The new C8 Chevrolet Corvette would make Zachary Arkus-Duntov very happy. The Belgian-born engineer and racing driver (class win at Le Mans and a Pikes Peak record) is known as the “Father of the Corvette”.
Not the creator, mind, because Arkus-Duntov joined General in Motors in 1953, after the sports car was launched. Actually, he joined because the sports car was launched: he saw the Corvette at GM’s Motorama show and approached the company about working on it.
As director of high-performance vehicles at GM from 1954, he shaped the Corvette legend, introducing V8 power in 1955 and fuel injection in 1957. And Arkus-Duntov always wanted a mid-engined Corvette.
He was well aware of the shift towards the mid-engined layout in top level competition from the late-1950s. He masterminded the Chevrolet Engineering Research Vehicle (CERV) concept car in 1960, a pseudo-Indy open-wheeler with the engine in the middle, behind the driver.
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Not exactly a road car design, but it was later used for testing and handling development. Those lessons were applied to CERV II (1964), a mid-engined all-wheel drive sports car that would have worn a Corvette badge and taken on the likes of the Ford GT40 in endurance racing.
As with the original CERV, it was really a passion project, because there had been an American Manufacturer’s Association (AMA) ban on factory-backed racing since 1957; Arkus-Duntov had hoped to circumvent that by having private teams enter the cars. It didn’t happen.
But CERV II (above) was used for further mid-engined development, partly with a view towards a “super Corvette” GM wanted to build.
There came a steady line of mid-engined Corvette concepts through the late-1960s and 1970s, including the XP-880/Astro II, XP-882 and even a rotary-powered XP-987. Some guy called John Z DeLorean authorised an alloy bodied concept in 1972, the XP-895.
Arkus-Duntov retired in 1975, but the mid-engined Corvette idea kept moving. The most notable was CERV III of 1990, which obviously paid homage to Arkus-Duntov’s originals but also looked quite production-ready, including all-wheel drive, four-wheel steering and active suspension. But it still wasn’t the right time.
That seems like a good place for The Good Oil to leave it. Although GM certainly didn’t.