Chevrolet Staff engineer, designer, and race car driver Zora Arkus-Duntov was a man who liked to go fast. Nicknamed “the father of the Corvette”, Duntov started development on a series of experimental Chevrolet vehicles in 1959, one of which would provide some of the engineering behind the groundbreaking 1963 Corvette Stingray.

One of those test mules was the Chevrolet Engineering Research Vehicle, or CERV, which you see here. It was created for the specific purpose of helping to develop the Corvette’s independent suspension system. Its bones are a chromium-molybdenum steel tubular space frame while the body was molded from two layers of fiberglass which weighed a mere 80 pounds.

The CERV was powered by a 289 cubic inch V8 that was based on an earlier Corvette prototype with a silicon alloy block and all in, the vehicle weighed just 1450 pounds. It’s widely considered to be the most important development mule ever created by General Motors.

Through the subsequent years, Arkus-Duntov managed to hold on to the car rather than seeing it sent to the crusher. In 1972, the CERV, along with the CERV II, were given as a gift from General Motors to Briggs Cunningham for his automobile museum in Costa Mesa, California. Though the car was to remain there permanently it was not to be, and the collection was sold to Miles Collier in 1986, who then sold it on to the current owner later on.

Now the CERV is set to go up for sale once again, this time at RM Auctions in Monterey on August 13-15th, with an estimated price tag between $1.3 and 2 million, and it looks more stunning than ever.