The Legend Who Created the Corvette : Autos: Zora Arkus-Duntov, 81, is revered for his engineering feat in developing America’s famous sports car.
The canonization of Zora Arkus-Duntov is almost complete.
His 1953 memo suggesting that American youth was ready for an American high-performance car has been donated to General Motors. It is being framed and enshrined. As others with a sense of immortality have done with presidential papers.
At a recent Florida gathering of classic car cognoscenti, the crowd surrounded and held Duntov captive beneath a palm tree. He autographed calendars, show programs, car pictures and posters for three hours. As movie stars must do.
On Friday, Duntov traveled to a museum in Oxnard where the master met the pick of his masterpieces--a pristine 12-car pride of the world’s rarest, most-valued, most-powerful Chevrolet Corvettes.
As corporate and industry recognitions go, it was an Oscar moment and clearly one man’s lifetime achievement award.
Over cheese and chenin blanc at the Vintage Museum of Transportation and Wildlife--where the wild life is represented by six-dozen muscle and race cars as much as it is by big-game trophies--Duntov was revered for his 1953-75 service to the development and continuance of the Chevrolet Corvette.
First as research engineer and ultimately as chief engineer, they said, he was the man who elevated the Corvette from show car and plastic toy to true American sports car and world-class racer.
Zora Arkus-Duntov is the patriarch of high performance, said Jim Perkins, general manager of Chevrolet. Also the heritage of the company, he continued. Certainly Saint Zora.
“The word that comes to mind is complete,” said Reeves Callaway, whose Callaway Cars of Old Lyme, Conn., modifies and turbocharges stock Corvettes into 180-m.p.h. collectibles. “There are great designers, there are great motor people and great corporate politicians.
“Zora Arkus-Duntov is all of these things. And a race car driver. So he was able to build a car where his personality shows through. The Corvette is him.”
The cars, it follows, are the marque of Zora.
All of which Duntov finds horribly embarrassing.
“A man puts his pants on one leg at a time,” spoke the Belgian-born, German-educated Russian emigre. He was 81 on Christmas Day and is fading gently, but with dignity to his years and the effects of a mild stroke. “So the fuss about me is out of proportion.
“The cars. They deserve the attention. Not because of engine numbers matching chassis numbers. But because of the car as a whole and how the hell they assembled it to produce the end result, a good car.
“I really didn’t create anything. Genius? Hah! I just make a good car.”
Duntov is happy that Corvettes are being collected and that he will have a legacy.
In one area of the country, a collector has 25 Corvettes estimated to be worth more than $1.5 million. In another, there is a collection representing every year of the car--from the first 1953 Corvette powered by a Chevy Stovebolt-Six, to today’s limited edition, 385-horsepower Corvette ZR-1 capable of 180 m.p.h.
Duntov is angry that time and corporate economies have damaged the car’s affordability. His original concept was inexpensive high performance, and in 1953 a Corvette convertible cost $3,500. Its 1991 equivalent costs $33,000.
He also knows he could have done much more with the car.
“I know that I give lots of people joy, and I’m happy for that,” he says. “But my satisfaction with the car was never really full . . . because I was always constrained.”
One of those corporate trade-offs, Duntov says, saw him back down on several engineering issues. As early as 1957, he worked on four-wheel drive and mid-engine technology, developments embraced by today’s high-performance automobiles. Yet Duntov was denied.
In 1963 he complained that Chevrolet stylists were becoming dangerously preoccupied with aesthetics over aerodynamics.
“I tried it (1963 Corvette prototype) on the proving ground and at 150 m.p.h. I felt front-end lift and I was losing control. Aerodynamically, the car was at the limit that it could do and at the point of becoming a bad airplane.”
Duntov fought the stylists on this one but was defeated again.
“I lost interest in that car right then,” he says. “You know, I never used a public opinion poll. I decided (what to build). And looking around here, at my Corvettes, and people praising and collecting them, probably I was right.”
Duntov did win more than a few arguments.
He fought for seat designs and instrument positioning until the Corvette interior was an ergonomic ideal. He brought fuel injection to the car and a four-speed, all-synchromesh gearbox. Retractable headlights. Limited slip differentials. To these he added independent suspension on all wheels, with variable rate springs for better handling over a broader performance range. He built Corvettes that competed in the senior endurance races, the 12 Hours of Sebring and the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
In the end, in the mid-60s, Duntov spoke the Corvette’s highest credential: Here was an American sports car he would be proud to be seen driving in Europe.
Yet had he been given a free hand for his own design views?
“Today’s Corvette would be a mid-engined car and four-wheel driven,” he says. “For obvious reasons. Four-wheel drive for better traction needed in a high-performance car. Mid-engine for better balance, more efficient braking.”
Friday at the Vintage Museum--owned by Otis Chandler, former publisher of the Los Angeles Times and now chairman of the executive committee of the Times Mirror Co.--Duntov touched and smiled at and re-explored the major cars of his past.
Arranged by the museum with Chevrolet’s assistance, the visit was an afternoon of testimony to a collection--through a tribute to a man.
Duntov was photographed for a commemorative portrait alongside a blood-red 1965 Corvette--the first year for Chevrolet’s big-block engine.
He sat inside a white 1969 ZL-1--a 430-horsepower Corvette of which only two were made.
He admired a 1971 ZR-1--8,600 miles and only five owners.
He corrected the Corvette reminiscences of others, autographed more books, sat for a television interview and toured the museum collection of muscle cars, sports cars, race cars, classic cars and railroad cars.
Nothing tired the white-haired bantamweight legend who still climbs steps two at a time, flies his own single-engined Rockwell 112 and says his only training regimen is a 5 o’clock martini.
And driving his Corvette.
It used to be a 1974 Corvette owned since retirement from Chevrolet: “But three years ago, someone offered me $100,000 for the car and I said: ‘Take it.’ ”
Now it is the 1989 Corvette purchased as a replacement: “But I don’t like it as much as the ’74. It’s not as good as it should be. It should be a mid-engined car and four-wheel driven. . . .”
