Robert has pursued parallel career paths for more than 50 years, first as a car designer, then as a writer specializing in design. The first car made to his sketches — a one-off known as the Parkinson Jaguar Special, which is still vintage-racing — was done when he was 15 years old. At 19, he was a General Motors designer, working chiefly on Corvettes, and he had been published in national magazines. From 1958 onward, he has been an independent designer, working for major car manufacturers in Europe and the U.S. and for small-volume specialists. He taught transportation design at the Art Center College of Design, is the editorialist for Italy’s Auto & Design magazine, and has written a popular car design column for Automobile Magazine for 25 years. Learn more about Robert here.
The Suits Win Again It was intended as one of the first steps in his personal plan to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans with Chevrolet, an enduring obsession for Zora Arkus-Duntov. He had participated there a few times in the early 1950s, driving one of Porsche’s early class wins. In 1956, I talked with him frequently in Studio X, where we were working on the initial Corvette C2 (later postponed seven years). I knew he was aiming for that future win and fervently hoped he would achieve his goal. Corporate policies, alas, kept it from ever happening. This audacious […]
The Suits Win Again
It was intended as one of the first steps in his personal plan to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans with Chevrolet, an enduring obsession for Zora Arkus-Duntov. He had participated there a few times in the early 1950s, driving one of Porsche’s early class wins. In 1956, I talked with him frequently in Studio X, where we were working on the initial Corvette C2 (later postponed seven years).
I knew he was aiming for that future win and fervently hoped he would achieve his goal. Corporate policies, alas, kept it from ever happening.
This audacious backdoor Grand Sport project, a courageous undertaking, could easily have cost Zora his career. Perhaps the fact that every car guy at General Motors liked Zora, and that the Grand Sport wasn’t successful in its actual goal of beating the Cobra, saved Zora from the “bad guys” in the GM hierarchy who hated racing in all its forms. Those same people killed off the Corvette SS in 1957 and tried to prevent every manifestation of performance for the rest of Zora’s time there. — Robert Cumberford
FRONT 3/4 VIEW
Great styling, maybe, but awful aerodynamics. This overhanging shelf grabbed a lot of air and tried to lift the front wheels off the pavement
Good old Ted Halibrand; his magnesium wheels were on both silly-dollar American racers auctioned at Car Week this year.
Sewer-pipe exhausts spoke of a great deal of internal combustion taking place under the hood.
Width added to width add-ons. Rules long ago required tires’ treads to be covered on the front upper portion of wheelarches for 30 degrees, and the aft upper part for 90. Zora’s guys took two cuts.
The windshield looks pretty vertical and clunky to our eyes today, responding to a more-upright engineering standard than Ford had at the time.
The stack of louvers and the huge hood bump allowed a big-block engine, if desired. Looks tough, too.
REAR 3/4 VIEW
A dozen holes in the tail skin help significantly with keeping things cool.
So did an external radiator…
…and slots in the rear fenders behind the rear tires…
… not to mention still more holes in the front flanks.
The 30-degree tire cover creates a substantial air brake behind the front wheelhouses.
A pair of ram-air scoops atop the relatively flat panel between the upper cabin and rear fender peaks add yet more cooling capacity.
INTERIOR VIEW
Compared to the rather lavish cockpit finishes of production Corvettes, this cabin is nearly austere. But the engineers who built the five Grand Sports retained the double-cowl bumps of the very first Corvettes, the thin-rimmed steering-wheel design beloved of GM stylists and the nice, color-coded carpeting of a road car. This cabin has neither the harsh unstudied look of a pure racing machine nor any sense of being intended for daily use. It is exactly what it is, a racer meant to help sell cars coming off the production line. I drove one of the three Grand Sport coupes for a few hours on the streets of Southern California. Even with some 600 horsepower it was easy to manage, but the spacious cockpit was the key to the Grand Sport’s greatest flaw: It was just too big.
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