Documented
Elfi Arkus-Duntov died on 23 October 2008 at St. John’s Hospital, where she had been for several weeks with a severe leg infection. She was 93. The National Corvette Museum announced it, and the news ran within days on CorvetteBlogger (25 October), in John Gunnell’s column at Old Cars Weekly (27 October, quoting Keith Martin of Corvette Market), and in AutoWeek’s obituaries. The museum’s Hall of Fame page gives her dates as 25 April 1915 to 23 October 2008.
The notices place the hospital in Detroit. Her Find a Grave memorial places it in Grosse Pointe. That is the same St. John hospital system, not two different deaths, and this page will not pretend otherwise.
The line everyone remembers
The CorvetteBlogger notice, credited to the museum, put it simply: the former dancer from the Folies Bergère in Paris was 93 going on 19. It is the kind of sentence an obituary rarely earns. It fits the woman who danced in Paris in the 1930s, drove south in June 1940, and spent decades at the side of the most famous engineer in Corvette history without ever becoming a footnote to him. The Folies note holds what the record says about the dancing years.
How Burton remembered her
Jerry Burton, who wrote the authorized biography of her husband and spent long hours with her doing it, gave the line that became her title. As reprinted in a later John Gunnell piece: “If Zora Arkus-Duntov is the godfather of the Corvette, Elfi Arkus-Duntov is its first lady. With her blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes, and German accent, Elfi helped personify the car in her own inimitable way.” The museum’s Hall of Fame page opens with the same first-lady sentence. The Burton note covers the biography itself.
A small, human footnote sits underneath that tribute. When she landed in New York in December 1940, the passenger list recorded a woman of five feet six with brown hair and gray eyes. The tributes of 2008 remembered blonde and blue. Both are honest records of how she was seen, sixty-eight years apart.
Where she rests
Zora died in April 1996. The 2008 notices said Elfi would be cremated and her ashes joined with his as part of the tribute inside the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The museum’s own page confirms that their ashes are interred there. The museum note has the visiting details, and the First Lady title note covers her 2022 Hall of Fame induction.
What is still loose
Her Find a Grave memorial gives her birth as 15 April 1915. The 1939 Billancourt marriage record, the museum, and other sources say 25 April, and that is the date this site uses. The same memorial credits her with dancing at the Copacabana in Miami with the June Taylor Dancers; we have not found a primary source for that yet, so it stays open. No free civil death certificate or newspaper death notice from Detroit or Grosse Pointe has turned up. Nothing here is filled in by guesswork.
Her story is told in full in Margot Dorée’s novel First Lady of Corvette, now on Kindle. It starts in Berlin in 1935, a long way from Bowling Green.
Sources: National Corvette Museum Hall of Fame page for Elfi Arkus-Duntov (dates 25 April 1915 to 23 October 2008; ashes interred at the museum; first-lady sentence). CorvetteBlogger, 25 October 2008 (source credited: National Corvette Museum; St. John’s Hospital; several weeks with a severe leg infection; “93 going on 19”; ashes to be joined with Zora’s). John Gunnell, Old Cars Weekly, 27 October 2008 (quoting Keith Martin, Corvette Market). AutoWeek obituaries (died 23 October, aged 93). Jerry Burton quotation as reprinted on alt_driver (John Gunnell). Find a Grave memorial 99681842 (birth 15 April 1915, treated as an outlier; hospital in Grosse Pointe; Copacabana claim unconfirmed). Boulogne-Billancourt acte 69, 1939 (birth 25 April 1915). New York arrival list, Nyassa, 4 December 1940 (5 ft 6 in, brown hair, gray eyes).