Steve Magnante's 1001 Corvette Facts. Steve Magnante
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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 passenger-car-based 265 V-8 served up 180 hp, Corvette retained ultimate bragging rights with 195. MacDonald’s use of the word “option” was surprising; it must have led some readers to assume that a mix of V-8s and 6s would be produced going forward.
120 Judging from the wording of a full-page Corvette ad that also appeared on page 15 in the May 1955 issue of Motor Trend, certain factions within Chevrolet management may have been on the fence about eliminating the 6-cylinder engine altogether. It read, in part, “Now the Blue-Flame 6 is joined by a very special 195-hp version of the astonishing Chevrolet V-8 engine, the version will stun you.” Hmmm. The wording “joined by” instead of “replaced by” certainly implied that there were plans to move forward with both engine offerings. In the end, only seven Blue Flame Corvettes were built in 1955. The other 693 were V-8s.
121 Bumping backward two months to page 15 of the March 1955 issue of Motor Trend we see another full-page ad for the 1955 Corvette that’s even more confusing. There is zero mention of the V-8 engine! A beautifully designed ad with hand-drawn sketches of the car and its details, the headline reads “For experts only!” and the only referenced engine is, “The special Blue-Flame engine fueled by three side-draft carburetors.” A close look at the Corvette script rendered on the front fender of the drawn Corvette reveals an omission of the telltale exaggerated golden V in the Corvette emblem.
122 My take on the lack of V-8 reference in this early 1955 Corvette magazine ad is that it was intentional. Remember, 1954 Corvettes sold very poorly, and thousands of unsold cars lingered on dealership lots well into 1955. To advertise the new V-8 would have made the leftover 1954s sales proof.
123 Of the many small automotive businesses advertising their wares in the back pages of magazines like Motor Trend, one stood out to C1 owners seeking a quieter cabin. Plasticon of San Gabriel, California, ran an ad in the May 1955 issue of the magazine for a one-piece fiberglass top for 1953–1955 cars. It read, “Give your Corvette the additional style and distinction it deserves. Takes only seconds to install or remove, it is detailed very nicely, with stainless rain gutter, interior of rayon flocking, large wraparound Plexiglas rear window, and is completely weatherproofed.”
124 When Chevrolet finally offered a removable hardtop in 1956, companies including Plasticon didn’t dare compete. Nevertheless, with 4,640 C1a Corvettes built, there were enough buyers to keep the orders coming in for a few years. Plasticon retailed its lid for $225, about $10 more than the $215.20 Chevrolet charged for the RPO 419 hardtop in 1956.
125 If aftermarket companies such as Plasticon predicted enough demand to produce Corvette hardtops for 1953–1955 cars, one wonders how much potential revenue Chevrolet lost by ignoring the market. We can’t turn back time, but a look at 1956–1958 RPO 419 auxiliary hardtop sales can give clues. In 1956, 2,076 of 3,467 buyers chose the $215.20 top; in 1957, 4,055 of 6,339 took the option; and in 1958, 5,607 of 9,168 Corvettes left St. Louis with it. So with roughly 2/3 of Corvette buyers taking the hardtop from 1956 to 1958, it’s conceivable that Chevrolet turned its back on $658,942 in potential hardtop sales during the 1953–1955 period (assuming 2/3 of all 1953–1955 buyers took the option at $215.20).
1956–1962 C1b: V-8s and Fuelies Take Over
126 Were any 1956 Corvettes built with 6-cylinder engines? Although seven Blue Flame machines emerged from the St. Louis plant in 1955, by 1956 the 6-cylinder was strictly a thing of Corvette’s past.
127 Did Ford’s Thunderbird save Corvette from extinction? Yes, absolutely. Chevrolet was about to discontinue