Corvette history 1956-57

Index	1956-57 CORVETTE Page 2

Another person in high places was Edward Nicholas Cole. He was a gentle man: cheerful, astute, thoughtful, kind, courteous, enthusiastic, engaging, and extremely capable. He grew up in Mame, Michigan, where his father ran a small dairy farm. As a teenager, Cole buzzed the countryside in his hot rods, among them a Saxon roadster and several Model T Fords. His father wanted him to become a lawyer, but Cole loved things mechanical and decided on a career in automotive engineering.

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In the Depression year of 1933, after dropping out of the General Motors Institute for financial reasons, Cole was offered a job at Cadillac as a lab assistant. Sixteen years later, he emerged as that division's chief engineer. There he headed the team that engineered Cadillac's revolutionary, lightweight, overhead-valve V-8 for 1949.

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Cole moved to Chevrolet in 1952, again as chief engineer. There he immediately boosted Chevy's technical staff from 850 to 2900 people, all needed to develop the 1955 V-8 and the all-new 1955 passenger cars and trucks. In 1953, Chevrolet decided to produce the Corvette, so Cole hired Zora Arkus-Duntov that spring to help vault Chevrolet past Ford in the performance arena. Ed Cole went on to become Chevrolet's general manager in 1956, then GM's president in 1967. He retired in 1974 and was killed in 1977 when his twin-engined Badger aircraft crashed in a snowstorm near Kalamazoo, Michigan.

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It was during the Cole years that the Corvette arrived, survived, and eventually flourished. GM and Chevrolet were doing extremely well financially in the mid-Fifties, and that success played a major role in Corvette's survival. Also, Chevy's rivalry with Ford grew intense when Cole decided to pull away from Ford not only in sales, but also in raw performance. Until 1955, the average man in the street -- even if performance didn't mean that much to him -- viewed Ford as the hot rod and Chevy as the bank teller's car. That stereotypical image had for decades rested on Ford's lively flathead V-8 versus the competent but stodgy Stovebolt Six.

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Then suddenly in 1954-55, American automotive technology changed. Ford launched its "Y-Block" pushrod overhead-valve V-8 in 1954, which was followed by Chevy's small-block V-8 the next year. It was a classic battle of the giants: Dearborn versus Detroit, complete with a raging horsepower race, stock-car competition drawing record crowds, and polarized loyalties. Here were the two traditional U.S. auto giants trying desperately to outdo and outsell each other.

Into this total, unconditional war were plunged the Corvette and Ford's new two-place Thunderbird. By 1955, when the T-Bird arrived, the Corvette was nearly ready to receive its last rites. But also by 1955, Chevrolet and GM were enjoying the best money years of their lives. So was Ford. And thus the tremendous Ford/Chevy rivalry manifested itself on both technological and sales levels. Without GM's corporate fitness and wealth, the 'Vette would surely have joined such mid-Fifties memories as the Nash-Healey, Kaiser-Darrin, and Hudson Italia. And even Ford's moderately successful 1955-57 Thunderbird, which outsold the Corvette by more than five-to-one during those years, didn't show a profit. Money wasn't at issue, though; rather, it was corporate ego and divisional glory. Chevrolet wasn't about to let the T-Bird kick sand in its face.

As has been noted, the 1953-55 Corvettes had an odd focus. Their fiberglass bodies said high tech, and their styling showed that Harley Earl had a good understanding of the sports car mystique. But the old Stovebolt Six and the Powerglide automatic put the early 'Vette in a compromised position against true sports cars like the Jaguar XJ-120. Six-cylinder 'Vettes weren't especially quick, they leaked and squeaked, and handled like motorboats. Not to put them down, but there was ample reason not to buy a Corvette in its formative years.

And that's were Zora Arkus-Duntov comes in. Arriving at Chevrolet in May of 1953 he was born in Belgium of Russian emigre parents and educated in Germany. He'd been around the track a few times, notably with Allard in England. Just before going to Allard, he and his brother Yura designed the Ardun overhead-valve conversions for Ford's flathead V-8, which Sydney Allard used in some of his sports/racing cars. Zora was an accomplished performance engineer, a top-notch chassis designer, and a good race driver as well. Ed Cole hired him to help make all Chevrolets -- not just Corvettes -- outperform the hottest cars of the day. Zora's job was partly to create Chevy's competitive edge and partly to promote it.

Zora became the catalyst that transformed the Corvette into a genuine sports car. In the days when Cole was still Chevy's chief engineer, he and Duntov decided to abandon the boulevard approach -- leave that to the Thunderbird -- and to head for the track and run with the big dogs. Again, it was only because Chevrolet had a V-8 in the works and could afford to throw good money after bad that Cole and Duntov (and to some extent, Earl) lobbied top management to legitimize the Corvette as a competitive sports car. Cole convinced his immediate boss, Chevrolet's then-general manager Thomas Keating, that this was the way to go. Keating, Earl, and Cole then convinced GM president Harlow Curtice, which sewed up all the necessary people in high places.

It wouldn't have made much sense not to drop the V-8 into the 1955 Corvette, and indeed only six 'Vettes came through that year with the six. What didn't make sense was the Powerglide transmission, the only gearbox available until late in the model year, when the three-speed manual became available. That left most '55 'Vettes definitely unsports-car-like.

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October 10, 1998