1. Zora Arkus-Duntov was a racing driver, appearing at the 24 Hours of Le Mans four times and taking class wins in 1954 and 1955.
17 Facts About Zora Arkus-Duntov
1. 2.
Zora Arkus-Duntov began writing engineering papers in German motor publications.
3.
Zora Arkus-Duntov eventually settled in Paris as a dancer with the Folies Bergere.
4.
Ardun grew into a 300 employee engineering company with a name as revered as Offenhauser, but the company later went out of business after some questionable financial decisions by a partner the Zora Arkus-Duntov brothers had taken on.
5.
Zora Arkus-Duntov attempted to qualify a Talbot-Lago for the Indianapolis 500 in 1946 and 1947, but failed to make the race both years.
6.
Zora Arkus-Duntov joined General Motors in 1953 after seeing the Motorama Corvette on display in New York City.
7.
Zora Arkus-Duntov found the car visually superb, but was disappointed with what was underneath.
8.
Zora Arkus-Duntov wrote Chevrolet chief engineer Ed Cole that it would be a pleasure to work on such a beautiful car; he included a technical paper which proposed an analytical method of determining a car's top speed.
9.
On May 1,1953, Zora Arkus-Duntov started at Chevrolet as an assistant staff engineer.
10.
Shortly after going to work for Chevrolet, Zora Arkus-Duntov set the tone for what he was about to accomplish in a memo to his bosses.
11.
In 1957 Zora Arkus-Duntov became Director of High Performance Vehicles at Chevrolet.
12.
Zora Arkus-Duntov developed the famous Duntov high-lift camshaft and helped bring fuel injection to the Corvette in 1957.
13.
Zora Arkus-Duntov is credited with introducing the first mass-produced American car with four-wheel disc brakes.
14.
Zora Arkus-Duntov retired in 1975, and Dave McLellan became Chief Engineer of the Corvette.
15.
Zora Arkus-Duntov drove the bulldozer at the ground breaking ceremonies for the National Corvette Museum in 1994.
16.
Six weeks before his death, Zora Arkus-Duntov was guest speaker at "Corvette: A Celebration of an American Dream", an evening held at the showrooms of Jack Cauley Chevrolet Detroit.
17.
Zora Arkus-Duntov died in Detroit on April 21,1996, and his ashes were entombed at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky.