70 years of the Chevrolet Corvette

Seven decades of the ’Vette

When it comes up with an idea that works, Chevrolet tends to stick with it.

The Chevy Suburban, to take the most dramatic example, has been in production since the 1930s, while Camaros have been built across half a dozen generations almost continuously (though with one eight-year hiatus) since 1966.

Between these memorably long-running vehicles lies the Corvette, which is now, incredibly, in its 70th-anniversary year.

Here we look at its history throughout the second half of the 20th century, and end by taking note of the current situation.

The story begins

The original Corvette was one of the earliest production cars with a glassfibre body, which was bolted to a separate chassis.

For this generation and no other, it had a leaf-sprung solid axle rather than more sophisticated independent rear suspension, and was sold only as a convertible.

Strange though it now seems, the earliest Corvette was not initially available with a V8 engine. Instead, it was powered by a 3.9-litre straight-six sometimes known as Blue Flame.
 

Public debut

The Chevrolet Corvette was first seen by the general public at the GM Motorama event held at New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel in January 1953.

Production began in Flint, Michigan, on 30 June of the same year. Only 300 were built before Chevrolet introduced the 1954 model in December.

The new version was manufactured in St Louis, Missouri, which remained the car’s home until 1981.

Michigander Corvettes are the rarest of all by a wide margin. The factory from which they emerged was demolished in 2003. 12 years later, the National Corvette Museum began selling its surviving bricks for $25 each if engraved and accompanied by a certificate of legitimacy, or $5 each if not.

Enter the V8

Corvettes powered by the Blue Flame straight-six were not quick. Extra performance became available in the 1955 model year thanks to the introduction of the small-block V8, Chevrolet’s first engine of that type since 1918.

The small-block, which also became available in the Bel Air in the same year, originally had a cylinder bore of 3.75in and a capacity of 4.3 litres.

Two years, later the bore was increased to 3.875in and the capacity to 4.6 litres, and fuel injection was offered as an option.

The V8 was enlarged still further to 5.4 litres in 1962, the final model year of the first generation. The Blue Flame was by now a thing of the past, having been discontinued in 1956.

Transmissions

The only gearbox offered in the earliest Corvettes was the General Motors Powerglide, a not particularly sporty two-speed automatic.

Perhaps to entice enthusiastic drivers, a three-speed manual was introduced in 1955, around the same time as the V8 engine was enlarged to 4.6 litres.

Further complication arose in the 1957 model year, when a four-speed manual became available.
 

Styling changes

Like most American cars, the Corvette was updated on a yearly basis throughout its production run.

The structure remained the same, but styling details varied. For example, the number of headlights increased from two to four in 1958, while the previous toothy grille was replaced by something a little more modest in 1961.

The tail lights, originally placed on top of the rear wings, were moved lower and further back, and two-tone paintwork was replaced by a single colour in 1962.

That was the final year of first-generation production, and the most successful in terms of sales: 14,531 Corvettes found customers, contributing strongly to a total of 69,015.

Stingray Racer

In 1959, a team within General Motors built a racing car called the Stingray, whose name and general shape would become familiar to Corvette owners in the following decade.

The Stingray was successful in competition, but the team was persuaded to bring this project to a halt, after which the car was converted for road use.

It later featured in the 1967 Elvis Presley movie Clambake, now painted red and fitted with a bonnet scoop.
 

Second generation

Influenced partly by the Stingray, the new Corvette, the C2 of 1963, was an almost completely different car from the one it replaced.

With its new chassis, it was lower, wider and longer (though its wheelbase was shorter), its headlights were hidden when not in use, and it looked much more aggressive.

The weight distribution was closer to equal than before, and it had independent rear suspension. Both factors led to this Corvette being much better to drive than the previous one.

Split windows

Unlike the original Corvette, this one was offered as a coupé as well as a convertible.

For the 1963 model year, the coupé had a split rear window, with two slightly separated panes of glass.

Rear visibility was suboptimal because of this, and a single window was used from 1964 onwards. Split-window Corvettes are now rare and highly prized.

Engines

At first, the new Chevy Corvette was powered by the now familiar small-block V8, which had been enlarged to 5.4 litres during the lifetime of the earlier car.

For the 1965 model year, Chevrolet introduced its big-block V8. This had started out at 5.7 litres when it first appeared seven years before, but its standard capacity had by now reached 6.7 litres.

The Corvette became one of the first cars offered with a 7.0-litre version of the big-block in 1966.

One year later, the Corvette became available with an even more potent 7.0 called the L88 (pictured), which had a higher compression ratio, a more aggressive camshaft profile and a claimed output of 430 horsepower by the measuring system used at the time.

Success story

The second Corvette was a big seller right from the start.

At more than 21,000, sales in 1963 were around 50% higher than the most the first-generation car had achieved in its best year.

After that, things only got better. This Corvette was in production for just five model years, half as long as its predecessor, but it found nearly 118,000 customers in that time.
 

Mako Shark II

Only four years separated Chevrolet’s two Mako Shark concept cars of the 1960s, but they looked as if they had been designed at least a decade apart.

Mako Shark II appeared at international motor shows in 1965. This was less than halfway through the production life of the second Corvette, but the public now had a good idea of what the third would look like.

Changes were made, of course, but the Corvette introduced in 1968 retained the concept’s prominent front wheelarches and long rear overhang.

Chevrolet Corvette C3

Once again, the Corvette was available as both a coupé and a convertible, but the convertible had the option of a hardtop and the coupé had removable roof panels.

Every engine was either a small-block or a big-block V8. A 5.0-litre unit with a modest 180bhp output was available in California (to meet local emissions regulations) late in the production run, while the largest engine measured 7.4 litres.

Milestones

The third Corvette was the longest-lived of all, remaining on sale all the way from 1968 until 1982.

Two major milestones were reached during this period. First, a gold convertible which came off the St Louis production line in November 1969 became the 250,000th Corvette ever built.

Then, less than eight years later, production reached half a million when a white coupé emerged from the factory in March 1977.

Disappearing chrome

The 1972 model year Corvette was the last with chrome front and rear bumpers.

In 1973, as part of an update which also included fitting radial tyres and reducing the interior noise levels, Chevrolet introduced urethane front bumpers, which looked from a distance as if they were an integral part of the bodyshell.

Similar work was applied to the rear for 1974, completing the process of removing almost all chrome from the car’s exterior.
 

Fastback

The Corvette reached its 25th anniversary in 1978, and received a small but dramatic styling update at the same time.

All third-generation cars until then had had vertical rear windows. Chevrolet now introduced a fastback window.

According to that year’s sales brochure, “the new rear window not only allows for a cleaner styling profile, it also improves driver visibility and adds luggage space”.

Kentucky

In 1981, Chevrolet Corvette production moved to a new factory in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where it has remained ever since.

Today, Bowling Green is the home of the Corvette in two ways. The National Corvette Museum, located only a mile from the assembly plant, was opened in 1994, and includes exhibits, archives and a shop selling Corvette merchandise.

Buyers of new Corvettes can also collect them from the museum and enjoy a guided tour. This is officially listed as GM RPO code R8C, and costs $995 at the time of writing.
 

Hatchback

The rear window introduced in 1978 was fixed, but four years later Chevrolet introduced one which could be opened remotely.

For this generation, it was available only in the 1982 Collector Edition, a special version of the car Chevy’s marketing department was now calling ‘a rather spiffy hunk of road machinery’ with an upgraded interior.

The window was described as a hatchback, though the term would not be used today, since only the glass moved and none of the bodywork came with it.

Production record

As mentioned before, the half millionth Corvette of any kind was a C3 built in 1977.

The C3 itself reached the same milestone four years later, and by the time it was replaced in 1982 sales had risen to more than 540,000.

Nearly a 10th of all C3s were built in 1979 alone. That year’s figure, generally agreed to have been 53,807, remains a production record for the Corvette.

Only a small proportion of C3s were convertibles. This body style was not popular at the time and Chevrolet abandoned it after the 1975 model year.

Chevrolet Corvette C4

The fourth Corvette was roughly similar to the C3 in profile, but its styling was much more angular, following the fashion of the early 1980s.

At first, the only available body style was a coupé, as it had been since 1976.

The roof panel was detachable, as before, and the opening rear window used in the 1982 Collector Edition was now a standard feature.

For this car, Chevrolet abandoned the quad headlights introduced in 1958 and provided just two, though for the third generation in a row they were retractable.

V8 developments

All C4 Corvettes were powered by a 5.7-litre V8, but there were several variations.

The biggest change came in 1992, when Chevrolet introduced an engine known as LT1. This was a redesign of the original small-block, which had been soldiering on for nearly 40 years and would actually remain in production after its successor had been replaced.

The Corvette was the first car to be given the LT1 motor. For the 1993 model year, it also became available in the Camaro and the Pontiac Firebird.

Convertibles and pace cars

GM’s policy of offering the Corvette only as a coupé finally came to an end after 11 years.

From 1986, the C4 was also available as a convertible. The Corvette Roadster, described in the brochure as the Ultimate Fresh-Air Machine, was used as the pace car at that year’s Indianapolis 500 race, driven by test pilot Chuck Yeager (pictured).

This was the second time a Corvette had performed that duty – a C3 was used in 1978.

Since then, the Corvette has become by far the most common of all Indy pace cars. Up to 2022, it has performed that duty 19 times. The Camaro is a distant second, having being used on nine occasions.

Callaway Corvette

All 20th-century Corvettes left the factory with naturally aspirated engines, but Chevrolet made turbocharging an official option (RPO code B2K) for the C4 from 1987 to 1991.

The conversion was done by Callaway Cars of Old Lyme, Connecticut, which had previously done similar work on the Alfa Romeo GTV6, and cost $26,995.

Regular Corvettes were delivered to Callaway from the Bowling Green factory and had their engines removed and completely stripped down. They were then rebuilt, now with twin turbochargers and a pair of intercoolers.

A derivative called Project Sledgehammer upped the ante yet further and was clocked at 254.76mph at the Transportation Research Center in Ohio in 1989. According to Callaway, it was legally driven to and from the track on public roads.

The ZR-1

The ZR-1 stood out from all other standard Chevrolet C4 Corvettes, partly because of its remarkable engine.

The LT5 was designed by Lotus, which had become part of the General Motors empire in 1986. Still a 5.7-litre V8, it was all-aluminium and had four valves per cylinder, operated by twin camshafts.

The ZR-1 hit the headlines when it set several new international speed records at Fort Stockton, Texas, in March 1990, a year after it had been revealed at the Geneva motor show.

Its most famous achievement was a new 24-hour world record of 175mph, which stood for 12 years before being beaten by a much more powerful Volkswagen W12 concept car.
 

The end of the C4

The ZR-1 was discontinued in 1995, and the C4 range in general was discontinued the following year.

The sales figures had been very impressive at first (more than 50,000 in 1984), but soon dropped significantly, though they never fell below 20,000 per annum. In the days of the first-generation Corvette, that would have been almost unimaginable.

Total C4 production amounted to a little more than 358,000 units, a respectable number for a high-performance sports car built over 13 years.

The one millionth Corvette was a white 1992 convertible (pictured) which was badly damaged after falling into a sinkhole at the National Corvette Museum in 2014, but has since been fully restored.

Corvette C5

The fifth Chevy Corvette, introduced for the 1997 model year, was the last to go on sale in the 20th century.

Compared with the C4, it was noticeably curvier, which meant both that it looked more modern and that it was far more aerodynamic.

It was also a great deal more practical. Chevrolet quoted a luggage volume of 24.8 cubic feet, or 702 litres.
 

C5 body styles

At first, the C5 was sold only as a coupé with a removable roof panel.

Customer choice widened in this respect within a couple of years. A convertible was soon introduced, and impressed reviewers by how calm the airflow was inside the cabin even when the car was travelling at 130mph.

A third option soon followed. This was a hardtop coupé, the only version with a fixed roof.

All three body styles remained available until the C5 was replaced in 2004.
 

C5 engine

As the 1992 C4 had been, the C5 was the first car to receive a new General Motors engine (again beating the Camaro and the Pontiac Firebird), although in this case it was available right from the start.

Like most of its predecessors, the LS1 was a 5.7-litre V8 with pushrod-operated overhead valves, but it was otherwise a completely different design, and only the second all-aluminium unit offered in a Corvette after the 1990 ZR-1.

An updated version of the LS1, known as the LS6, was used in the Corvette Z06 introduced in 2001 (pictured). Initially producing 385bhp, it was tweaked a year later to give 405bhp.
 

The transaxle

In another new development, the gearbox, rather than sitting immediately behind the engine, was combined with the differential to form a transaxle at the rear of the car.

There were several benefits to this. One was that Chevrolet could provide more room in the cabin, since it didn’t have to allow for a large mechanical object in the middle of the car.

Another, Chevrolet said, was that the central tunnel could now be structural, contributing to the car’s widely admired chassis stiffness.

A third advantage was that moving a large mass from where it used to be to the rear axle brought the weight distribution close to the optimal 50:50.
 

Moving forward

After a slow start in 1997, the Chevrolet Corvette C5 achieved annual sales of more than 30,000 for the remainder of its life.

Production came very close to a quarter of a million, stopping short at 248,715.

The sixth and seventh Corvettes, which followed the same basic design principle as their predecessors, could not emulate this market success.

Fewer than 200,000 of either were built before the arrival of the C8, which turned Corvette history on its head.
 

The mid-engined Corvette

After nearly seven decades, it had become almost axiomatic that the Corvette was a front-engined car.

Be that as it may, Chevrolet defied this convention entirely by giving the C8, which made its debut in the 2020 model year, a mid-engined layout.

All C8s produced at the time of writing have had a 6.2-litre V8 engine driving the rear wheels, but in January 2023 Chevrolet confirmed that it would introduce a new variant called the Corvette E-Ray (pictured), which also has an electric motor driving the front axle.

The E-Ray will therefore be the first four-wheel-drive Corvette, and the first hybrid. A twin-turbocharged version called the Zora, with a total power output of around 1000bhp, is expected to follow.