The Corvette Diaries: Launching the Sting Ray

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, August 16, the U.S. Air Force came calling-their second high-ranking delegation of the summer. This time it was Chief of Staff Curtis Lemay, along with two aides. In the early '50s, as commander of the Strategic Air Command, LeMay had made airbases available for sports car racing; in return, he received the SCCA's Wolf Barnato Award. On that day he was in Detroit for a Sting Ray ride at the Proving Grounds, later lunching with Cole, Knudsen, Goodman, and Bill Mitchell. Afterward Cole and Goodman asked "Bombs Away" LeMay how to get defense business. "LeMay said he felt with all the sentiment against GM's size they ought to be in defense work to be less vulnerable. He said he felt we would have to spend some of our own money in order to show good faith. He also said we needed an organization to do it." After his '65 promotion to group vice president, GM's defense contracts became one of Knudsen's domains. Before LeMay took off-quite literally, he flew himself around in Air Force bombers-Cole and Mitchell shocked Knudsen and Goodman by taking the general and his aides down to Styling, where they were shown the '64 models under development. Yet this was hardly the last surprise Cole had in store for Knudsen

The parade continued. At the end of that same week, Augie Pabst, brewing family scion and successful sports car racer, arrived for his look at the Sting Ray. "He was amazed," Knudsen said, noting Pabst remained in "bad shape" due to a recent accident. Always impressed with good manners and stately bearing, he lauded Pabst as "a very nice and clean young man."

After the Sting Ray had dazzled Chevrolet dealers and top GM management, the next group exposed to its power was the automotive press. On August 21, reporters gathered at the Proving Grounds for the '63 model year preview. Knudsen must have headed into this news conference with high hopes. "This entirely new Corvette is much more than another bucket seat luxury sports car," he said, before running through the impressive list of equipment and features. "The early Corvettes established a performance and luxury image that has affected automobile design around the world and inspired a whole new class and concept of personal transportation. A Corvette in the driveway has become the suburban symbol of arrival for those with sports car taste."

He concluded his remarks by saying, "The new aerocoupe will expand the line to attract greater interest in those customers desiring closed car comfort with sports car appeal." Writing later in his diary about the reaction this program produced, his sarcasm leaked onto the page: "Corvette good. When a dead group like newspaper men give a standing ovation, it must be good."

As all these episodes passed in the waning summer of 1962, Knudsen was recalling the good things at Pontiac that had been wrought for him (and for Mickey Thompson, Bobby Unser, Smokey Yunick, and others) with the 421ci engine and Tri-Power, and such pleasant recollections led him to dream of the big-block Chevy V-8. He had already reconnoitered the "fine" Tonawanda plant, and eventually the Mark IV engine would be produced there.

Before he could launch this crusade, which would forever galvanize Corvette adherents, he had to contend with a brushfire of the incendiary Cole's own setting. The first flames flickered during the final week of August, and Knudsen scratched out these lines: "Cole is manipulating again. Now wants us to build four-passenger Corvettes to get wagons away from [coachbuilders] Mitchell Bentley. By giving M-B this four-passenger Corvette body, he salves them over."

Knudsen might have sat up straight at his desk and stared at the wall before summing up, "The four-passenger Corvette he wants to build is of no use to us." But Cole could skillfully work the GM system. As will be seen in the next chapter of this series, Knudsen's declaration was far from the end of the four-passenger Corvette. And the big-block V-8 he wanted was far from being a sure bet.