Cars
Broken Dreams: Chevrolet CERV. The Long Wait
From F1 roots to the C8, Corvette’s rear-engine dream took decades, driven by Zora Arkus-Duntov and CERV innovation.
It was January 1958 when the mid-engine Cooper Formula 1 won its first Grand Prix in Argentina. Previously, Cisitalia had attempted the same feat with a car designed by Ferdinand Porsche as well as Bugatti, but unsuccessfully. They were racing pioneers who gave no thought to the fact that a solution of this nature could easily be adopted for road-going Gran Turismos.
In Detroit, therefore, the idea of putting an engine in the rear of a production car, proposed by Zora Arkus-Duntov, the Belgian designer who had joined Harley Earl, the creator of the Corvette, simply wasn’t considered among the possibilities. But it wasn’t completely discarded, so much so that in the CERV programs - Chevrolet Experimental Racing Vehicle - a single-seater was created using that exact same solution. But it ended there.
