Classic Car Guy Interview - Corvette and Cobra designer Peter Brock

You you will. We will show Rocky Mount great news is due. But before we get to the second I got to tell you all this information is a Christian card. I.com so if you want to find out more about what were talking about are links to all the resources that we have a solid Christian Car Guy.com but any less good producer just earlier show I spoke about because of art. I wanted to get really quickly update or are you doing I'm doing great work on your number seven and the temperature is about 80° outside is the place also excellent, excellent. Well, you heard earlier on the show he was talking about the cobra cobra that you designed for the Shelby group back in the 60s and now it's his museum for everyone to see.

I thought it would be appropriate. How in the world you have the vision to design such a card was a rendition of the BS Corvette stingray Cooper vice a versa. No one actually had very little to do with the stingray of I have always been sort of the student of history and of course of my interest in cars. I had come across from rather complex papers that were written in the late 30s by some German scientist of being aromatic for automobiles and I couldn't read the German but I could understand the numbers and they had a very low coefficient of drag and I thought that would be applicable to a new car, because nobody ever used that information at all been lost after World War II and identically deployed those numbers to the cobra Jesse and came up with a design it all into all inspiration of it was designed in the late 1930s, while sanctioned your your inspiration to the Corvette stingray was very similar. I was actually a direction of Bill Mitchell.

Of course the GM styling. He had gone over the turbine show in the 1957 he had seen all these beautiful little stream letters that we been built by known of it, mostly Italian Fiat powered record breakers and the bear all have this very crisp don't line all the way around the little aerodynamic shapes over each tire and the dickens. I came back with a bunch of photographs that was the previous. It looks like this theme and run with it and of course there were several newsletters in the studio is working for, but in the end he ended up choosing a design that I have come up with and that we rented it and developed it into the corporate name and start where you see the future of performance at this point I'm initiated C7 Corvette at the six way always championships in Evergreen and so on a work you have there is a better car remained in the world right now, a technology standpoint really been a matter Corvette for the money you pay for that car. It's absolutely the finest engineered car in the world and if it does everything it has incredible performance of the wonderful comfortable driver that has all the fit and finish of the finest European supercar so if it's gonna be pretty tough. The top anything that they're doing right now in that direction. So I think that we will see more going in the direction of more efficiency with hybrids and that sort of thing. Ignore hybrid technology rather than like the health test was noted to full electric will be more like a combination yes definitely BMW had about while that's pretty sick you recently put out a book 63 Corvette stingray to cobra. Yeah, could you sure Charlie will be with us on that.

The effect that mass culture that really fills the whole history of how the Corvette came about with the will Bill Mitchell back in the GM in the course of the Harlem of Curtis will examine the president of General Motors and they had decided that the AK industrywide dam all performance and the cut off all development on the anything having to do with performance, but Bill Mitchell was just coming into his rant, GM styling, taking over from the previous years had been all pretty pretty pretty bland stuff and Mitchell delighted that he was going to change the whole look GM styling, but he had all occurs in the way so excited that you would build the Corvette in secret and he couldn't take it upstairs to the main med design studio so Charlie, so he took it downstairs were all young interns were working in the studio I was working on it gave a set brief to design the car and based on what he had learned (the inability of the torrential and from that angle we developed the first prototype Corvette, which eventually became the car took six years from the original sketch that I did on November 7 Teledyne it finally came out, so was showing 5757 you were designing 63 Corvette exactly yes while that long it took that long to get it through. Partly because of the bureaucracy of General Motors and the time it took to convince management that it was a viable product so we built a prototype that was all done in secret, and then when they finally discovered that he had signed the car he said you cannot put a Chevrolet name on it.

You cannot put the Corvette name on it; stingray and they said that you're gonna run this car on the track you have to pay for yourself. So go metal went totally against the management fee solid red in the current so-called existing regular course it got such incredible public acclaim from styling it was so far advanced that he completely took management turn them around and realize that this was going to be the halo car for General Motors and he he is starting a whole new design line for General Motors and I think it was probably one of his most successful design that I agree with cars you know but that that was the car that really made Bill Mitchell with Corvette stingray 63.

All your accomplishments and you probably look at yourself and say that normal day at the office. From our perspective on the side of the racing world you're been a role model mind for years racing. I want your partners.

Jim Fitzgerald's part what your biggest biggest accomplishment well enough and so whatever the next project is that there was one unfinished project that we get it. General Motors, of which I had not gone to work there when I was 19 I knew it was like to try to buy the car when you're 19 years old. You don't have any money yet to go out and buy a used car and you like our work by yourself or you have tools or Jack running like that so I explained to the idea of building a student car because the efficiency that they've got in the numbers of economy of scale we could build a beautiful little car for thousand dollars that any student could buy and so we made a couple prototypes like that and it was a fabulous car great and we got got as far as billing and full-size that Harlow Curtis came along with Devon for now we will build small cars which are motorcycle the project but that will evaluate the most exciting project I was involved in end of the ever got to see that's great. Going many tremendous things in your life so far as imagining things that literally shape the history of the automotive world, especially the racing world again development of our models in a tone. The group did that. I'll tell you because it's in the only car that the ideas of aerodynamics of transfer over to the Dave Farnum you look at the Toyota previous work sample that particular coupe with a little dynamic shape of the chopped off for the most efficient package that's no matter what you say.

I still can't buy a prison.

Sorry, but by the high being on the show sharing stories with us. I really allow has been an exciting show all the way around today on the Christian congregation. I'm so thankful Andy that these amazing destitute lined up for us how God blessed us so that you will thank you all in one of the ways of God's blessings with you the listings. Those of you had a chance to share with us today. I can't tell you what it means to us to have younger listening so thanks again. Remember slowdown. Jesus walked everywhere he went and got it all done in 33 years and thank you for listening to the Christian Caravaggio? I.com