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1959 Stingray Racer

In 1959, Bill Mitchell and Larry Shinoda set out to create a race car based on the Corvette and its intended purpose was to be a test car for the future of Chevy racing. But as quickly as it developed, the powers that be at GM decided to scrap the racing program and not provide factory support for the effort, but that didn’t stop Mitchell or Shinoda.

Work continued on the prototype of the race car and when the dust and clay settled, a fiberglass racing machine called the Stingray Racer was born. The Stingray had a 92-inch overall wheelbase and, compared to the weight of the regular production Corvette that year, it weighed about 1,000 pounds less.

Under the hood lived a monster with a 283-cubic-inch V-8 engine that was capable of producing 315 hp at 6,200 rpm. The initial speed trials were spectacular and Mitchell was eager to get his baby out on the track.

He hired “Flying Dentist” Dr. Dick Thompson to pilot the car and it made its Maryland debut at Marlboro Raceway in April of that year. The end result was that Dr. Thompson rose to fourth place.

In 1960, the Stingray Racer, driven primarily by Dr. Thomson, came to dominate the SCCA and the car won the National Championship in the C-Modified Class that year. After the 1960 season ended, Mitchell pulled the Stingray Racer out of the competition and later treated it with a number of modifications.

One of the most notable modifications was the addition of a passenger seat. Mitchell then took the Stingray Racer across the country to car shows as a kind of dream car prototype. However, those who knew Mitchell best said this was simply an excuse for him to be able to drive the car on weekends.

In 1963 the C2 Corvette was born and much of the design would be derived from Mitchell’s Stingray Racer. Because the Stingray Racer was never a real car, a test mule was made and many components that ended up on later Corvettes were first on the Stingray Racer. Four-speed transmissions, different rear ends, and experimentation with aluminum began on the Stingray.

While it’s a shame the Stingray Racer never got the endorsement it deserved from GM to be all it could be in the racing world, at least its influences returned to the Corvette. In fact, the last Corvette prototype to come to light in 2009 was called the Stingray and it also took many of its styling cues directly from the 1959 race car version.

So the Stingray Racer that started out as a simple test machine ended up dominating a year of racing, influencing the second generation Corvette and influencing a prototype some 50 years later. If the rumors are true, there may also be some great nuances from the Stingray Racer in the next generation Corvette that is speculated to come out in 2013 on the supercar’s 60th birthday. Bill Mitchell would be proud.

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