The ad jumped out from a copy of Hemmings Motor News in 2000 to Joe Trybulec: 1954 Corvette, 15,000 miles, one owner, fuel-injected V-8 engine.
Apparently he was the only one who noticed it.
“Nobody paid attention to the ad because it was listed with a fuel-injected V-8,” Trybulec of Bentonville, Arkansas, says. Corvette collectors stayed away in droves because they believed the six-cylinder sports car was a cobbled-up V-8 hot rod. But Trybulec pursued the car and discovered an incredible story.
The original six-cylinder engine had been removed in 1957 and replaced with a special fuel-injected “Black Widow” 283 cubic-inch engine, which had actually powered a factory entry in that year’s Sebring 12-Hour race.
The engine was originally in the factory-racing 1957 Corvette owned and raced by Ebb Rose of Houston, Texas. Rose’s father owned Rose Trucking, which, in 1957, had purchased a large volume of new Chevy trucks for their business.
“After attending a dinner in Houston in appreciation for the Rose Trucking purchase of 100 trucks, GM President Ed Cole asked Rose to drive the new Corvette race cars in SCCA,” Trybulec says. “After the 1957 AMA ban (which forbade American auto manufacturers from racing involvement), Cole sold Rose three Sebring Corvettes for $1 each.”
Joe Trybulec was the only one who called about this hybrid ’54 Vette. It was listed as having a fuel injected V-8; ’54s only came with six-cylinder engines. This one was last on the road in 1967. JOE TRYBULEC
Soon after the Corvette purchase, Rose was badly hurt when he crashed one of the Corvettes in a Louisiana road race. The car was shipped back to Rose’s ranch in Texas for storage. “After crashing one of the production body Sebring Corvettes, the wrecked racecar was given to friend and mechanic George Moore with plans of transplanting the drivetrain into his ’54 Corvette,” Trybulec says.
Rose is reported to have told Moore to take the wrecked Corvette, because “I only paid one dollar for it.”
Moore removed his Corvette’s six-cylinder engine and replaced it with the Black Widow V-8, gearbox, and differential. He used the car on the road, but when his son was involved in an accident while driving the car, Moore put the car into his garage for a 30-year hibernation.
Trybulec followed up on the Hemmings ad. When he flew to Texas, checked out the car, and heard the story, he bought the car immediately from the Moore family.
The fuel-injected engine was actually a transplant from a 1957 Corvette that raced at Sebring. Trybulec had stumbled upon Corvette gold! JOE TRYBULEC
Trybulec’s friend, Ken Kayser—a long-time engineer at a GM engine plant—was able to confirm that the drivetrain actually had Sebring history. “That Sebring drivetrain was removed undisturbed, unrestored, and complete in 2007. It was displayed at the Bloomington Gold Special Collection 50th anniversary of the 1957 Corvette, Fuel Injection, and the T10 four-speed,” Trybulec says.
“That unrestored Sebring engine is planned to return to the surviving Sebring car,” he says. “So the 1954 Corvette continues to sit in my garage with only 15,000 miles on the odometer.”