1957 Corvette Factory Race Car Survivor

This is the amazing story of an experimental, factory built ’57 Corvette race car that was instrumental in the development of the Rochester fuel injection, rubbed shoulders with the biggest racing names of the 50’s, set records and earned class wins, then ended up on a used car lot before disappearing into a suburban Chicago garage for four decades. Pretty amazing, right? Well, there’s a lot more to the story.

There are actually three story lines here that converge in an amazing and unlikely way. If one tiny piece of any of this had happened differently, it’s very possible that we wouldn’t be looking at this fantastic Corvette, currently on display at the Museum of American Speed. But thanks to the dedication and determination of Corvette collector and historian Joe Trybulec and some plain old fashioned good luck, we get to experience this one-of-a-kind piece of history.

Let’s start at the beginning.

In 1956, Ed Cole was fresh off his stint as Chief Engineer at Chevrolet where he was in charge of developing a little thing that would come to be known as the small block Chevy. Now promoted to General Manager of the division, Cole was fired up about getting an experimental new fuel injection system under the hoods of Chevrolet performance cars for the ’57 model year. This, of course, is what we all now know to be the legendary Rochester Ramjet.

To make it happen, Cole needed a couple things. First, he needed some help from the best and brightest on the engineering team. Second, he needed some cars to test it on. Engineers John Dolza and Harry Barr provided the engineering talent, with a little help from the "Father of the Corvette" Zora Arkus-Duntov. Duntov’s contributions were a bit impeded since he was still in a body cast from a racing crash.

The cars would arrive to the GM engineering skunkworks in November of ‘56, fresh from the St. Louis Corvette plant. There, the three white Corvettes were met with a recipe meant to cook up some world-class race cars. This recipe was delivered as Engineering Work Order 17792 and it included some pretty darn cool hop-up parts from the GM parts bin. The cars were fitted with the aforementioned Fuelie 283’s and 4-speed transmissions. Big brakes with cooling ducts bolted up front and rear, and the RPO 581 rear suspension was an experimental design with traction bars and Houdaille shocks that never reached production. A big 37-gallon fuel tank was added to keep the cars on the track and out of the pits. The radio and heater were deleted, and that neat chrome roll bar was added. A special short steering column was fitted, and a fast-steering adapter made the ratio a bit more racy. The engineers wanted a reliable tach, so that Sun tach you see in the center of the dash actually carries a GM part number. How cool is that? As a final flourish, the cars were painted with two blue stripes and blue fender coves, as had become standard practice on the factory Corvette race cars. This little detail will be important to our story later on.

In early December of '56, the three cars were loaded onto the S.S. Nassau, bound for the Bahamas and Nassau Speed Week. Bill Mitchell, Harley Earl, and Zora Arkus-Duntov were present to watch their new hot rods go head-to-head with some of the biggest names in racing driving cars from some of the world’s most storied marques. Remember, the Corvette was only a few years old at this point, and here it was going fender to fender with Ferraris, Porsches, and Maseratis. The Corvettes won their class, and a write up on the successful campaign made it into the first ever issue of Corvette News in an article titled "Corvette Introduces Ramjet Fuel Injection at Nassau." Not a bad showing for their first time out.

After Nassau, the cars were shipped to Smokey Yunick’s shop for additional tuning before heading to Daytona for the big Speedweeks event on the beach. There, the very car that we’re looking at in these pictures was driven by Paul Goldsmith to a new speed record on the beach, hitting 91.301 mph in the measured mile and clocking an impressive 131.941 in the flying mile. If that’s not enough, Goldsmith and our hero car also turned in an impressive performance at the following weekend’s road races held at the New Smyrna Airport. This was the first-ever NASCAR sanctioned sports car race, and Goldsmith finished first in his class and fourth overall behind Carroll Shelby in a Ferrari, Marvin Panch in a Holman-Moody Thunderbird, and Lance Reventlow in a Maserati. Again, the Corvette proves itself against some legendary company.

The Corvettes were sent back to Smokey’s once more before heading out to be used in practice at Sebring before new cars arrived for the actual event. From there, the trail goes cold for a while. Two of the three would disappear forever, but our hero car would resurface in 1958 wearing a new coat of paint and parked on a car lot in Chicago, of all places.

To be fair, this wasn’t just any car lot. Dick Doane Chevrolet and the associated Dick Doane Raceway Enterprises was very friendly with GM and was known for getting rare and special cars, especially Corvettes. When it re-emerged, the Nassau-winning Corvette was wearing a fresh coat of white paint, covering up the blue stripes and making it look a bit more like a run of the mill Corvette and less like a factory-backed race car.

Erwin Rohrer was an engineer at Rockwell with an interest in cars and racing. And, he had some well-connected friends. In May of ’58 he got a call from one of them, letting him know that there’s an ex-factory Corvette race car for sale at Dick Doane. He then becomes the “original owner” of a car that was already a year old and had seen its share of the world. Rohrer proceeded to use his factory race car as a regular street driver, even taking it on a family trip to Florida. Then, in 1961, he did something that profoundly changed the way this car’s story would play out; he painted it gold. This allowed the very special Corvette to fly under the radar, hiding in plain sight as Rohrer drove it around on the street and commuted to work. As Corvettes became highly valued collectibles, few would have expected there to be a white and blue racecar hiding under a gold paint job, puttering around in Chicago traffic next to nondescript sedans and Volkswagens.

Let’s rewind to 1957 and move our story to Houston, Texas, where there’s another Corvette racing saga unfolding. A fellow named J.H. Rose has just placed a huge order for Chevy trucks for his trucking company. As a way to say, “thank you,” Ed Cole flies in to have dinner with the Rose family. It happens to come up in conversation that J.H.’s son Ebb Rose is a local hotshoe race car driver, and that the family ranch happened to be next to one belonging to A.J. Foyt’s family. This caught Cole’s attention, because he was in the process of shutting down the Chevrolet sponsored racing program after the horrific ’55 crash at Le Mans that resulted in the ’57 AMA racing ban. The Rose family might just provide him with a way to unofficially stay in the racing game. So, Cole agrees to sell them the ’56 Bill Mitchell SR-2 and a production Fuelie ’57 Corvette for $1 a piece(!). Ebb would go on to race both cars, but crashed the ’57 some time later. The car was then given to his friend George Moore, who pulled the engine and transmission and transplanted them into a ’54 Corvette. That car was then wrecked in 1967 and parked.

What do Ebb, George, and their exploits have to do with the faded gold ’57 that’s sitting in the museum? Sit tight, we’re almost there.

Our story picks up in 1976 in St. Louis. Here’s where we meet the hero of this story's second act. Joe Trybulec is on his way to work downtown and takes a different route than he would normally take. This causes him to spot a pair of old Corvettes for sale on the corner used car lot. The next day, Joe becomes the proud owner of a red ’59 Corvette. This moment would become the catalyst for a lifetime spent collecting and researching Corvette history.

Years later, Joe is combing through a copy of Hemmings Motor News, looking for ads that included anything Corvette, when he spotted something curious. The ad read “1954 Corvette, 15,000 miles, Fuel-injected 4-speed, Houston.” If you’ve been paying attention, you probably know where this is headed. Knowing that there was never a factory ’54 with a V8, let alone a Fuelie, Joe’s curiosity compelled him to call, and not long after Joe added the car to his collection. Joe had just purchased George Moore’s old ’54 with the Ebb Rose Fuelie 283 and 4-speed.

This is it. This is the critical moment where it all comes together. While researching his oddball ’54, Joe meets Ken Kayser, a GM engineer who was involved with the Corvette program and, more importantly, was literally writing the book on the Rochester fuel injection. He helped Joe figure out what was going on with that 283 in his ’54 and the two stayed in touch. This brings us to the fateful day when Joe gets a call from Ken, “Joe, a car has surfaced in Chicago and you need to buy it.” A few days later, Joe was on an airplane.

The year is 2004. Erwin Rohrer is now elderly and in poor health. The car is being sold by his son Erik, who appointed his brother-in-law to meet Joe and show him the car. When he arrived at what had been the Rohrer family home, Joe discovered a mid-century house with new development springing up all around. He was shown to an old garage with a dusty gold Corvette inside. It’s important to remember here that Joe didn’t yet know what he was looking at. He lifted the hood and saw the Rochester fuel injection, which was a good start. Then he saw the 4-speed and chrome roll bar, also signs that he was onto something special. But the clincher came when he looked under the rear of the car and saw that some of the gold paint had flaked off, revealing remnants of white paint with blue stripes. Bingo. Joe knew then and there that he had to make a deal.

Later that day, Joe discovered something else surprising inside the house. There in the basement was one of Erwin Rohrer’s high school wood shop projects from Albert G. Lane Technical High School in Chicago. This would normally be an unremarkable detail, but Joe recognized it instantly because he had made the very same thing. Erwin and Joe had attended the same high school, albeit 20 years apart. This fateful detail further connected Joe to the family and the car, and would distinguish him in the bidding war that was about to ensue.

Anytime a one-of-a-kind survivor Corvette race car sees the light of day for the first time in four decades, you can bet there will be a few interested parties. Joe began discussions with Erik to secure the deal, though others were attempting to do the same. Keep in mind that at this point Joe didn’t know that this was the long-missing Nassau Corvette, nor did the family. This important detail would come to light through one of the other interested parties, but Joe had already earned the trust and respect of the family. After some back and forth and a few scary moments, the car was his.

As word of Joe’s discovery spread throughout the Corvette community, he started getting attention from some pretty important places, including the Bloomington Gold Corvette Show. Joe knew that the Bloomington Gold was known for pristine restorations and was reluctant to show his scruffy garage-find, but he agreed. As you can imagine, Joe’s car was a hit at the show. It’s not every day that you see a time capsule like this, let alone one so significant.

In the subsequent years and with a little help from the GM Heritage Center, Joe was able to secure a copy of Engineering Work Order 17792. This document shows without a doubt that his car was one of the three Nassau-Daytona-Sebring Corvettes. It also offers a rare look at the internal workings of GM circa-’57. Through his research, Joe also uncovered some interesting pieces on the car that make it even more special. You’ve heard of the mythical Airbox Corvettes? Well, this was the car that served as a test mule for that design. Those “pie pans” on the air cleaner are one-offs, made by GM engineering to hook it all up.

Last year the car was displayed at Amelia Island, followed by a stint at the Motorsports Hall of Fame in Daytona before being delivered to the Museum of American Speed. If you have the chance to check it out, we strongly encourage it. Under a crumbling gold shell is a Corvette that was worked on and driven by some of the greatest names in the history of the American automobile. Standing in its presence, it’s hard not to get goosebumps thinking about the ghosts of those legendary Corvette pioneers with names like Cole, Earl, and Duntov leaning over the fender, tinkering with that experimental fuel injector.

This car crackles with the energy of a machine that has more stories to tell than will ever be told. But Joe Trybulec is doing his best to collect as many of these stories as he can, and we’re honored to have the opportunity to tell a few of them.