From the Chevrolet Files...

The report above is a vehicle test report from Zora Arkus Duntov regarding the Cadillac-Allard #952. Test car!? Allard!? Chevrolet!? It's no secret that the major car companies bought their competitors cars to test and dissect, but we think it's pretty cool that Chevrolet had an Allard as a test car. A few points of reference...this report was dated August 19, 1953 and the first Corvettes started rolling off the production line on June 30th of the same year. The first Corvette could hardly be called a true sports car, it was basically an underpowered sedan chassis wrapped in a sleek body. With the lack of comparable production sports cars from the competition, it makes sense that the bow tie would would want learn what made an Allard tick so they could make the Corvette better.

So what car did Chevrolet acquire? We know they had access to Fred Warner's J2X, but that was an outright race car. After checking the database, we found that Chevrolet purchased K3 3171 from Vauxhall Motors USA (Vauxhaul Motors was acquired by GM in 1925). It makes sense that they would use the K3 as a test mule...convertable body, V8 engine, sporting suspension. Although we don't learn much about the car from the report, we do learn that with a fairly stock automatic transmission, the car could hit 0-60 in 8 seconds flat...not bad! It also sounds like they have some plans to tune the car to see what else it could do.

Our records also indicate that Fred Warner ended up with the car and that it was raced. In case your curious, the car was light gray with a red interior and black top - and yes, the car still exists.

-Click here or the image above to download the pdf. Special thanks to Barry Burrell for sharing this document!