I have heard, not to say that I heard correctly, that the tri-carb set up of the original Corvettes was too much carburetor for normal daily driving. The three carbs proved their worth when demanding performance, but the original Corvettes were not built for speed or handling. Because the tri-carb was too much for daily driving and too temperamental, many owners converted to a standard 235 single carb manifold and mothballed the triple set up. Supposedly, this is why you can occasionally find a Corvette tri-carb rig all by itself as a barn find. Could be completely untrue, but that's what I've been told.

My hunch that more were contributed to the number of barn finds by being purchased as dealer accessories to bolt on to non-Corvette 235's than by being stripped and mothballed, but who knows. On a similar note, the Corvette split manifolds that were sold as dealer accessories supposedly way outnumbered the ones that were actually attached to Corvettes and that's why these can still be found, still rare but more common that the triple rig.

I have heard the same about the original mechanical fuel injection on the Corvette 327's being mothballed in favor or a carburetor due to being temperamental.

Here's a link to the often-discussed Soup the Chev! article from the March, 1954 Hot Rod magazine. It explains progressive modifications that were made to optimize the performance of a 261 back in the day. The two carb and three carb modifications are covered at the very end. By the time they got around to the carb modifications, lots of other things had already been done to the engines, so it is by far not a pure comparison to what would happen by adding them to a stock engine. I found it interesting to note that the three carb design was not friendly on the street, similar to the urban legend that I've heard for years regarding the Corvette tri-carbs that I mentioned above.

http://www.earlycorvettes.com/linda/mcgurkhotrod/mcgurkhotrod001.pdf

Interesting string of posts...thanks to all contributors. As for me, I like my lonely single carburetor...

Matt