Experimental rear-engined Corvette to appear at Amelia Island

The story of XP-819, the one-off rear-engine experimental Corvette that Chevrolet built in 1964, begins not with Zora Arkus-Duntov, the famed godfather of the Corvette whom many are quick to include in the story, but rather with Frank Winchell, the engineer then in charge of Chevrolet’s research and development program.

Winchell took that position in 1959, just in time to see the lawsuits start rolling in from Corvair buyers complaining about their cars’ tendency to roll. Winchell, who conducted many a test on the Corvair in about 1963 to provide engineering data that would defend and exonerate the Corvair in those lawsuits, soon focused his new enthusiasm for rear-engine layouts in a couple of different directions: on the track, via Jim Hall and the Chaparral cars; and on the street, via the Corvette XP-819, pitched to test the feasibility of a balanced, rear-engine, V-8-powered sports car.

Duntov, who is famous for pursuing mid-engine layouts for the Corvette during his tenure at GM, initially scoffed at Winchell’s concept, but later came around to it when presented with Larry Shinoda‘s renderings, an evolution of sorts of the Corvair-based Monza GT and Monza SS show cars that Shinoda designed two years prior. Corvette historians will also point out how much the XP-819′s design foreshadowed Shinoda’s later design for the Mako Shark, a design that would, of course, greatly influence the third-generation Corvette’s styling.

Within two months, the XP-819 was built and running, using a marine version of the small-block V-8 (taking advantage of its reverse rotation to turn the two-speed transaxle in the correct direction), a custom-built backbone chassis, and Chaparral-like wheels running larger tires on the rear to compensate for the rearward weight bias. The XP-819 reportedly handled well on Winchell’s Black Lake, recording more than 1G on the skidpad, but a crash during testing (which Shinoda later said was caused by the installation of incorrectly sized wheels and tires) was all that was needed for Corvette engineers to discard the concept of a rear-engined Corvette.

Chevrolet then had XP-819 torn apart and sent to Smokey Yunick’s shop, where it sat in storage until Corvette collector Steve Tate bought it in 1979 and reassembled it. It then passed through a couple different hands and went on display at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky, until Mike Yager of Mid America Motorworks bought it in 2002.

Now fully restored, XP-819 will make an appearance at the 2012 Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance, which takes place March 9-11. For more information, visit AmeliaConcours.org.