Dave Kindig Provides Build Details on His Ridler Award-Winning 1953 Corvette

There will be an 8-part TV series on this custom 1953 Corvette, but this video gives us a sneak peek into what went into the build.

There are custom builds and there are CUSTOM builds. This Ridler award-winning 1953 Corvette is the perfect example of the latter and deserves the emphasis on custom. We just covered last week the news of the big win at the Detroit Autorama. But now thanks to a video recently posted on the Ranas Radar YouTube channel we get some specific details on the build directly from Dave Kindig himself.

A car like this that took over 4 years to build cannot be adequately summed up in a 9-minute video. In fact, Kindig announced that there will be an 8-episode television series just to cover all the details of this hand-built 1953 Corvette. And while we may have to wait for that television series to learn all the details, Kindig did serve up some interesting facts about the car in this YouTube video.

Unibody 1953 Corvette

One of the more interesting facets of this stunning build is that it is not built on a chassis, but instead is a unibody design. “The entire V12, the bell housing, the torque tube and the transaxle create the entire backbone that all of the suspension bolts on,” said Kindig. Less than one percent of the parts on this car are store bought. Almost the entire vehicle was built by hand. The aluminum body, the headlight rings, the bumperettes, the grille, the hood, just about everything was built in the shop. There is nothing on this car that you will find at your local Pep Boys.

Mechanicals

The front and rear suspension is a single lateral coilover which creates a sway bar that acts on pushrods. If that type of setup sounds familiar, it is not too different from a modern Formula One car. It is a long way from the rear leaf spring setup found on an original 1953 Corvette. The suspension on this custom Corvette runs through the lower body pan. Under the hood is an LS-based 9.2L V12 built by Race Cast Engineering out of Australia. The intake design is meant to look like a 12-stack injection setup. There is no accessory drive, as the water pump is electric and runs off the radiator, and the starter and alternator are hidden in the bell housing.

Design Details

This car is jam packed with incredible design details, and Kindig points out a couple of them in this video. One of them is the front grille. The team wanted to retain a vintage look but blend it with a modern feel. The inside of the grille is billet aluminum. Across the grille is a spoke with teeth that mimic the teeth that you would find on a standard 1953 Corvette. The headlights are another incredible piece of design. They are 3D printed and the lens are a single piece of acrylic. And in the acrylic are lines that represent the wire baskets that cover original 1953 Corvette headlights.

There is still a lot more to cover on this car, but Kindig stops here and teases that we need to watch the TV series to see the rest. Of course, we would love to know everything right now, but for a special car like this we are willing to wait until later this year when the series becomes available.

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