The history of corvettes
The history of corvettes"The History of the Corvette"
It all started in September of 1951, when General Motors chief stylist Harley Earl took a ride to Watkins Glen sports car race. He was impressed with the Jaguars, Ferraris and Alfas, which made him decide to begin designing a new American sports car. Later on that year he assigns Bob McLean to draw a layout for a sports car for General Motors.
1952 arrives and the first plaster model two-seater convertible goes on display in General Motors' private viewing auditorium. At the end of April, Harley's crew completed a full-size plaster model of his sports car project. It was designed from the back to the front. In the middle of June, the Chevrolet's director of research and development, Maurice Olley, created a sketch for the new sports car frame, showing the locations of the radiator, wheels, and the body mount points. All it really was was a shortened Chevy Sedan frame. In July, Chevrolet's chief engineer Ed Cole, and Harry Barr started to work on a all new Chevrolet V-8 engine. During a test run, the prototype fiberglass-bodied Chevrolet full sized convertible accidentally rolled. Since the body survived with minimal damage, they decided to keep the fiberglass for the body material for the upcoming Corvette. The year was almost over when they had to decide what name to give the new Chevrolet. The Chevrolet EX-122 is named the Corvette after a fast type of Royal Navy warship, by Myron Scott. He was an employee of Cambell-Ewald, Chevrolet's advertising agency. Strong consideration had been given to naming the car "Corvair", a name picked from the dictionary.
The debut of the first Corvette was on January 17 of 1953. It was displayed at the GM Motorama show at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. In May the first Corvette advertisement was unleased. It was a stylish two-seat convertible, designed to show the world that GM could produce a sports car to compete with the other European cars. All three hundred of 1953 Corvettes were built by hand and appeared identical to the Motorama car. Everyone of them were Polo White with red interiors. They were powered by the existing Chevrolet 235 cubic inch 6-cylinder engine that was modified with a three-carburetor design and dual exhaust to give it a more sports car like performance. Named the Blue Flamed Special, this engine generated 150 horsepower, and was combined with a 2-speed powerglide automatic transmission with unassisted steering. It could go 0 to 60 mph in just about 11 seconds and its top speed was just slightly over 107 mph. Harley Earl's aim was to make a sports car that was fast and cheap so anyone could own one. They were all made in a small room in a G. M. plant in Flint, Michigan. Earl didn't want...
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