THE ILLUSTRATED CORVETTE
Designer Series No. 265
VETTE (ISSN #0199-7890) Vol. 43, No. 07. Copyright © 2019 by TEN: Publishing Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Published monthly by TEN: Publishing Media, LLC., 1212 Avenue of the Americas, 18th Floor, New York, NY 10036. Periodicals Postage
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
K. Scott Teeters has been a contributing
artist and writer with Vette magazine since
1976 when the magazine was titled Vette
Quarterly. Scott’s Corvette art can be seen
at http://www.illustratedcorvetteseries.com. His
muscle car and nostalgia drag racing art can
be found at http://www.precision-illustration.com.62 VETTE 19.07
the 150-mph Corvette won Car and Driver’s
Fastest Car in America award and began a
run of total domination in the SCCA Escort
Showroom Stock racing series from 1985-
’87. Porsche bought a Corvette to take
apart to find why the car was unbeatable.
By the end of 1987, SCCA kicked out all of
the Corvettes for being too fast. McLellan
followed up with the Corvette Challenge
factory-built race cars.
McLellan’s personal style was more
suited to the intricacies of modern elec-
tronic computer-controlled performance
cars than Duntov’s. Where Duntov’s enthu-
siasm was effervescent, McLellan was laid-
back and approachable, but not shy with
the automotive press. After the successful
rollout of the C4, McLellan took on four
very serious performance projects for the
Corvette: the Callaway Twin-Turbo option,
the ZR-1 performance model, the LT5 Lotus/
Mercury Marine performance engine and
the mid-engine CERV-III. Let’s look at all
four projects.
Supercars were all the rage and by
1985 Porsche had their 959 and Ferrari
was about to unleash their F40. To have
something to offer while McLellan was
starting his ZR-1 project, a deal was made
with Reeves Callaway to build brand-new
Corvettes with a Callaway Twin-Turbo pack-
age. The cars had 345 horsepower (stock
Corvettes had 240) and from 1987-’91 RPO
B2K was the only non-installed official RPO
Corvette option ever offered.
The ZR-1 super Corvette had two compo-
nents. The first was its Lotus-engineered,
all-aluminum, double-overhead cam
engine. McLellan’s engineers set down the
size parameters and
horsepower objec-
tive; Lotus did the rest.
McLellan turned to the
best manufacturer of
all-aluminum, perfor-
mance marine engines
in the country: Mercury
Marine. The end result
was the beautiful, jewel-
like LT5, an engine that
is still respected today.
The second compo-
nent was the widening
of the ZR-1’s body to cover the enormous
315/35ZR17 rear tires and beef up the car’s
drivetrain and suspension.
The 1990 CERV-III Corvette was
McLellan’s vision of Duntov’s mid-engine
Corvette, with electronic steroids. The car
had a carbon-fiber, Lotus-style backbone
chassis; four-wheel steering; active suspen-
sion; a transverse-mounted 650-horse-
power twin-turbocharged LT5 ZR-1 engine
with a dry-sump oil system and a four-
speed transaxle. This was the final design
that started out as the Indy Corvette in
1986 and had a top speed of 225 mph.
And lastly, the CERV-III was designed to be
manufactured.
When McLellan was part of the 1992
“Decision Makers” three-man internal
Chevrolet design group, gathered to evalu-
ate the direction of the C5, McLellan chose
the CERV-III concept over the front-engine
“Momentum Architecture” and the stiffer/
lighter restyled C4. But the CERV-III was
deemed too expensive for the market. The
“Momentum Architecture” with its back-
bone structure, transaxle
and all-aluminum engine
with design elements from
the LT5 lives on today in
the C7.
And finally, McLellan
oversaw the three-year
(1990-’92) mid-cycle
refresh. The process
started in 1990 with an all-
new dash; 1991 saw new
front and rear bumper
covers; and in 1992, the245-horsepower L98 was replaced with the
300-horsepower LT1.
In 1990, McLellan won the Society
of Automotive Engineers’ Edward N.
Cole Award for Automotive Engineering
Innovation. In 1991, GM was offering early
retirement packages, allowing 53-year-old
employees to receive the same benefits as
those retiring at 62. McLellan took the offer
and stayed on as a consultant while GM
looked for a suitable replacement. McLellan
was fortunate enough to still be in his con-
sulting position on July 2, 1992, to be on
hand to see the one-millionth Corvette roll
off the Bowling Green assembly line. What
a thrill for a car that McLellan had given so
much to and a car that was so often on the
line for its survival.
Finally, on November 18, 1992, the new
chief of Corvette Engineering was Dave
Hill. Since then, McLellan has been a much
sought after automotive consultant, he
wrote and illustrated Corvette From the
Inside and he’s a frequent and revered
guest of honor at all of the top Corvette
events. McLellan goes down in the auto-
motive and Corvette history books as the
second of the five great Corvette chief
engineers. VETTE