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The General Motor’s Corvette brand might not be very popular in India but globally it is known for making quite a number of exquisite and powerful cars. Back in 1957, one such masterpiece, the Corvette called the Stingray was designed by Pete Brock, the then youngest designer at GM, Mr. Bill Mitchell, the then Vice President of styling and Larry Shinoda. The Stingray concept was powered by a fuel injected, 5.4 litre V8 engine that produced 375 BHP of power. A 2 door convertible, the Stingray was extremely light in weight at 1000kgs and was even lighter than the mainstream production cars. A production version of the Stingray was built in 1960 which was powered by a 4.6 litre V8 producing 315 BHP of power at 6200 RPM.
The 1957 Stingray Concept had a space frame type chassis on which the body of the vehicle was made of fibreglass. The 4.7 litre V8 motor had a bore/stroke ratio of 1.29 with a compression ratio of 11:1. With such a bore and stroke ratio, the engine developed a peak power of 315 BHP at 6200 RPM while a maximum torque of 400Nm was achieved at 4700 RPM. The power is transferred to the rear wheels via a 4 speed manual transmission. After a failure to race at the 24 hour LeMan racing, the Corvette Stingray Racer Concept made its debut at Maryland’s Malboro Racetrack.
50 years later, GM revived the concept model as a tribute and showcased a modern version of the original Stingray Concept to commemorate the journey of the Stingray Concept. Called Corvette Centennial, the Stingray’s main motto was to celebrate the company’s past, present and the future. However, the company has not announced of any plans to commercialize it in the near future. In fact, the Corvette Stingray Concept was built for internal design purposes to inspire the employees to design and develop such exquisite cars. If only the company had made plans of bringing in a production version of it would have made this product one of the most anticipated ones.
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