A Mystery Corvette - Or Are There Two?

A Mystery Corvette – Or Are There Two?

by Wallace Wyss

Corvettes, for the most part, were bodied in the U.S., of fiberglass. Now those Euro-snobs would like us to believe that if an Italian designer designs a body for a car, even if it’s a made-in-the-USA chassis, that it is gonna be a design to die for.

Not so.

Sometimes Casey strikes out at bat. Now I don’t know who to blame for this monstrosity, Giovanni Michelotti or maybe Pietro Frua. And the coachbuilder of at least one of them was Ghia-Aigle, in Switzerland, an offshoot of Ghia in Italy.

I have seen pictures of the car in two different colors, white and light blue. In one picture it is two tone, and that version has tailfins that are not unlike a Chrysler car of the mid-’50s. So it doesn’t quite resemble the light blue or silver car which looks Maserati-ish from the rear. At any rate a Ghia-Aigle Corvette was in the Auto Revue catalog of 1958 and may have been at the Geneva Salon in ’67.

Inside the dashboard of at least one has wood, which is very Euro, and on the outside Borrani wire wheels were fitted which makes you wonder if they switched to center lock axles.

In the interior both the steering wheel and dashboard, were partly of wood, rather Italian and on the outside the Italian contribution was underlined by the Borrani wheels.

The coachwork was in alloy.

Now I came across a white Ghia-Aigle Corvette at the RM auction in Monterey back in 2002. I don’t think it had a sign so anybody going to the auction might assume it was customized by Joe Blow of Idaho. Ordinarily an Italian-bodied Corvette goes for big bucks (but that one went for $63,000). But this car was “unsung” in Corvette literature, and I think deserved to be so. It looks like the designer was saying to himself “I know what Americans like—they like tailfins, they like two-tone, yadda-yadda ” (hey, throw in some sponge rubber dice, why don’tcha..) and was throwing in every cliché in the book instead of just going with the Euro look.

One puzzler is that, though I saw it at the auction in Monterey a few years ago, a Michelotti Corvette was reported discovered in Portugal, where it had been stored with only 3,800 km (about 2,350 miles) on it’s odometer so I don’t know if this is that same car, and later went to Portugal or if it was discovered before it came to Monterey.

On the Corvette Forum website, in a letter posted in 2001 it said Hyman Ltd., a U.S. dealer, was advertising it and they were the ones saying it was found in Portugal. They wanted $169,500 for their man must have left the auction with a sour grapes look when it hammered down $100K short.

At any rate, once I found out it was based on a ’54 (after seeing a picture with the bonnet open, it’s definitely a “Blue Flame” six) I am even less interested.

So, tho I am a Euro-snob at times I ain’t buying that everything an Italian touches is subsequently anointed with gold.

So don’t give me that “it’s worth more because it was designed in Italy” bull, sometimes even the Italians have a bad day…

Color studio shot prints of solid color car from – click here.
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THE AUTHOR: Wallace Wyss says his fourth “Incredible Barn Finds” book will be coming from Enthusiast Books in the spring.