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GM’s 1950s Motorama-mobiles were mostly pretty out-there, with flamboyant fins, rocket-inspired skegs and cockpits, and other flights of wild imagination. Frankly, many of them were a bit absurd and even childish. But there were a few that were somewhat down to earth, even rather brilliant, like this 1955 Chevrolet Biscayne.
Built for outright top speed, this prototype Corvette was built by Zora Duntov. He successfully piloted the car to a two-way average speed of 150 mph in January of 1956 at Daytona. Later two more similar cars were built for the 1956 Daytona Speed Weeks in February. After initial resistance from Engineering, Duntov’s cam was delivered to the Proving Ground.
1953 Corvette Owners Manual
A warm welcome to a new form of motoring pleasure is extended to you as a Corvette owner. This is your introduction to an all new and distinctive design in which Chevrolet combines many of the desirable features of the passenger car into a truly fine and beautiful sports car.
The engineers came up with a unit-body construction that relied on strength coming from the side sills of the chassis. These contained the exhaust which probably easily overheated the cockpit, especially in the coupe. Unfortunately, GM fitted fake V6 engines in both cars with a concept valve train that included dual overhead camshafts.
1962 corvette
While there are some early C1 Corvettes out there that are exceedingly rare and prohibitively expensive, there are plenty of first-generation Corvettes - especially those between 1959 and 1961 - that are well within the range of most budgets.