Yahoo Autos The Corvette Stingray Concept’s Stunning History
It has been most of a human lifetime since this car made its mark on automotive history. The stunning 1959 Chevrolet Stingray racer/concept seen in this photo gallery was designed by Peter Brock, Larry Shinoda, and Bill Mitchell, who was GM’s director of styling at the time. It was initially a styling exercise; secondarily, it was an exploration of Corvette performance and handling capabilities. Riding on a 92-inch wheelbase and the tube-frame chassis from one of Zora Arkus-Duntov’s 1957 Corvette SS race cars, it weighed just 2200 pounds (about half a ton less than a production Corvette of its era), and its 283-cubic-inch fuel-injected small-block V-8 delivered 315 horsepower (SAE gross) at 6200 rpm.
Mitchell-heir apparent to GM’s industry-dominating Styling section, which was still under the leadership of its founder, Harley Earl-had just returned from the October 1957 auto show in Turin, Italy, and was thinking how great a second-generation Corvette could look using themes borrowed from some streamlined Italian sports cars he had seen there. But that June, the all-powerful Automobile Manufacturers Association (AMA) banned U.S. automakers from supporting performance or motorsports activities and from building, selling, or advertising performance products. And when Mitchell, a strong performance and racing enthusiast, was told that the ban would kill Chevrolet’s still struggling Corvette two-seater, he reportedly said, “I’m not going to let that happen.”
So he gave this project to a group of young designers in Styling’s basement Research B studio, away from the prying eyes of GM executives, accountants, divisional managers, and everyone else not directly involved. “Three or four of us were there when he walked in,” Peter Brock told us (the same Peter Brock who would some years later design Carroll Shelby’s Le Mans–winning Cobra). “He sat down and told us what he wanted to do, and we were looking at each other thinking, ‘Is this for real? He wants to give us the Corvette program?’
“He pulled out a bunch of pictures from Turin and laid them out, and they all had a crisp line around the belt separating upper from lower, and aerodynamic shapes over the wheels. And the one that really got to him, even though it was two years old by then, was the Alfa Romeo Disco Volante. Alfa had done roadster and coupe versions, and Mitchell wanted to do the first Corvette coupe. He said, ‘Okay, guys, give me your best. Put it up on the walls. I’ll be back in a few days to check it out.’ ”
Brock’s theme won that competition, and with Mitchell coaching this youthful team (which also included Gene Garfinkle, Chuck Pohlman, and Norm Neumann, under studio head Bob Veryzer), they took it from sketches to a one-fifth-scale model, then a full-size clay that would fit on the Mercedes-Benz 300SL–derived Corvette SS chassis that Mitchell had purchased from Chevrolet engineering. But when the AMA ban lingered, he decided to turn the car into a prototype racer that he would own himself and campaign out of his own pocket to publicly test its design with no clear connection to Chevrolet or GM.
He told the designers to lose its roof and make it a roadster. Then it was moved, in the dark of night during the December 1957 Christmas break, to a secret studio behind a tool room called the Hammer Room. There it received further development by ace designer Larry Shinoda and board man Tony Lapine. Early in 1959, shortly after Mitchell succeeded Earl as a GM vice president, it was moved again and finished in Mitchell’s new secret Studio X, in the basement of the Styling Administration building.
Expertly piloted by Dr. Dick “the Flying Dentist” Thompson, Mitchell’s Stingray scored a fourth-place finish in its Marlboro, Maryland, Raceway debut on April 18, 1959, and an SCCA national championship the following year. It was then retired from racing, upgraded with a 327-cubic-inch V-8 and a passenger seat (among other changes), and became a concept car, which Mitchell joyfully drove on weekends. It also served as a test bed for a four-speed manual transmission, a de Dion rear suspension, and extensive usage of aluminum. At one time (according to Karl Ludvigsen, author of the comprehensive book Corvette: America’s Star-Spangled Sports Car, the Complete History), it even got a 427-cubic-inch V-8. Most important, its jaw-dropping design led directly to the styling of the 1963 C2 Corvette, which was named Sting Ray (two words, although the race/concept car wears a one-word badge). The original car is now part of the General Motors Heritage Collection and was most recently displayed alongside other landmark GM concept cars at the 2018 Concours d’Elegance of America in Plymouth, Michigan.
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