Steve Magnante's 1001 Corvette Facts. Steve Magnante
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hp (around twice its stock output) could fracture the block.
12 If you’ve ever pondered the origin of the Ardun V-8 brand name or Zora’s hyphenated last name, here’s the scoop. Zora and his seven-years-younger brother, Yura, were the children of Rachel and Jacques Arkus, Russian revolutionaries. Later, their parents divorced, and Rachel met and married an electrical engineer named Josef Duntov. Out of respect for both male parent figures, Zora and his brother embraced both of their last names. The Arkus-Duntov brothers immigrated to the United States in 1940 and by 1941 had founded the Ardun Mechanical Corporation at 351 West 52nd Street in New York City. By 1944 they had 100 employees and Zora was making $40,000 per year. The Ardun company name was a play on their extended last names.
13 Ardun was making parts for corvettes 10 years before Corvettes appeared on the road. How can this be? Let’s look to the ocean. As a job shop, Ardun Mechanical Corporation took on a wide variety of machining, manufacturing, and design jobs during World War II. One was the development of a harmonic dampener for massive marine diesel engines. Some of these Ardun diesel engines powered a class of armed warships known as corvettes. Similar to destroyers, corvettes were suited to rough seas and were used primarily for hunting enemy submarines.
14 Detroit had a long tradition of applying exciting military names to road-going vehicles including the Ford Mustang, Buick Wildcat, Dodge Hellcat, and many others, so when GM ad man Myron C. Scott suggested the Corvette nameplate (see Fact 3), public awareness of the name was strong. Less than a decade earlier, corvette-class warships made worldwide headlines stalking enemy submarines and surface vessels. Tapping into this gung-ho reputation was a natural move calculated to attract young, male customers, many of whom either likely served on corvette-class vessels not long before or knew someone who did. Today, nobody remembers the oceangoing version; the tail wags the dog.
15 Modern restorers of 1953 Corvettes seeking high-quality photographs of obscure details and unseen nooks and crannies owe a huge debt of gratitude to . . . Chrysler Corporation! The engineering division of Chrysler’s Technical Information Section acquired Corvette number E53F001076 (the 76th car from the 300-car run) and performed a deep-dive photographic investigation of its many unique details. Dated March 1954, Chrysler’s report contained 50 high-quality photos depicting overall views, panel fit irregularities, VIN locations, hinge design, trunk-compartment layout, convertible-top mechanism, and more. No doubt Chrysler was curious about Corvette’s novel fiberglass body construction.
16 Like Ford’s Thunderbird, the Corvette body was originally meant to be formed from steel. It was only the last-minute nature of the decision to put the EX-122 Corvette Motorama show car into production (the program was completed in a mere seven months) that made fiberglass the material of choice. Unlike the many months, and millions of dollars, needed to create the massive die-stamping equipment for steel body panels, as any small-boat builder or California car customizer knew, fiberglass molds could be made in days. It’s documented that Chevrolet only intended to use fiberglass for the first year or two, after which conventional steel construction would take over. However, as its fiberglass body became part of Corvette’s marketing strategy, General Motors embraced it more fully, and the steel-body takeover was cancelled.
17 Some have claimed that Corvette embraced fiberglass construction because of its supposed lighter weight than sheet metal. After all, Corvette was a sports car, and sports cars were light for enhanced power-to-weight ratios and svelte handling. In truth, unless carefully executed, hand-laid fiberglass parts can easily out-weigh identical parts rendered in stamped steel. Part for part, the early Corvette’s hand-laid panels generally weighed slightly more than steel stampings.
18 Without exception, 1954–present Corvettes were either built in Bowling Green, Kentucky (from 1981-on), or St. Louis, Missouri. The only exclusion was the first year, 1953. All 300 debut-year models were built on a dedicated line situated in the middle of Chevrolet’s huge Flint, Michigan, car-and-truck assembly plant. There, any assistance required from the engineering department was minutes away. Corvettes built in Flint wore VIN tags starting with E53F, the fourth character (F) denoting Flint, Michigan. When the St. Louis plant opened for business, the VIN prefix was changed to E54S, with the fourth character (S) representing St. Louis.
19 Long before the sleekly styled 1968 Opel GT triggered false rumors claiming the Stingray was about to get a major down-sizing, Chevrolet used the Opel name as a cover for the original Corvette development program, which started in June 1952. Let’s remember that in 1931, Adam Opel AG became a wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors, so the link was natural. In addition, because it was a manufacturer of small, utilitarian cars at the time, its use didn’t attract hordes of spies and snoops to Chevrolet’s first sports-car development program.
20 Beyond Zora’s “imported” talents, the man tasked with transforming the 1952 Chevrolet passenger-car frame and suspension for Corvette duty was British-born Maurice Olley. He arrived at General Motors during the Great Depression, having previously worked for Rolls-Royce as a suspension engineer. It was Olley who broke Chevrolet away from decades of reliance upon torque tubes with the 1953 Corvette’s use of a modern, open driveshaft.
21 Ignoring aftermarket conversions and owner-built customs, Corvette’s only brush with a factory-authorized station-wagon-body offering (to date) came in 1954. Dubbed the Nomad, it appeared on that year’s Motorama car-show circuit and had a two-door fiber-glass body riding on a 115-inch wheelbase, a full 13 inches longer than a stock Corvette roadster. A year later, the legendary Chevrolet Nomad production model appeared. But instead of expanding the Corvette line, it was constructed of steel and shared its styling with the totally redesigned 1955 full-sized passenger-car lineup. General Motors built 8,386 models of the car destined to become a legend unto itself. As for the 1954 Corvette Nomad, two appear to have been built for the show circuit, one of which still exists today.
Despite teasing the public with two Corvette Nomad station-wagon show cars in 1954, General Motors smartly dropped the idea, allowing the Bel Air–based Nomad to thrive in 1955. This modern-era custom what-if proves the public is still fascinated with what might have been.
22 Hinting that Chevrolet briefly considered offering roadster, wagon, and coupe body types to attract a broader clientele, the 1954 Corvette Corvair coupe appeared on the Motorama show circuit alongside the Corvette Nomad. Much more than a Corvette roadster with a sloping fastback roof, the two-seat Corvair broke away from the distinctive reverse-angle windshield pillars seen on the Motorama Nomad and used on production Corvettes through 1962. Instead, GM stylists employed more traditional A-pillars with a 55-degree slant and wraparound windscreen. The Corvair fast-back would have offered occupants a truly weather-tight cabin with a permanently attached roof, something buyers were forced to wait for until the 1963 Sting Ray coupe.
23 As we all know, Chevrolet applied the Corvair nameplate to a very different line of compact cars just five years after its 1954 debut aboard the Motorama show-car twins. In the latter case, the “air” part of the name referred to the air-cooled, horizontally opposed 6-cylinder engine mounted at the tail of the chassis. So was the 1954 Corvair also air cooled? Nope, its power came from the same triple-carbureted 235-ci OHV 6 used in production Corvettes.
24 One of the biggest myths surrounding 6-cylinder-motivated Corvettes was their supposed sluggish performance. Magazine road tests of the day prove otherwise. With 150 hp and an agile 3.55:1 rear-axle ratio, the 2,850-pound 1953 Corvette turned 0–30 mph in 3.7 seconds, 0–60 mph in 11.0 seconds, and the quarter-mile in 18.0 seconds. These figures beat the contemporary Jaguar XK-120, Porsche 356 coupe, Aston Martin DB2-4 saloon, and Austin Healey 100. The others may have had higher top speeds and better corner-carving capabilities, but in a drag race the Blue Flame 6 Corvettes always came out on top against factory-stock challengers from these competitors.
25 The 1953 Corvette cylinder head is among the rarest Corvette parts in circulation. It was the only head in the Blue Flame 6 engine family with casting number 3836066. Only 300 were installed in cars (plus perhaps two dozen service replacement parts for warranty coverage),