The Chevrolet Corvette has been manufactured by General Motors since 1953. The car was originally built in Michigan and Missouri, it is currently built at a General Motors assembly plant in Kentucky.
Taking its name from the corvette, a small, maneuverable fighting frigate, the first Corvettes were virtually hand-built in Flint, Michigan in Chevrolet's Customer Delivery Center. 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. 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. Up until that time, the Chevrolet division was GM's entry-level marque, known for excellent but no-nonsense cars.[citation needed] Nowhere was that more evident than in the Corvette.[citation needed] A Paxton supercharger became available in 1954 as a dealer-installed option, greatly improving the Corvette's straight-line performance, but sales continued to decline.
GM was seriously considering shelving the project, 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 (a 265 CID [4.3 L]) since 1919, and the second was the influence of a Soviet émigré in GM's engineering department, Zora Arkus-Duntov. Arkus-Duntov simply took the new V8 and backed it with a three-speed manual transmission. That modification, probably the single most important in the car's history[citation needed], helped turn the Corvette from a two-seat curiosity into a genuine performer. It also earned Arkus-Duntov the rather inaccurate nickname "Father of the Corvette."
Another key factor in the Corvette's survival was Ford's introduction, in 1955, of the two-seat Thunderbird, 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.
Dave Burton
www.bargain-motors.com
