A Note from Peter Brock

Hello Mike…Peter Brock here,

Many thanks for your really well-done piece on the ’63 Corvette Sting Ray on My Car Quest on 3-21-26.  As you so well wrote, it was a rather long complicated process to finally get the car into production. Had it not been for the incredible presence and power of Bill Mitchell the car would never have made it into production.

So much resistance from a very conservative GM management that had no concept of what a fine GT car could be in the US market. Unless you had read my book on the origins of this car you’d have been unaware that Tony Lapine was the co-designer with Larry Shinoda (under Mitchell’s direction). Tony was what was called a line designer at the time, a guy who put the final design lines from the full size wall sketches onto paper (no computers at that time!) that defined the car’s final lines for production tooling.

Larrry Shinoda did the sketch work that adapted my lines from the XP84 “Mitchell Racer” concept, that I did for Mitchell, into the production version. Although I’d been working on this concept since ’57, because Mitchell was certain that a GT Corvette coupe would be a sales winner. That whole  coupe concept was done in secret away from the eyes of top management because they had essentially killed off the entire Corvette Program in June of ’57 with the now infamous “AMA ban” on all performance related activity.

When management finally learned what Mitchell was up to they came to my secret studio, Research B, and viewed the in-progress full size clay model. They informed Mitchell that the program was to be cancelled!

Mitchell gave his valid reasons to continue but was still told the project should end and that all internal financing would be terminated! At that point Mitchell pointed out that he was so certain of his belief in the project that he’d finance its completion personally! That is why the XP84 was completed as a roadster. It would have been too expensive to complete the prototype as a coupe.

When management saw what Mitchell was doing, they told him that he could not use the Chevrolet name on it…or the Corvette name either! That‘s where the name Stingray came from. Mitchell was big on deep sea fishing and loved the colors and forms of sea creatures. When he took the XP87 to it’s first race in NY as a “private entry” there was no fooling the media. The car caused such a sensation and so many unsolicited orders were received that management finally agreed  that the program could continue.

That’s where Larry Shinoda and Tony Lapine came in and refined the concept into production form. Tony then was sent to Opel in Germany to set up an advanced concept studio similar to my Research B studio at GM Styling. There Tony was responsible for the Opel GT coupe. He was then hired by Porsche as Director of Design….he did that for 35 years and took Porsche into front engined water-cooled designs like the 928 and 944.

Sorry for the long letter, but I thought you’d be interested. Again, many thanks for recalling some great Corvette history.

Peter Brock

Peter Brock – photo by Steve Temple for Corvette Magazine

Summary

Article Name

A Note from Peter Brock

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When GM management saw what Mitchell was doing, they told him that he could not use the Chevrolet name on it…or the Corvette name either! That‘s where the name Stingray came from.

Author

Peter Brock