Chevrolet Corvette Rondine

The Chevrolet Corvette Rondine, also called the Pininfarina Rondine, is a drivable show car built in 1963 on the underpinnings of the second-generation Chevrolet Corvette. General Motors design chief Bill Mitchell asked the Turin studio Pininfarina in the autumn of 1962 for a European interpretation of the Corvette, and the American designer Tom Tjaarda, then working in Turin, shaped the two-seat coupe. It has a steel body rather than the plastic body of the Corvette C2 and keeps that car's chassis, wheelbase and 5.4 litre Chevrolet V8 of 365 SAE horsepower. It was first shown at the Paris Motor Show in October 1963 with a short roof and a near-vertical rear window, which critics disliked, so Tjaarda added a large panoramic rear window in time for the Geneva show in March 1964. Only one was built. Pininfarina kept it until a private collector bought it at auction in Scottsdale, Arizona, in January 2008 for 1.6 million dollars. Its styling is regarded as an influence on the Fiat 124 Sport Spider and several Ferrari models of the 1960s.