[VIDEO] Zora’s ‘Turning Points’ Letter to Ed Cole Shown First Time in Public at the NCM Bash

The National Corvette Museum is responsible for the caretaking of thousands of individual artifacts relating to the Chevrolet Corvette and during the NCM Bash, they decided to dust off a few of them to show to the public. One of the most important documents now in the possession of the NCM could be considered the “Holy Grail” of Chevrolet Performance as it detailed the reasons for Chevrolet to embrace the performance aftermarket.

The letter was written on December 16, 1953 by an assistant staff engineer named Zora Arkus-Duntov who recognized that the burgeoning hot rod market was made up of young men who invariably turned to Ford parts and accessories for performance. Zora believed that once these men progressed in age and income, they would give up their used Ford jalopies and trade up for new Fords for their work and family vehicles. If Chevrolet was going to compete with the new performance-minded customers, the automaker should release their upcoming V8 engines with a ready line-up of engineered performance parts including cams, pistons, and valves for these hotrodders to work with on the new engines.

With the first Chevy small-block V8s offered in the 1955 Corvette, a new era was born as Zora and his engineers set upon an upward path of wringing as much performance out of that early 283s, 327s, and 350 cubic inch V8 engines and then making those performance parts available to the everyman. Today, Chevrolet has built well over 100 million small-block V8s and the engineered performance parts from Chevrolet Performance can be found in many of today’s hotrods…all thanks to the vision Zora has and his ability to put it down in a letter to Ed Cole in 1953.

While a reproduction of that letter is on display at the National Corvette Museum, the real letter (text available below) has never been seen in public until this year when the Museum showed it off during an “Artifact Pit Stop” tour during the NCM Bash event held at the end of last month. We were there as the NCM’s Bob Bubnis and former Curator Derek E. Moore broke it out for the world to see:

Thoughts Pertaining to Youth, Hot Rodders, and Chevrolet

The Hot Rod movement and interest in things connected with hop-up and speed is still growing. As an indication: the publications devoted to hot rodding and hop-upping, of which some half-dozen have a very large circulation and are distributed nationally, did not exist some six years ago.

From cover to cover, they are full of Fords. This is not surprising that the majority of hot rodders are eating, sleeping, and dreaming modified Fords. They know Ford parts from stern to stern better than Ford people themselves.

A young man buying a magazine for the first time immediately becomes introduced to Ford. It is reasonable to assume that when hot rodders or hot rod-influenced persons buy transportation, they buy Fords. As they progress in age and income, they graduate from jalopies to second-hand Fords, then to new Fords.

Should we consider that it would be desirable to make these youths Chevrolet-minded? I think that we are in a position to carry out a successful attempt. However, there are many factors against us:

1. Loyalty and experience with Ford.
2. Hop-up industry is geared with Ford.
3. Law of numbers: thousands are and will be working on Fords for active competition.
4. Appearance of Ford’s overhead V-8, now one year ahead of us.

When a superior line of GM V-8s appeared, there where remarkably few attempts to develop these, and none too successful. Also, the appearance of the V-8 Chrysler was met with reluctance even though the success of Ardun-Fords conditioned them to the acceptance of Firepower.

This year is the first one in which isolated Chrysler development met with successes. The Bonneville records are divided between Ardun-Fords and Chryslers.

Like all people, hot rodders are attracted by novelty. However, bitter experience has taught them that new development is costly and long, and therefore they are extremely conservative. From my observation, it takes an advanced hot rodder some three years to stumble toward the successful development of a new design. Overhead Fords will be in this stable between 1956 and 1957.

The slide rule potential of our RPO V-8 engine is extremely high, but to let things run their natural course will put us one year behind – and then not too many hot rodders will pick Chevrolet for development. One factor which can largely overcome this handicap would be the availability of ready-engineered parts for higher output.

If the use of the Chevrolet engine would be made easy and the very first attempts would be crowned with success, the appeal of the new RPO V-8 engine will take hold and not have the stigma of expensiveness like the Cadillac or Chrysler, and a swing to Chevrolet may be anticipated. This means the development of a range of special parts – camshafts, valves, springs, manifolds, pistons, and such – should be made available to the public.

To make good in this field, the RPO parts must pertain not only to the engine but to the chassis components as well. In fact, the use of light alloys and brake development, such as composite drums and discs, are already on the agenda of the Research and Development group.

These thoughts are offered for what they are worth: one man’s thinking aloud on the subject.

Signed,

Zora Arkus-Duntov
December 16, 1953

Source:
Video by Keith Cornett

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