The
Chevrolet Corvette is a sports car manufactured in six
generations by General Motors (GM) since 1953. At the
time of its introduction it was America's only
two-seat car, and for decades was unchallenged as the
premium domestic sports car of its day.
The first Corvette was designed by Harley Earl and
named by Myron Scott after the fast ship of the same
name. Originally built in Flint, Michigan and St.
Louis, Missouri, it is currently built at a General
Motors assembly plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The
National Corvette Museum and annual National Corvette
Homecoming, also located in Bowling Green, celebrate
the car's history.
The generations produced so far, sometimes referred to
as C1 (the first) through C6 (the current one), each
have various versions with differing features; for
example, C6 includes the ZR1, which has the most
powerful engine used in a production Corvette to date.
Over the years, versions of the car have won awards
from magazines such as Motor Trend and Car and Driver
and from organizations like the Society of Automotive
Engineers, and have been used from time to time as
pace cars for the long-running Indianapolis 500 race
since 1978.
While sold under the Chevrolet marque in the United
States and other locations in the world, it is sold
under its own Corvette marque in Europe and Japan,
where the car is also rather rare in. The car is built
in coupé and convertible versions; the possibility of
a sedan version has also been considered by GM
executives.
Early history
General Motors hired designer Harley Earl in 1927.
Earl loved sports cars, and GIs returning after
serving overseas in the years following World War II
were bringing home MGs, Jaguars, Alfa Romeos, and the
like. In 1951, Nash Motors began selling an expensive
two-seat sports car, the Nash-Healey, that was made in
partnership with the Italian designer Pinin Farina and
British auto engineer Donald Healey, but there were
few moderate-priced models. Earl convinced GM that
they also needed to build a two-seat sports car, and
with his Special Projects crew began working on the
new car later that year, which was code named "Project Opel." The result was the 1953 Corvette, unveiled
to the public at that year's Motorama car show. The
original concept for the Corvette emblem incorporated
an American flag into the design, but was changed well
before production since associating the flag with a
product was frowned upon.
Myron Scott is credited for naming the car after the
corvette, a small, maneuverable fighting frigate.
The first Corvettes were virtually hand-built in
Flint, Michigan in Chevrolet's Customer Delivery
Center, now an academic building at Kettering
University. The outer body was made out of
then-revolutionary fiberglass, selected in part
because of steel quotas left over from the war.
Underneath the new body material were standard
Chevrolet components, including the "Blue Flame"
inline six-cylinder truck engine, two-speed Powerglide
automatic transmission, and drum brakes from
Chevrolet's regular car line. Though the engine's
output was increased somewhat, thanks to a
triple-carburetor intake exclusive to the Corvette,
performance of the car was decidedly "lackluster".[5]
Compared to the British and Italian sports cars of the
day, the Corvette was underpowered, required a great
deal of effort as well as clear roadway to bring to a
stop, and even lacked a "proper" manual transmission.
A Paxton centrifugal supercharger became available in
1954 as a dealer-installed option, greatly improving
the Corvette's straight-line performance,[6] but sales
continued to decline.
The Chevrolet division was GM's entry-level marque.
GM was seriously considering shelving the project,[8]
leaving the Corvette to be little more than a footnote
in automotive history, and would have done so if not
for two important events. The first was the
introduction in 1955 of Chevrolet's first V8 engine
since 1919, and the second was the influence of a
Soviet émigré in GM's engineering department, Zora
Arkus-Duntov. The new 265 cu in (4.3 L) V8 became
available with a three-speed manual transmission late
in the model year turning the "rather anemic Corvette
into a credible if not outstanding performer".[5]
Although not part of the original project,
Arkus-Duntov was the architect of the car's
performance image and in 1956 he became the director
of high-performance vehicle design and development for
Chevrolet helping him earn the nickname "Father of the
Corvette."
Another key factor in the Corvette's survival was
Ford's introduction, in 1955, of the two-seat
Thunderbird,[10] which was billed as a "personal
luxury car", not a sports car. Even so, the
Ford-Chevrolet rivalry in those days demanded that GM
not appear to back down from the challenge. The
"T-Bird" was changed to a four-seater in 1958.
(1953–1962)
Mike Connor of Motor
Trend said that the next generation of Corvettes will
not debut until 2012. Connor indicated that GM
executive Bob Lutz favored a mid-engine design for the
C7 to more easily implement cylinder deactivation, but
the company stopped considering it due to high
redesign costs.
More about Corvettes
|
