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General Motors hired designer Harley Earl in 1927. Earl
loved sports cars, and GIs returning after serving in Europe during
World War II were bringing home MGs, Jaguars, Alfa Romeos, and the like.
Even the small independent automaker, Nash Motors, began selling a
two-seat sports car in 1951. The Nash-Healey was made in partnership
with the Italian designer Pinin Farina and British auto engineer Donald
Healey using Nash Ambassador engines and manual transmissions with
overdrive. Earl convinced GM that they also needed to build a two-seat
sports car. Earl and his Special Projects crew began working on the new
car later that year, which was code named "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.
Taking its name from the corvette, a small, maneuverable fighting
frigate (the credit for the naming goes to Myron Scott), 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 a revolutionary new composite
material called fiberglass, selected in part because of limiting steel
quotas left over from the Korean War. Underneath that radical new body
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. Nowhere
was that more evident than in the Corvette. 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 in³ {4.3 L}) since 1919,
and the second was the influence of a Soviet emigre 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, 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".
The first generation is commonly referred to as a solid-axle, based on
the fact that independent rear suspension (IRS) was not available until
1963.
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