Chaparral 2C 1965

The first Chaparral 2-Series was designed and built to compete in the United States Road Racing Championship and other sports car races of the time, particularly the West Coast pro Series races that were held each fall.

First raced in late 1963, it developed into the dominant car in the series in 1964 and 1965. Designed for the 200 mile races of the sports car series, it was a winner. Although not built for endurance racing, in 1965 it shocked the sportscar world by winning the 12 Hours of Sebring in a pouring rain storm, on one of the roughest tracks in North America.

The Chaparral 2 featured the innovative use of fiberglass as a chassis material. The Chaparral 2C had a conventional aluminum chassis.
It is very difficult to identify all iterations of the car as new ideas were being tested continually.

The 2A is the car as originally raced, featuring a very conventional sharp edge to cut through the air. It also featured a concave tail reminiscent of the theories of Dr. Wunibald Kamm. The first aerodynamic appendages began to appear on the 2A almost immediately to cure an issue with the front end being very light at speed with a consequent impact on steering accuracy and driver confidence.

As the car evolved, it grew and changed shape. Most call these the 2B, as raced through the end of 1965.

The 2C is the next car with the innovative in-car adjustable rear wing. The integrated spoiler/wing was designed to lie flat for low drag on the straights and tip up under braking through the corners. This was a direct benefit of the clutchless semi-automatic transmission which kept the driver's left foot free to operate the wing mechanism. The 2C was based on a Chevrolet designed aluminum chassis and was a smaller car in every dimension than the 2B. Without the natural non-resonant damping of the fiberglass chassis, Jim Hall nicknamed it the EBJ — "Eye Ball Jiggler".

[SIZE="1"]Source: wikipedia.org[/SIZE]