Sport -- and Super Sport

For those Americans who dream of a U.S.-bred-and-built sports car, it has been a long time between drinks. The list of great names is a thin one: Mercer. Stutz, Duesenberg, Cunningham – until the Chevrolet Corvette appeared in 1953 there really were no others to be seriously considered.

Semi-sports cars, yes: the Auburn, the Cord, even the early Stanley Steamer, in the Gentleman's Speedy Roadster Model, and in the present, the Ford Thunderbird. But these machines, admirable in their several ways, still could not meet the strictest definition of a sports car: a machine suitable for everyday use and competition.

Even in the longest view, there have been few makes of motorcars that could run with equal ease down of the drugstore or out to the track. One thinks of the mighty old Bentleys, high-sided. Rag-topped four-passenger touring cars that used to win at Le Mans with regularity in the Twenties. Our own best was certainly the Mercer Raceabout. When the Raceabout ran wild on the dusty roads of pre-World War I America, men could, and did, buy one off the showroom floor and take it directly to Indianapolis for the 500. Therein lay part of the monstrous appeal of the car: the one you drove up the graveled driveway to your girl's house in the violet dusk of summer was no watered-down substitute, no mere blood-brother to a racing car – it was a racing car. It was the cold max, the deep-down honest thing itself.

As much could not be said of the Duesenberg. Like most of the great builders of the Twenties and Thirties, Fred Duesenberg made two kinds of cars: passenger and racing. So did Briggs Cunningham when he spent a prince's ransom trying to win Le Mans for America, after World War II. Cunningham made only the minimum number of passenger automobiles necessary to qualify him as a constructor, probably about 30. The rest of Cunningham's production was in competition sports cars with top speeds around the 170 mark. The British made many genuine dual-purpose sports machines: MG, Morgan, Jaguar, Aston Martin, Frazer-Nash and so on. But, until the directors of General Motors decided the company could well afford to have a go at racing again, no Americans of our time had attempted a genuine sports automobile.

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Racing is no new thing to the Chevrolet name. Gaston and Louis Chevrolet were formidable racing drivers, and Gaston won Indianapolis in 1920. But automobile racing, the heart's blood of the industry before the Kaiser's War, had no great appeal for the production-minded men who ran Detroit after the war. They were riding a seller's market, and their decision to concentrate on producing automobiles, never mind racing them, was a logical one. Logical, that is, until 1946, when a British freighter unloaded a gaggle of TC-model MGs on the New York docks. Experienced trend-spotters knew then that something was in the wind, and they knew why: an inevitable aftermath of every war is an uncontainable demand for personal freedom, the right to move about at will – and fast. This demand the sports car uniquely satisfies. Further, thousands of GIs had discovered in Europe, to their amazement, that there were many kinds of automobiles besides American. To a young man brought up believing that a Packard represented the absolute limit of fun on the road, an MG was a revelation, a curtain pulled back on a brand-new kick. Something really special, say a supercharged 2.9 Alfa-Romeo, produced sensations positively alarming in their intensity. As the postwar years wore on, the dribble of imported cars turned into a brisk stream and Detroit decided to pick up this European notion and see what could be done with it. This decision produced the Thunderbird and the Corvette, and at first they were much alike – except that the Thunderbird was a success and the Corvette wasn't. Ford had craftily disclaimed the sports car idea of competitive machinery and announced that the T-bird was a "personal car" – something quicker, handier, more sportif than the cars of the regular line, but distinctly not a competitor. Chevrolet, back there in 1953, rejected the whole-hog sports car idea, too, but less bluntly. T. H. Keating, General Manager of GM's Chevrolet Division, said, "In the Corvette we have built a sports car in the American tradition. It is not a racing car in the accepted sense that a European sports car is a race car. It is intended rather to satisfy the American public's conception of beauty, comfort and convenience, plus performance..."

The car found a limited acceptance: the white plastic body looked vaguely like an upside-down bathtub, the top leaked, and the flat-top six-cylinder 150-horsepower engine with automatic transmission moving 2850 pounds made it no tiger on the road. In short, it looked funny and it wouldn't really go. Over the next two years, it was the Thunderbird salesmen who walked away with the money. By the end of 1955, Corvette production had simmered down to fewer than 100 units a day.

The idea of failure has never been well received at General Motors and they decided to start over again. The new Chevrolet V-8 engine was in production, and the regular-issue cars powered by it had been taking a lot of silverware from the stock car circuits. A European-type racing department for the stocks had been set up at Chevrolet, and a small air of excitement, conspiratorial and gay, hung over it. Mechanics had bets going with each other on the performance of cars they rated, and on race-days men hung over the radio and listened for the word. Nothing like this had been seen in Detroit for 25 years. Names well-known in sports car racing began to be mentioned as actual or prospective Chevrolet employees or consultants, names like Zora Arkus-Duntov, designer, and John Fitch, driver and writer. Early in 1956 it was announced that there would be a new spanking new Corvette, powered by the 225-horse-power V-8 carrying two four-barrel carburetors.

I went to Detroit to see the car, and although the one they showed me was the first one, hand-built and a non-runner, it was obvious that men of both taste and mechanical prescience had been at work: by indenting an air-foil along the side of the body the designers had nullified the deadly bathtub look; the steering wheel was new and very Grand Prix and Italian in appearance, drilled-out spokes and all; the interior was new, the top was automatic, the windows rolled up and you could have a stick-shift if you wanted it.The chassis was the same one Chevrolet uses on its police cars and the engine was obviously quick and susceptible to any amount of modification. People forgot all about the old flat-head Corvette and looked at the 1956 as if it were a brand-new beast. This was obviously a car in the 115-120 mph class.

American sports car drivers had hoped the drought was over when the Thunderbird and the Corvette first appeared, and that it might be possible now to win an occasional race mounted on a U.S.-built car. A few had been impressed at first by the Thunderbird, but soon realized that it was just what Ford said it was: no sports car. The first Corvette, with its mandatory automatic transmission, had no chance at all, but the new one looked as if it might well be the answer. A lot of people dug deep and plunked down money.

At about this time – early in 1956 – Alec Ulman, the Sebring promoter, held a quiet luncheon meeting for a few cognoscenti at the Racquet Club in New York. Duntov was there, so was Fitch, together with Cole and MacKenzie of the Chevrolet top brass. Over coffee it was announced that GM president Harlow Curtice himself had authorized limited release of the statement that Chevrolet was in racing, seriously and for good. A couple of the guests were nearly overcome by the impact of this news: it meant that for the first time in a quarter-century a big U.S. firm was throwing down the gauntlet, deciding to sell its automobiles by arguing that they would damned well go faster than the competition's, go faster and stick better and outlast and out-gut anything else around. It meant that an American manufacturer would have a full racing department, staffed by high-performance experts and racing mechanics, campaigning from April to September up and down the land, and perhaps in Europe, too. It meant that maybe, just maybe, there'd be an American car you could run without being blown off by every D-Jag or 300SL owner who felt like showing you. The rejoicing in the Racquet Club that day was decorous but intense. This might be a first step taking America back to the big league of automobile racing – a heady atmosphere we hadn't known since Jimmy Murphy copped the Grand Prix of France in a Duesenberg in 1921. No U.S.-built car had won a European road-event since (continued on page 81Super Sport (continued from page 52) that time, although one American driver, Bob Said, won a Grand Prix in a Ferrari at Rouen in 1953.

The Corvettes first ran under factory sponsorship at Sebring, 1956. General Motors' public relations policy would not yet permit open acknowledgement, but no one was deceived, or was meant to be. Five cars were entered, the No. l being driven by John Fitch and Walter Hansgen, two of America's best drivers, particularly qualified on heavy machinery. Their car, carrying an unusually big engine for a Chevrolet – 5180 cubic centimeters, about the size of a Pontiac's – finished in 9th place, beaten by two Ferraris, two Jaguars, two Porsches, a Maserati and an Aston Martin. Two others finished in 15th and 23rd places, and two more retired, one on the 4th lap with a broken camshaft, one on the 23rd with a cracked cylinder head. Everything considered, this was a very reasonable showing, and the only disappointed Corvette boosters were a few feather-headed chauvinists who had expected that because the Corvettes were American they would lap the field in the first hour. To finish 9th in the hottest sports car league in the world, and running over one of the world's meanest circuits, was actually quite laudable, and there was even a prize for the Fitch-Hansgen car &andsh; it won a cup as the first sports car over 4000 cc. to finish. (If a Corvette had finished 25th and dead last it would still have won this, since there were no other over-4000 cc. cars running.)

The 1956 Sebring did put weight on the arguments of those who held that while an American-made car might do well in big-league sports car racing, the going would not be easy, and the next 12 months saw a heavy effort made by Chevrolet. A new and mysterious "SS" model (for "Super Sport") was known to be under design, but the standard Corvette, now producing 283 horsepower out of 283 cubic inches, with fuel-injection and a close-ratio four-speed transmission available at option, was turning into the terror of American road circuits. The smug owners of 300SL Mercedes-Benz coupes, barricaded in impeccable social security by their upward-opening gull-wing doors, found to their horror that a 300SL, all $8500 worth of it, could be taken by a hard-driven Corvette costing $5000 less. A Washington, D.C., dentist, Dr. Richard Thompson, began to campaign in earnest with a Corvette, said by the knowledgeable to be a factory car, and when the Sports Car Club of America totted up its rankings at the end of the year, lo, Dr. Thompson led all the rest: he was national champion in Class C production, previously a Jaguar XK140 stakeout.

Some Chevrolet advertising began to sound pretty tough – the more so because it was dictated from an entirely tenable position: "'Sports car' is a description that has a proud meaning. It can't be pinned loosely on any two-seater convertible or five-passenger clubcoupe. In America, only one car is entitled to use the term – the Chevrolet Corvette ... in all the world only a handful of great names quality, and in America only one is manufactured – Corvette."

Other copy was more specific: "…Mainspring of the Corvette's performance is, of course, the fantastically effi-cient 4.3-liter V-8 Chevrolet engine. Holder of the Pikes Peak stock car record, heart of the Corvette that set a two-way American mark of 150 mph at Daytona Beach, powerplant of the Mascar Short Track champion, this short-stroke V-8 is capable of turning well over 5000 rpm..."

Because the Corvette had been winning races that had been regarded as strictly the private property of Jaguar owners, small and discreet alarm bells were sounding in England, and early in 1957 the Jaguar factory announced a new model: the XK-SS, of which 150 would be built to conform with Sports Car Club of America production standards. The XK-SS was a thoroughly frightening looking machine. It was obviously a D-Jaguar with a shave and a haircut. The body was the same body that had covered the Le Mans-winning Jaguars, except that a windshield had been stuck on and a folding cloth top arranged for. Pasted to the tail was a chrome luggage rack, the rear being otherwise fully occupied by petrol-tank and spare tire. The wheels were racing knock-off, the head-lamps faired over with clear plastic, the enormous gas-tank filler-cap sat just behind the driver's head, and the whole rig looked like something that would do 150 miles an hour up the Matterhorn. This bolide, to be sold for around $6500 (qualified drivers, only need apply) was, if one could believe everything one heard, Jaguar's answer to the Corvette. It would almost certainlyhave interfered with the Corvette's winning ways, at that, but a near-catastrophic fire at the Jaguar factory destroyed or damaged a large number of the cars, and Sir William Lyons, head of Jaguar, ordered every-thing that had in any way been touched by the fire to be junked. (He felt that anything less draconian would result in rumors that the factory was flogging off fire-sale merchandise on the unsuspecting Yanks.)

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Meanwhile, back at the foundry, Chev-(Continued overleaf) rolet engineers led by the redoubtable Mr. ArKus-Duntov had nearly completed their own SS, the Corvette Super Sport. Outwardly, the car was instantly identifiable as a Corvette because of the familiar grill and the air-foil indentation on the side. However, it was half a ton lighter, 10 inches shorter than the production model, and underneath the sKin strange and wonderful things were going on: the frame was a 180-pound arrangement of welded tubing derived from the Mercedes-Benz 300SL; instead of a solid axle the expensive De Dion system was used (a dead axle carrying the weight; the differential bolted to the frame, universal jointed half-shafts driving the wheels); the rear brake drums were mounted inboard, next to the differential, to reduce unsprung weight. The 283-inch fuel-injection engine was full of light alloys and every nut and bolt in it had been specially selected. Topping everything, a road-to-the-moon headrest and a plastic bubble canopy gave the car a most distinctive look.

This, then, was the Corvette for the 1957 Sebring. Again John Fitch would drive the No. l car, and more nearly standard Corvettes would back him up. This was to be a major effort, and everyone connected with Chevrolet seemed to feel that a reasonable success at Sebring would be followed by an entry for Le Mans in July and that success there would result in flat-out Chevrolet participation in world sports car racing. The excitement was contagious and it fed on a fantastic amount of pre-race talk about the Corvette. In the hotels, the bars, the garages of Sebring, two topics dominated every conversation: the 4.5-liter Maserati, said to be producing 400 horsepower, and the Corvette. Of the two, the Corvette was getting the most attention. One heard that the cornering power of the car astounded even Fitch; that the sintered ceramic-metallic brake linings were proving to be absolutely fade-proof; that the drivers were under orders to slow down once during every lap, lest rival clockers learn that even the beat-up practice SS, "The Mule," was faster than anything that had ever run at Sebring. Here, it seemed, was a Detroit-spawned car turning in lap speeds that might well make it a fear-some contender in championship racing all over the world. The atmosphere was electric. The presence of GM brass, the tight security arrangements surrounding the Corvette, the sheer numbers of the Corvette contingent-I heard that a request for 60 pit-passes had been made, instead of the usual half-dozen-all helped to make the wildest stories credible. When word went round that GM had offered S10,000 to Juan Manuel Fangio, the champion of the world, to drive the Corvette, it seemed only reasonable, so high was excitement running. Since Fangio was under contract to Maserati, he could hardly do more than entertain the idea, but he did accept an invitation to try out the car, and both he and Stirling Moss lapped the 5.2-mile course in 3 minutes 27 seconds in the sorry-looking practice "Mule." The 1956 record was 3 minutes 29.7 seconds, and Fangio, in particular, was enthusiastic about the Corvette. "Fantastico," he said, "I could have gone two seconds faster If I had tried." Driving the Corvette was in a sense a homecoming for Fangio – most of his early victories in the Argentine were won on stock Chevrolets. Still, he could not break his contract even if he wanted to, and a hurry-up phone call was made to Piero Taruffi in Rome. Taruffi, one of the two or three greatest road-drivers of all time, accepted on the spot and he and his wife threw some things in a bag and were on the scene as quickly as the Linee Aeree Italiane could arrange it. Taruffi, a ranking engineer and designer in his own right, was clearly impressed with the car, although he was somewhat more restrained than Fangio. Duntov, a broad grin plastered across his face, added: "It is irrational that the car should go so fast when it is so new."

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When the flag fell to start the 12-hour Sebring race, the sleek, for-real SS Corvette stood at the head of the rank of cars parked in a long line facing diagonally down the track, since the cars are placed according to engine size, and the Corvette was running the biggest engine in the race. Fitch, the starting driver, didn't get off the mark quite as quickly as one of the standard Corvettes driven by Dick Thompson, which was actually the first car across the line, the blood-redItalian cars howling after it. That was the high point of the race for Corvette and the thousands of Corvette backers. The SS, the big ice-blue Corvette, started off like a rocket, the huge V-8 engine booming in the slow beat of the breed in contrast to the high-pitched screaming of the Ferraris and Maseratis, but after three good laps Fitch brought it into the pits to change a wheel. Peter Collins, running wild for Ferrari, was leading the field, and when the SS pulled out again it had of course dropped down the rankings, but certainly not hopelessly far. There was still the better part of the 12-hour period to run. But in twenty minutes the Corvette was in again, this time with ignition trouble, The red Italian cars screamed past it, silent in the pits. Again it was pushed off, again it ran like a demon for a time, and then, just at the end of the main straight, it died again. This time it was a coil that had failed. The foresighted Fitch had one in his pocket and he changed it on the spot, pulled out again, still running fast but now a long way behind. He was beginning to suffer from the heat in the cockpit, which was almost unbearable. The big exhaust pipes, running down the side of the car, were absurdly closed in and they made a furnace for the driver to sit in. Piero Taruffi tried the car and it went no better for him. Finally a rubber-bushing failure in the rear suspension put it out for good. Fangio, in the 4.5 Maserati, won.

None of these failures could be considered serious, or even notable. The 60-year history of automobile racing is studded with such disappointments. What was remarkable was that the car was so fast and handled so well.

"As designed, without any modification indicated by experience, the SS was a highly competitive sports car," John Fitch said. "It can honestly be compared with the Mercedes-Benz 300SL. As a matter of fact, in two departments, cornering and braking, I think it extremely unlikely that any amount of effort would bring improvement."

The Corvettes were packed up and shipped back to Detroit in March, but there was still Le Mans in July. The organizers of the 24-hour race expected three Corvettes to run, one of them under the sponsorship of Briggs Cunningham. Cunningham had made the entry for the car in December 1956, long before the performance potential of the SS was known. Out of his experience in building racing cars from scratch, Cunningham knew that the flaws the Corvette had shown at Sebring were of no major significance, nothing that prolonged testing would not cure. But Cunningham never got a chance to prove it. He was told, late in May, that the factory would not enter the car and that it could not be bought. The reason was publicly announced early in June: the Automobile Manufacturers Association board of directors recommended to member companies that they take no further part in any kind of racing activity. The force behind the resolution was a fear of growing public concern over the horsepower race and the upswing in highway fatalities.

The SS will still run on GM proving ground tracks, but only as an "engineering experiment." No competitive event will see it go. The regular production Corvette will continue to be made, and anyone who wants fuel-injection, 283 horsepower, a close-ratio four-speed manual gear-box and other competition necessities can have them, and Corvettes will still zip down to the drugstore and out to the track and they will still win. And the Corvette is still the only real sports car being built in America. But for a few days, in the hot sun of Sebring in March, it looked as if the Corvette might take a run at whipping the best in the world.

The holy terror of U.S. road circuits: a standard touring-competition Corvette.

America's all-out entry in big-time racing: the Corvette Super Sport with road-to-the-moon headrest and the guts of a winner.