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Metalworks Speed Shop's Split Window Corvette Gets the Most Out of an Art Morrison Chassis

It's blasphemous when someone with a $20 toolset and more ambitions than sense goes to town with the internals or externals of a 1963 Corvette Sting Ray with the split rear window. If you're going to mess around with perfection, you better have some impressive credentials.
C2 Corvette Metalworks Speed Shop 11 photos
Photo: Metalworks Speed Shop
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In that case, does having the pound-for-pound highest acclaimed restomod chassis in America qualify as a good enough receipt? That's a title the MetalWorks Speed Shop's C2 Corvette with an Art Morrison Chassis can lay claim to over in Eugene, Oregon. The aftermarket chassis's purpose is simple: to take all the headaches, complications, and potential screw-ups out of custom restomodding.

This restomod began with a perfectly normal 1963 split-window C2 Corvette 327 we all know and love. Complete with a stock chassis that may seem antiquated today but no less impressive in the early 60s. It sported fully independent rear suspension a full five decades before the Ford Mustang finally got around to it.

Even so, let's be real, it's not like there are a plethora of performance parts out there that don't need at least some degree of custom fabrication in a sports car this old. Where a stock vintage chassis may take months of labor and fabrication to get the desired result, the Art Morrison Chassis comes as close to plug-and-play with a classic sports car's bare bodyshell as you're ever going to see.

Their 55-57 GT Sport chassis alone, built for sports cars of any variety in that range of model years, has already sold over 2,000 examples since 2002. Knowing thousands of these custom chassis are helping to keep classic cars on modern highways is comforting in an odd way.

Metalworks C2 Corvette
Photo: Metalworks Speed Shop
But it's the bespoke custom C2 GT Sport Chassis that finds its way underneath this extra squeaky clean-looking 1963 C2 Chevy Corvette with the breathtakingly classy split window. Yes, it makes visibility a bit of a challenge, but just look at it.

Look at how gosh darn beautiful it looks! This resto modded example got quite a nice engine to go along with it as well. It's a GM LT1 crate motor, much the same as you'll find in a late model C7 Corvette Stingray. The 460 or so horsepower this motor jets out is fed through Bowler Tremec TKO five-speed manual transmission down to a Strange S60 performance-tuned rear axle.

Underneath the body, the Art Morrison Chassis's fully independent coilover suspension is supplemented by Wilwood six-piston brake rotors in front and four-piston brakes in back with ceramic pads. In short, this C2 Vette is more well-sorted than most things claiming to be sports cars in 2022.

But let's be real, nothing built in the 2020s can claim to have even half the appeal this remarkably sorted Vette looks to posses in photos and in the flesh. As far as the interior, this notion holds true as well, thanks to a set of LED-backlit Dakota Digital RTX gauges with integrated LCD screens in both the speedometer and tachometer that pop in a way no vintage gauge cluster ever could.

Metalworks C2 Corvette
Photo: Metalworks Speed Shop
It's one benefit of modern technology we can't help but admit fits the vintage look phenomenally well. The stunningly pearly and shiny black paint with the dark blue interior on forged alloy wheels meant to match the smaller steel wheels they're replacing ties this together into a restomod as refined and smartly planned out as we've seen in years.

If nothing else, it's a perfect case study into how custom restomod chassis builders are going to keep classic bodyshells on the road for many years to come. Until inevitably, someone shoves a Tesla motor and some batteries inside of them and gets the entire internet up in arms about it.
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