If you’re in Bowling Green for the upcoming National Corvette Caravan, be sure to check out a special display at the National Corvette Museum that honors three 2019 Corvette Hall of Fame inductees.
For example, you’ll see two legendary Corvettes with connections to Briggs Cunningham, who’s being inducted in the Racing category.
They include his personal car, a 1952 Cunningham C3, the second production car he built, and the 1960 Le Mans Corvette #3, which won the race that year after he came up with the ingenious idea of packing the engine compartment with ice during the last few hours of the event to keep the motor cool.
Three special cars honor the efforts of Tom Peters, being inducted in the category of GM/Chevrolet, including the 1986 Chevrolet Indy styling buck for the Corvette Indy mid-engine concept car that he designed. John Cafaro, then the executive design director of Chevy, says this car profoundly influenced vehicles across the entire GM lineup and the automotive industry as a whole.
Also on display will be the C5 that almost was. It is Peters’ fifth-generation styling buck that was the result of three Chevrolet design studios being challenged by VP of Design Chuck Jordan to come up with the best C5 design. While Peters didn’t win, he always saw it as a friendly competition meant to stimulate ideas.
Peters also had a hand in the 2009 Stingray Concept, a modern interpretation of the 1963 split window coupe and the original 1959 Stingray Racer. This car heavily influenced the design of the fifth-generation Camaro and the seventh and eighth generation of the Corvette, and it even became famous as Sideswipe in “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.”
The third inductee, Dollie Cole in the category of Enthusiast, was the wife of Ed Cole, the legendary president of General Motors. An outfit she designed and wore will be on display and shows her strong spirit that helped many in the Corvette world over the years. She was often a resource to struggling race teams that needed engineering help or sponsorship money and a frequent speaker and fundraiser for Corvette clubs, not to mention serving as chairman of the board of the National Corvette Museum at a time when it needed someone with her leadership, vision, and connections to thrive.
The three inductees will be honored as part of the Museum’s 25th Anniversary event set for Aug. 28-31, with the actual induction set for Friday evening, Aug. 30.
Source:
National Corvette Museum
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