construction versus the Mercedes-Benz’s steel shell (with aluminum doors, deck lid, hood, and rocker panels). Photos exist of the Oldsmobile Golden Rocket Motorama dream car posed next to a Mercedes-Benz 300SL gullwing coupe within the GM styling center. A little benchmarking clearly went a long way.

      135 Although Arkus-Duntov’s influence began to emerge with the 1956 Corvette, his impact on the 1953–1955 models was minimal. Born in Belgium to Russian parents, the automotive genius began GM employment on May 1, 1953. The Corvette’s path for the next two years was already established, and there was little room for his influence.

      136 Arkus-Duntov’s first assignment as a member of Chevrolet’s research and development department in 1953 was to explore varied chassis designs for rear-engine passenger cars. General Motors had been exploring rear-engine test cars for more than a decade, the 1960 Corvair being the eventual manifestation of the program. An early contribution to the solution of tail-heavy vehicle platforms was Arkus-Duntov’s discovery that oversteer and understeer habits could be tuned using tire pressure alone. The Corvair’s unconventional biased factory tire-pressure specification (22 psi front, 26 psi rear) was Arkus-Duntov’s doing.

      137 Ed Cole, a man whose motto was “kick the hell out of the status quo,” hired Arkus-Duntov. Cole’s decision to hire the then-43-year-old with the thick Russian accent was highly controversial; Senator Joe McCarthy’s notorious anti-Communist “witch hunts” were in full swing. Many of GM’s more conservative staffers blatantly disliked Arkus-Duntov and his outspoken demeanor. British-born chassis engineer Maurice Olley was particularly critical of Arkus-Duntov’s appointment. However, they eventually developed mutual respect for each other, and both men contributed great things to the Corvette program.

      138 Arkus-Duntov’s entrance into the Corvette development program wasn’t the straight shot most enthusiasts assume it was. For many months he toiled on decidedly non-performance projects, ranging from working on the aforementioned rear-engine family-car project to solving vibration problems on two-piece school-bus drive-shafts. The change came in mid-1954 when Ed Cole chose him to help develop mechanical fuel injection for the upcoming V-8 engine program. Yes, that fuel injection, the immortal “fuelie” of 1957.

      139 In hindsight, we mostly view Rochester Products Division’s mechanical fuel injection as a high-performance development meant just for the Corvette. However, quite the opposite is true. Although fuel injection generally offers advantages over carburetors in high-performance applications, General Motors also saw fuel injection as a modern technology and marketing bonus worthy of inclusion on family cars. Thus, engineers from Cadillac and Oldsmobile joined Duntov on the fuel-injection program. In the end, Pontiac was the only non-Chevrolet GM division to offer Rochester mechanical fuel injection, available on 447 of its 1957 Bonneville personal luxury models, plus 511 more in 1958 (available on all full-sized models).

      140 Although Arkus-Duntov was only 46 years old when he joined the Rochester fuel-injection program in 1955, his prematurely gray hair earned him the nickname “Papa” among his fellow engineers. By then, he had come to terms with his genetic fate. A mere three years earlier, and just days before the 1952 Le Mans race, Arkus-Duntov attempted to force nature’s hand with a hair dye of dubious quality. After turning yellow, much of his hair fell out, which prompted French press agents to nickname him “Le Jeune Blonde,” the young blonde. At the time, he was driving an Allard J2X with a Cadillac powerplant. Arkus-Duntov also drove many European road races for Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, and Talbot.

      141 The Rochester mechanical-fuel-injection program bore fruit, but Arkus-Duntov’s desire to be in charge of Corvette development didn’t come to fruition until December 1, 1968! That’s when he became Corvette’s first chief engineer, a position he held until 1975. Before his 1968 appointment, the Corvette didn’t have a chief engineer, and Arkus-Duntov’s title was director of high performance, putting him in charge of projects as varied as the SEDCO 1957 Black Widow circle-track cars and police packages powered by the Super Turbo-Thrust 348, Chevy’s first big-block V-8.

      142 Speaking of big-block Chevrolet engines, was the W-series 348 or “so-fine” 409 ever considered for the Corvette option sheet? Yes. Only 2-3/4 inches wider and 1-3/4 inches longer than the small-block V-8, size wasn’t a problem. A handful of 348-powered 1958 Corvette test cars were certainly assembled for evaluation within General Motors. But the somewhat disappointing W-engine didn’t add anything the hotter small-block 283s didn’t already deliver, except some torque and a disturbing increase in mass over the front tires. By the time the 409 arrived in late 1961, Corvette product planners had abandoned any thoughts of using the W-series big-block. But can you imagine how exciting a triple-carbureted 348 or dual-quad 409 factory Corvette engine option would have been? Alas, the world had to wait until March 1965 to sample the first factory big-block Corvette.

      143 During the Automobile Manufacturers Association (AMA) racing and performance promotion ban of June 1957 (see Fact 229), Chevrolet canceled many promising and exciting race programs but didn’t exit the racing world entirely. Like several other Detroit automakers, Chevrolet went underground and contracted front organizations to continue performance development during the late 1950s. One of them was the Advanced Marine Corporation (AMC) of Miami, Florida. NASCAR star Jim Rathmann ran the organization, which was conjured up by Arkus-Duntov and GM executives Ed Cole and Vince Piggins and served as a link between NASCAR racers and Arkus-Duntov’s advanced engine group in Detroit. Between 1958 and 1960, General Motors paid AMC/Rathmann more than $100,000 despite the corporate ban. AMC’s efforts focused on improving the 348 W-engine for racing and also on refining chassis, suspension, and brake components for race use. The program bore immediate fruit in the form of satisfying first, second, and third race victories at the all-new Daytona International Speedway in 1959 and a victory by Junior Johnson in the 1960 Daytona 500, all of them won with 348-powered Chevrolet race cars.

      144 There’s been a lot of confusion about the Southern Engineering and Development Company (SEDCO) race shop that produced the legendary Black Widow Chevy 150 race cars in 1957. SEDCO was established in Atlanta, Georgia, in the fall of 1956 to serve as a Chevrolet-funded development shop that was located closer to the NASCAR race action than GM’s Warren, Michigan, central offices. SEDCO was indeed responsible for retailing the Black Widow factory race cars of 1957, as well as for supplying Corvette racers on the SCCA road-race circuit. But unlike the Advanced Marine Corporation, SEDCO was not a clandestine organization. In fact, because of its high profile, when General Motors elected to obey the June 1957 AMA performance ban, SEDCO closed its doors.

      145 When Advanced Marine Corporation wasn’t secretly helping land-based Chevrolet racers be more competitive, it lived up to its namesake and created engine packages targeted at small-boat owners. One of them was a Corvette 283 small-block-based marine engine that was marketed as “the Terminator.” Decades before “Ahnold’s” android character lit up the silver screen and Ford toyed with using the name on supercharged 2003–2004 Mustang SVT Cobras (19,140 were built, but the name only appeared inside the bolt-on plastic body side scoops), Rathmann’s Miami race shop recognized the inherent “badness” of the Terminator nameplate. Specifics on AMC’s 283 Corvette-themed Terminator weren’t available as of this writing.

      146 For all he contributed to Corvette’s legacy and sales, it doesn’t appear that Arkus-Duntov became a millionaire during his years at General Motors. In the spring of СКАЧАТЬ