Chevy's Corvette: 55 years of star power and still going strong

Car enthusiasts were on the edge of their seats in the summer of 2008. General Motors was launching production of the fastest, most powerful Chevrolet Corvette in history — a 638-hp missile that would run to 205 mph and cost more than $100,000.

For the better part of three years, every car enthusiast magazine and Internet blog had scrambled to grab any shred of info about the new Corvette supercar, which had been christened the ZR-1 just before the Detroit auto show in January 2008.

Any insider's tip about performance or styling or a blurred picture of a prototype undergoing road testing or being hauled on a trailer was a golden nugget for editors and enthusiasts.

That's a lot of frenzy over a car that will be a bit player; GM plans to build just 2,000 a year. And sales of the Corvette on which it's based are only about 23,000 annually — a drop in the bucket of GM's annual global sales.

But that says a lot about the Corvette's drawing power during the past half-century.

No other car in GM's lineup garners as much attention or inspires as much passion — inside and outside the company — as the Corvette. That's as true today as when the plastic-bodied car first appeared 55 years ago, in January 1953, as a concept at GM's Motorama and months later as a production car.

Only one GM nameplate has been in continuous existence longer: the Chevrolet Suburban, which debuted in 1935.

Although the Suburban has more years under its belt, it can't touch the Corvette for star power.

Each year, thousands of Corvette owners gather in places such as Carlisle, Pa.; Normal, Ill.; and Bowling Green, Ky., for car shows and festivals. Corvette engineers and marketers from the present and past are treated like celebrities at those events. Creating and selling parts to restore old Corvettes is a multimillion-dollar-a-year industry.

And that star power helps in the showroom — even with shoppers who will never come close to owning one.

"There's a little bit of Corvette in every Chevrolet," was the mantra of former Chevrolet chief Jim Perkins. Over the decades, the mere presence of the Corvette in Chevrolet showrooms has drawn in plenty of people who drove off in a new Impala or Malibu or Silverado pickup.

In the 1960s, aided and abetted by chief engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov (see story, next page), Corvettes set performance records and battled Ford and European automakers on racetracks around the world — even when GM's official policy banned the company from supporting racing. The upgrades to make the Corvette a race car eventually flowed back to production cars.

It was the star of a popular TV show in the 1960s, "Route 66," and showed up in plenty of movies. It was the car of choice for America's original astronauts. Pop star Prince ("Little Red Corvette") and others have sung its praises over the years. And the Corvette has been the pace car of the Indianapolis 500 10 times, most recently in 2008.

But the Corvette nearly died after just two years on the market.

The first Corvette was designed by GM stylist Harley Earl, working with designer Bob McLean. The goal was to create a car that would entice World War II veterans who had been exposed to European roadsters.

That first Corvette, code-named Opel, was created in almost total secrecy within GM — a tradition that continues to this day. To be assigned to work on a new Corvette is one of the highest honors GM designers or engineers can get — yet they typically can't tell anyone what they're working on.

The project gained speed when Ed Cole was assigned to give Chevrolet a more youthful image. A cornerstone of Cole's effort was performance, embodied in his small-block V-8 engine.

When the Corvette was a hit in the 1953 Motorama, GM rushed to get it into production. It set up a temporary factory in Flint, Mich., and built 300 for the 1953 model year. It put those cars in the hands of celebrities and executives to build word-of-mouth enthusiasm.

But the first Corvette was anything but sporty. It was engineered from the GM parts bin and had a 150-hp six-cylinder engine and a two-speed automatic transmission. The plastic body panels were hard to fit properly and the cars were afflicted with large and uneven gaps between the panels.

Production soon moved to a factory in St. Louis, and production jumped to 3,600 units in 1954. But sales were slow and more than 1,000 were unsold at the end of the year.

Because of high costs and low sales, the Corvette's future looked grim. It owes its survival to Arkus-Duntov's work to improve the Corvette's performance with the small-block V-8 and a three-speed manual transmission for the 1955 model, and Ford's launch of the popular Thunderbird two-seater in 1955, which created competitive pressure to keep the Corvette.

Through the years, the Corvette's combination of high costs and low volume has exposed it to the threat of cancellation at times when GM has struggled with falling sales and profits.

One of the latest was in 1992, during the troubled reign of Bob Stempel as GM chairman, as the Corvette team worked to develop the fifth-generation model. All work on the car stopped for months after funding was frozen. The vehicle was introduced as a 1997 model.

And there are rumors today that GM's current financial problems may force a delay in the planned 2011 launch of the seventh-generation Corvette. Don't worry, says Chevrolet General Manager Ed Peper:

"The Corvette is a key part of Chevrolet. We do good business with it, and it's profitable. I think you're always going see it as part of the Chevrolet family."