(article continues on page after next) © AllAboutVettes.com 2012. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any material on this website is a violation of copyright and is expressly forbidden without permission. This website has not been prepared, approved or licensed by General Motors. Some words, model names, images and designations herein are the property of the trademark holder and used for identification purposes only. Publishers Note: The whole story of XP-819, an obscure engineering test mule, is a long and interesting one. It’s a story that was recorded most excellently by Mike Antonick in his now long out-of- print, limited edition book, Corvette! Sports Car of America, published by Michael Bruce Associates in 1980. Mr. Antonick graciously loaned us a copy of the book to use for scanning most of the images you see here and also gave us permission to excerpt from his text. He tells the history of XP-819 so eloquently, however, that we decided not to excerpt it, but rather to run it in its entirety, with our own later addendum on the car at the end of it. Here, then, the saga of XP-819 begins: Ye Shall NOT Sell Prototypes To The Public…oops! Dream cars have been a part of the American automobile industry for as long as most of us can remember, Harley Earl and his Motorama extravaganzas conjure up vivid memories of wild styling exercises, though a loose definition of "dream" cars could  easily include thou- sands of engineering prototypes as well. Through Harley Earl, and especially later through Bill Mitchell, the Corvette has a particularly rich history of one-off prototypes. From the first Motorama Corvette, to the modern derivatives of the AeroVette, there has hardly been a year that Chevrolet hasn't had some unique piece of Corvette machinery making the show circuit, and keeping everyones expectations high. It might be a pure styling exercise that won't even run (though GM has generally preferred showing operable cars), an opinion sampler of some- thing contemplated for production, or a prototype for a new chassis/engine configuration. A question that often circulates among Corvette enthusiasts is whatever happens to these vehicles after they've served their purposes? Put more simply, how do you go about buying one of these things? Unfortunately, the answer is that usually you don't. Though there is apparently nothing written in stone at GM proclaiming, "Ye shall not sell prototypes to the public," GM seldom does. And with the current battery of government qualification exams a car must pass, it isn't very likely that any future exotics from the GM stable will be sold to John Q. Public, either. That isn't to say that GM couldn't sell off some of the "used" dream cars tucked away in warehouses, or that it couldn't have done so in the past. Rumors of just such a sale, with the proceeds going to charity, make the rounds every year or two and stimulate the salivary glands of all Corvette enthusiasts in range. But it hasn't happened yet, and the smart money advises not holding your breath waiting. From GM's viewpoint, it's just a matter of nothing much to gain, maybe a lot to lose. The spectre of one of these one-off creations falling apart and resulting in a big bucks lawsuit has a definite lack of appeal for the folks at GM. Letters relieving GM of responsibility signed by the purchasers? Apparently not good enough. Legally, almost worthless, in fact. So the great Corvette prototypes and dream cars – some of auto history's most significant vehicles –  rest in museums, hide in warehouses, or have long since been chopped up for junk. But wait. There is a bright spot in this otherwise bleak story. As long as there are enterprising individuals around who "have gasoline in their blood" as Harley Earl put it, some of these cars will escape the GeneraI's grasp. Which is as it should be. Surely, there must be sympathy for the GM end of this dilemma, but a more important issue is at stake. When a dream car has outlived its corporate usefulness, GM gets rid of it one way or another. By so doing, history is destroyed. Our world is in a period of tremendous change. Plentiful fuel supplies are a thing of the past. In this context, so too are the cars of the fifties, sixties and even the seventies. And so, too, are its dream cars. A period of automotive history is vanishing right before our very eyes. Years from now, this period that we've been privileged to live through, will be written about in glorious terms by writers as the "golden age of performance," or similarly appropriate words. You can be sure enthusiasts will preserve the autos of the period, and that those cars will grow in value almost beyond imagination. So it is only right and just that at least a few of the one-off Corvettes of the period find their way to the garages of individual enthusiasts, to the people who will love, cherish, and nourish them as no museum or warehouse ever could. And so it is with XP-819. XP-819 after Steve Tate’s restoration, circa late ‘70s. (The white vertical line is the page binding, since this photo was a double-page spread scanned from the book, Corvette! Sports Car of America).