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Zora Arkus-Duntov: The Engineer Who Was Right About the Mid-Engine Corvette All Along

There's really only one word in the English language to describe the life of the man behind the Corvette. If we had to choose, that word would be "tenacity." Zora Arkus-Duntov certainly played the biggest role in the car nameplate's current trajectory.
Zora Arkus-Duntov 15 photos
Photo: General Motors
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Today, let's take a deep dive into the life of the man who was right about the mid-engine Corvette since the moment it first crossed his mind. Zora Arkus-Duntov was born with the name Zachary Arkus in Brussels, Belgium, on Christmas Day 1909 to Russian nationals. Zora's mother, Rachel Kogan, left his birth father and married an electrical engineer, Josef Duntov. The future mastermind of the mid-engined Corvette kept the last names of both men.

A short time after his birth, Arkus-Duntov's family moved back to their hometown of St Petersburgh, Russia. Unfortunately, this put the newly reorganized family right in the path of the coming Russian Revolution of the late 1910s and early 1920s. At least in the short term, this did at least land Arkus-Duntov's mother a pretty sweet high-up position in the fledgling Lennin government.

But, this being Russian communism, nothing lasted for very long, and by 1927 the family moved to Germany, settling in Berlin. It was around this time that Arkus-Duntov encountered a man who'd change his life and, inadvertently, that of General Motors as well. That man was Bernd Rosemeyer. You can think of Rosemeyer as the pre-Formula One equivalent of the archetypal suave, sophisticated German racing driver like Michael Schumacher.

Legend has it that his encounter with Rosemeyer in the late 1920s is what turned Zora Arkus-Duntov's lifelong love for machinery into a fascination with cars and motor racing. With formal training from technical schools in both Russia and Germany, it wouldn't take long for Arkus-Duntov's first motor vehicle, a 350 cc motor scooter, to feel especially "not fast enough." He graduated from what's today known as the Technical University of Berlin with a degree in engineering in 1934. His first big invention was a concept for one of automotive history's first ever superchargers, which he published in German auto magazines.

Zora Arkus\-Duntov
Photo: General Motors
Around this time, Arkus-Duntov met a local dancer by the name of Elfriede "Elfi" Wolf. Little did she know it at the time, but she'd go on to become the First Lady of the Chevy Corvette. The two settled down in Paris just in time for the German invasion of France in 1940. After a stint in the French Air Force as a bombardier and following the surrender of all French forces, Arkus-Duntov and some of his relatives piled in a tiny British MG and fled first to Portugal. From there, he took his family to the United States via Ellis Island, New York City.

Zora's brother Yura, who escaped the war along with his brother, helped his sibling start the Ardun Mechanical Corporation in 1942. With products like dies and airplane components, their big automotive claim to fame was manufacturing high-quality hemispherical combustion chamber cylinder heads for Ford Flathead engines. That's right, folks. Before he was the lead engineer for GM's flagship sports car, Zora Arkus-Duntov was designing Hemi heads for a Ford engine. Color us confused.

All the while, Arkus-Duntov never lost his love for motor racing. He tried admirably but failed to qualify for the 1946 and 47 runnings of the Indianapolis 500 after the war was over. Soon after, he briefly left the U.S. bound for England to help the Allard Motor Company build a sports car that could also be purposed as a racing car for the 1952 and 53 runnings of the 24 Hours of LeMans. During these years, Arkus-Duntov served as the Allard J2X's primary driver.

With his skills as a driver now abundantly clear, Zora Arkus-Duntov was offered a spot on Porsche's LeMans racing team. He went on to drive a 550 RS Spider to class wins back to back in 1954 and 55. For most people, that'd be a lifetime's worth of achievements. But Zora Arkus-Duntov? He was just getting started. So the story goes, seeing a prototype Chevy Corvette at the GM Motorama inside the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City inspired him to apply for a job at General Motors.

Zora Arkus\-Duntov
Photo: General Motors
Starting in 1956, first as a common staff engineer's assistant, Arkus-Duntov raved about the Corvette's "Jaguar and BMW-adjacent" European-inspired styling. But there was at least one catastrophic issue to be fixed in the young engineer's mind. That problem was, of course, the 1953 Corvette's "Blue Flame" straight-six engine. Though it's not entirely accurate to say Arkus-Duntov alone made the first 265-cubic inch (4.3-liter) V8 Corvette come to pass in 1954. That was likely a long-term plan from day one.

That said, the man was at least a driving force behind in ensuring its execution was a game changer for the Corvette line. His famous Duntov high-lift camshaft and mechanical novel fuel injection no doubt helped to a great degree. The results were successful enough to have GM approve Arkus-Duntov's idea for a dedicated Corvette racing team. He was also named the lead engineer of GM's new high-performance car department by 1957. The department's first creation was the one-off Corvette XP-66 SS (Super Sport).

This roadster-style racing car competed at the 12 Hours of Sebring once before bans on auto racing resulting from the 1955 LeMans Disaster put a stop to it. The car did at least get a thumbs up of approval from Stirling Moss and Juan Manuel Fangio before in test drives before the temporary ban. Alongside Arkus-Duntov's future Corvette Grand Sport small-block V8 racer, the two cars are perhaps Arkus-Duntov's most famous front-engined creations.

Alongside his colleague and the true father of the Corvette moniker Harley Earl, the two would make magic once again with the second-generation C2 Corvette platform on which the production models and the Grand Sport racer were based upon. During one running of the Nassau Trophy race in the Bahamas in 1963, a Corvette Grand Sport designed by Arkus-Duntov demolished its competition of Ferrari GTOs, Porsches, and Shelby Cobras by a scarcely believable ten seconds.

Zora Arkus\-Duntov
Photo: General Motors
Nobody in their right mind would have faulted Zora Arkus-Duntov for throwing in the towel after the Corvette Grand Sport program ended. But by 1967, he was named the Cheif Engineer for the entire Corvette program. All the while, Arkus-Duntov was also working on his Chevrolet Engineering Research Vehicle (CERV) prototypes. The first of these, the 283-cubic inch (4.6-liter) V8-powered CERV1 race car, was unveiled in 1959.

From then on until his retirement, Arkus-Duntov dedicated his little free time to designing high-performance race cars and sports cars under the CERV initiative. It was through the second-generation CERV II that Zora Arkus-Duntov forged his most memorable contribution to Corvette technology in 1964. With factory all-wheel drive on top of a mid-mounted, all-aluminum V8 under the hood, the CERV II set the stage for what the Corvette would one day become only generations later.

Zora Arkus-Duntov advocated for the Corvette to go mid-engined, using the CERV II and some of his other ideas as leverage until well after his retirement in 1975. As a lifelong lover of exotic European cars, the famed GM engineer reckoned taking the leap from a front-engined sports car into a European-style supercar would be just what was needed to make Corvette a serious contender against all world challengers.

Though GM execs long pondered this change over the decades, they'd balk at every single opportunity. This included a rejection to produce Arkus-Duntov's idea for a mid-engined C3 Vette in the form of the XP-880 Astro II in 1968. But eventually, finally, GM was forced to admit Zora Arkus-Duntov was right about the mid-engined Vette idea since day one with the advent of the C8 Corvette in 2018, 18 years after his death in 1996 at the age of 86 in Pontiac, Michigan.

Zora Arkus\-Duntov
Photo: General Motors
With all his achievements in mind, it's understandable why in the eyes of Corvette fans, Arkus-Duntov and his pal Harley Earl share an odd "co-founder" dynamic in their public images. But make no mistake. If it was Harley Earl who designed the Corvette, it was Zora Arkus-Duntov who made it an icon.

Check back soon for more from Corvette Month here on autoevolution.
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