1957 Fuelie Airbox C1 Corvette
C1s in this shape are hard to come by on today's market. However, this Onyx C1 has a bevy of factory options that push it into the stratosphere on the market.
1. Who the heck owned this marvelous creation?!
This 1957 black beauty comes to our attention courtesy of Super Chevy. The car is purported of the very rare variety due to its strange mix of optional equipment that it was built with. Legend has it that the original owner of this C1 was Kenneth Edwards from Sports Car Graphics. Edwards checked every box there was except for power windows. The car has a column mounted tach, a 4-speed transmission, a 4:56:1 rear end (although there is a 4:11 there now) and a red interior.
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2. This car has almost everything
To explain why this car is so rare is to get into all the boxes that were checked off when it was being ordered up. Firstly, it is a dealer-ordered race car that has been oddly ladened with luxury options. Only 50 Corvettes of that ilk were authorized for production at the time. Now add in the fact that for 1957 only 43 Corvettes were sold that have the RPO 579D mandatory radio and heater delete Airbox option to the mix. If you'll notice this C1 is a soft top which made it an RPO 473. There were 51 units made with the RPO 684 big brake kit and the RPO 276 larger wheels option. The Big Brake kit got you racing springs and shocks, a beefy front sway bar, a quick steering adapter, metallic brake linings, and finned brake drums. Adding to the performance oriented mods were "elephant ear" cooling scoops that allowed air cool air to pass through to the front brakes.
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3. Even the paint scheme is rare
You may be wondering about the C1's double coat Onyx Black paint adding to its rarity, but it's not that simple. Onyx Black was actually the MOST requested color for 1957 on the C1 so there isn't anything there. However, once Inca Silver was added to the mix on the coves things start to get interesting. Inca Silver was used on just 65 cars and was the rarest color option chosen for 1957.
Fun fact: Inca Silver brought acrylic lacquer to the color palette for 1957. The other remaining colors were made with nitrocellulose lacquer.
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4. Track monster
1957 was a fortuitous year as this was the first year that Chevy's 283 CI V8 was offered to buyers. The 283 has the distinction that it is the first American V8 that produced one horsepower per cubic inch. The increase in displacement from the 265 CI that Chevy was using previously meant a jump in horsepower from 210 to 220. Then to push things further Chevy added two optional dual 4-barrel packages that had fuel injection. This new engine featured fuel injection and a Duntov high-performance solid-lifter camshaft to make extra power. Edwards raced his C1 in drag races and on the track prior to letting it go in 1962.
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5. Why you drown out the engine sounds?
In order to check the box for the RPO 579D you had to delete the radio and heater to qualify. If you happen to get a chance to look under the bonnet of the 42 other RPO 579D Airbox Corvettes, you'll find a unpolished stainless steel cover that hides the distributor. So even though radio suppression is in place, there is a AM Wonderbar radio that sits nicely in the car.
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6. Classic ingenuity
The "airbox" that is in the title of the article draws cold air from the left side of the radiator and divides airflow with a split baffle and the driver's side rear brakes by way of a duct in the rocker panel. To put the "airbox" concept into modern terms, it is essentially a cold air induction system that is mounted to the inside of the driver side fender.
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7. Where is it now?
The interior has its own set of unique options such as the RPO 685 Borg-Warner T-10 four-speed transmission that had an ivory colored plastic shift knob.
From all the 43 RPO 579E 1957 Corvettes there are just 23 cars that can be allotted for. The C1 you've seen here was restored and then sold at Mecum's Dallas auction in 2013 for $290,000. The couple that bought this rare C1 from the auction sold it in January 2017 for $450,000.
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