Birth of a Legend: Corvette’s Trial by Fire at Sebring 1956

Ed Cole, Zora Duntov’s ultimate boss, was eager to race. He saw it as a way to gain the kudos needed to attract enthusiastic buyers to his Corvettes. After witnessing the preparations for speed runs at Daytona in 1956, Cole spun 180 degrees from indifference to eagerness to race his Corvette.
“I was not the driving force in ‘Let’s Go Racing’,” Zora recalled. “I was reluctantly pushed into it. Cole had seen the car doing 150 mph and he became very enthusiastic. ‘Let’s go to Sebring,’ he said. And I was terrified. It is one thing to make a speed run and another thing again to go racing with the Corvette of those years.”

Duntov went so far as to suggest in a staff meeting—likely a December 13, 1955 gathering—that an inadequately prepared production Corvette could cause a disaster at Sebring as appalling as the one that killed more than 80 people at Le Mans in 1955. He was well aware that the time remaining to the Sebring 12-hour race on March 24, 1956 virtually dictated that preparation would be less than comprehensive. Moreover he was under pressure to complete his work on GM’s fuel-injection system, a project to which he had been personally assigned by Cole.