His father, Yakov “Jacques” Arkus, was a mining engineer on contract in Belgium, and his mother, Rachel Kogan, was a medical student.

Even after the divorce, Jacques continued to live with the family, and out of respect for both men, Zora and younger brother Yura took on the hyphenated last name of Arkus-Duntov.

When his parents, fearing for his safety, insisted he trade the cycle in for an automobile, Duntov bought a cycle-fendered model from a short-lived German manufacturer called Bob [de].

While in Berlin Duntov met the fourteen year old Elfriede "Elfi" Wolff, who was in the city to study ballet and acrobatic dance.

When France surrendered, Duntov obtained exit visas from the Spanish consulate in Marseilles, not only for Elfi and himself, but for his brother and parents as well.

Elfi, who was still living in Paris at the time, made a dramatic dash to Bordeaux in her MG just ahead of the advancing Nazi troops.

[5]: 111  In 1947 the company introduced their own aluminum, overhead valve, hemispherical combustion chamber cylinder heads for the flathead Ford V8 engine.

The flathead 'siamesed' the two center exhaust ports into a single tube, creating a large heat transfer from the hot gases to the coolant that was eliminated in the overhead valve design.

Soon he left the United States for England to do development work on the Allard sports car, co-driving it at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1952 and in 1953.

[citation needed] He also developed the famous Duntov high-lift camshaft and helped bring fuel injection to the Corvette in 1957.

[5]: 360, 361  Mitchell designed the car with a long hood and a raised windsplit that ran the length of the roof and continued down the back on a pillar that bisected the rear window into right and left halves.

The SR1 and SR2 projects met with Harley Earl's approval, which led to Duntov's proposal to establish the Corvette racing team being accepted with his promotion to the post of director of the high-performance car department in 1957.

Therefore, having arrived in Sebring and joining the Corvette core team, SS pilot John Fitch still could not figure out the brake lock problem.

After a quick tire change, Fitch continued to race, but already on the 23rd lap, the Corvette SS was forced to leave the track due to suspension and other mechanical problems.

Dissatisfaction gradually increased in America, which is why the American Automobile Manufacturers Association (AMA) issued a recommendation to refuse to participate in races.

At his insistence, the driver Briggs Cunningham changed the three main Corvettes within 24 hours of Le Mans, each of which was equipped with an innovative 283-horsepower V8 fuel injected engine.

The winning strategy was based on firstly making an aluminum version of the "small block" V8, equipped with special spark plugs (At 377 °C, its power was 550 hp.

All body panels were of thin fiberglass with no gel coat, and the aluminum door handles were taken from an old Chevrolet pickup truck.

In order to use the oncoming airflow even more efficiently, near the rear window there were two air intakes (one from each side) that cooled the brakes.

News of the Grand Sport's development reached the board of General Motors, and Duntov was ordered to close the project and destroy all the cars.

Duntov agreed to stop work, but handed over three cars to Texas tycoon John Mecom and hid the remaining two in a Chevrolet research garage.

Before sending the cars with chassis numbers #003 and #004 to Texas, he handed them over for testing to two private racers: Chicago Chevrolet dealer Dick Doane and Grady Davis from Gulf Oil.

After all the changes, Arkus-Duntov decided to send the Grand Sport to compete with Shelby Cobra at the Nassau Trophy race (1954-1966) in the Bahamas.

Taking the previously unimproved chassis #001 and #002, Duntov removed the roofs making them roadsters to improve aerodynamics, and was preparing to send them to the race in Daytona.

But General Motors entered into an agreement with Duntov on the termination of any races, since the risks of the division of the company reached a maximum level.

[13] In a 2024 interview, Tadge Juechter recalled a mid-1990s onsite design review of the then upcoming 5th generation Corvette to which the retired Arkus-Duntov had been invited.

[14] Six weeks before his death, Arkus-Duntov was guest speaker at "Corvette: A Celebration of an American Dream", an evening held at the showrooms of Jack Cauley Chevrolet Detroit.

[2] Arkus-Duntov died in Detroit on April 21, 1996,[10] and his ashes were entombed at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky.