Racing enthusiast Bill Mitchell became a GM vice president in charge of Styling Staff. He bought the chassis of the 1957 Corvette SS mule to build the 1959 Sting Ray, whose racing competed with success and inspired the 1963 production Sting Ray Corvette.
Bill Mitchell could be proud indeed of his Sting Ray, his personal design on the Corvette SS chassis that raced successfully on his nickel. Here it was in racing trim.
Bill Mitchell knew five years in advance that when Harley Earl retired, on December 1, 1958, he would be his successor. At the age of 46 the ebullient Mitchell became a General Motors vice president and head of the company’s Styling Staff. His elevation did not mean that Mitchell, a sports-car enthusiast from his youngest days, would put aside his passions. Quite the contrary. He now had the means to realize his dreams.
Sting Ray’s chassis was that of the Mule version of the Corvette SS in which Zora Arkus-Duntov posed at Sebring in March 1957. It showed great promise.
Bill had been understudying Harley Earl as Styling’s director of design two years earlier when Chevrolet raced at Sebring with its spectacular Corvette SS, a thoroughbred sports-racing car from the pen of Zora Arkus-Duntov, Chevrolet’s Corvette expert. After Sebring both the racing SS and its crude practice Mule chassis were cleaned up and refurbished in a first stage of preparation for a planned assault on Le Mans. GM put the brakes on that exciting program in the spring of 1957 before any SS had a chance to sail for France.
John Fitch, left, drove the untested Corvette SS at Sebring in 1957, from which it retired early. Fitch would have a chance to race its alter ego, the Sting Ray.Behind him John Fitch, Stirling Moss jumps to congratulate Zora Duntov on the great performance of the Corvette SS Mule he tested during 1957 Sebring practice.
Cancellation of Chevrolet’s racing plans meant that the Mule was never fully bodied as an SS. It was, however, a famous chassis with a few faults needing fixing. The Corvette SS Mule saw many pre-race laps at Sebring in 1957. In its moment in the sun, it was test-hopped by Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss. Crude as it was, it set lap times that compared well with the best that Maserati, Jaguar and Ferrari could field.
The existence of this chassis, quietly gathering dust in a GM storeroom, nagged at Bill Mitchell. He had already used racing underpinnings to create some impressive Corvettes. Late in 1958 Bill made his move. “I knew they had three or four chassis that Duntov had built,” Bill recalled. “So I went to Ed Cole and said, ‘Get me one of those.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ll sell it to you for $500.’ It was worth $500,000—tubular frame, de Dion suspension, inboard brakes, everything! Nobody in the corporation knew about it.” Mitchell had to agree ultimately to sell it back to Chevrolet.
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