1957 Chevrolet Corvette - No. 50 Of 43

Are you sure it's only 43?

That's how many '57s are documented RPO 579D cars, powered by Chevy's 283hp, fuel-injected small-block and equipped with a system that supplies the fuelie's air meter with cold air from the grille opening. But according to this car's owner, they weren't the only '57 Corvettes to get it.

How does Dominick Salvemini know that his has a correct airbox? He found out from the leading airbox-Vette authority.

"I was talking about this car with Ken Kayser, who wrote the book on the '57 Corvette race cars (The History of GM's Ramjet Fuel Injection on the Chevrolet V-8 and its Corvette Racing Pedigree), and he gave me some interesting facts that I didn't know." Namely, that Chevrolet built a total of 50 airboxes. "He said that 43 went on the known airbox cars that were out there, and four boxes were installed incorrectly at the factory. He has pictures—taken on the assembly line—of them putting an airbox on a base-engined, carbureted car."

"There's a picture in Ken's book of a low-horse fuelie with a box. Zora is seen showing the car to some visiting VIP, and they don't know where that car is. That's airbox No. 49, and Ken says, ‘You've got the 50th!'"

This 50th-airbox-equipped '57 has some other rarities on it, including the steering-column-mounted tach, the RPO 440 Aztec Copper/Beige two-tone color scheme that was shared with 261 other '57s, and the Borg Warner T-10 four-speed gearbox, which didn't appear on a factory '57 until early April.

It's all original—and, per Salvemini, it had quite a history before he bought it in the mid-'90s.

"It was sold new at Bill Greene Chevrolet in Stuart, Florida," he says. It turns out that this C1 went to its original owner in the spring of 1957, who received it as a graduation gift when he was 18. He lost it a couple years later, when he told his father he wanted to buy a Porsche. The father took the car away from him and sold it to the second owner, who drove it until the late '60s. After then, it was parked, and changed hands several more times. Then Salvemini bought it, after hearing about it while displaying his famous "half and half"—one side restored, one side original—'57 C1 at a show at the Nassau Coliseum.

That stab got results. "I got a call from somebody who said, ‘I think you want to speak with me.' It was Michael Greene, who ran the dealership for his father. I told him, ‘I'm asking about an Aztec Copper 1957 Corvette'—and he interrupted me and said, ‘I remember the car well! Airbox, steering-mounted tach—I remember firing some kid over that car, because he washed it and got the carpeting wet.'"

Salvemini didn't restore the Vette right away, but he performed preliminary work on it while it sat in his shop. "I did stuff like rebuilding parts, and sending parts like the wiper motor out to get restored," he says. "When I was ready to do it, I had everything lined up and labeled, plus I had some N.O.S. stuff."

He also had a challenge restoring the original colors over the original fiberglass. The 1957 model year was the last time Chevrolet used nitrocellulose lacquers for all Corvette colors (except Inca Silver, which was an acrylic lacquer), before switching to acrylic lacquers for '58. Salvemini used the old-school paint, but—while painting a test panel—he found out the hard way about not mixing the two kinds of lacquers.