The 1 millionth Corvette, a white LT1 roadster with a red interior and a black roof\u2013the same colors as the original 1953 model\u2013rolls off the assembly line in Bowling Green, Kentucky on this day in 1992.<\/p>\n
The Corvette, America\u2019s first all-fiberglass-bodied sports car, made its splashy debut in January 1953 as part of General Motors\u2019 traveling Motorama display at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. It went into production the following June, with a base sticker price of $3,760 (around $30,000 in today\u2019s dollars). Despite its sleek, aerodynamic exterior and the fanfare that announced its arrival, early sales of the Corvette were unimpressive. Many sports car enthusiasts scoffed at this American response to the flashy, high-performance European models, with its standard family-car components\u2013including \u201cBlue Flame\u201d six-cylinder engines, two-speed Powerglide automatic transmissions and drum brakes from Chevrolet\u2019s regular car line\u2013and its lack of a stick-shift option.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
By contrast, the Corvette\u2019s primary American competitor, the Ford Thunderbird, was an immediate hit when it debuted in 1955, selling more than 14,000 that year (compared to just 700 Corvettes). Faced with the Thunderbird\u2019s success, Chevrolet made significant improvements to the Corvette\u2019s performance, including adding a V-8 engine in 1955. By 1961, the Corvette had become America\u2019s favorite sports car. Annual production of the Corvette peaked at 53,807 in 1979; after that, yearly numbers dwindled due to increasing competition from foreign-made models.<\/p>\n
The ceremony celebrating the production of the 1 millionth Corvette on July 2, 1992, featured a prominent appearance by Zora Arkus-Duntov, the Russian engineer and race car driver who was credited with turning Chevrolet\u2019s \u201cdream car\u201d into a classic. Arkus-Duntov had seen the original Corvette prototype at the Waldorf-Astoria in 1953, while he was working for a British racing car company. Struck by the gulf between the car\u2019s innovative design and its relatively lackluster engine, he applied for a job at Chevrolet. He subsequently spearheaded efforts to add ever more powerful engines to the Corvette, which jumped from 150-horsepower in 1953 to 283 by 1957.<\/p>\n
Arkus-Duntov also introduced a fuel-injection system that later became standard on many vehicles, and the first four-wheel disc brakes to be used on a mass-produced American car. Wanting the Corvette to rise to the level of Porsche, Ferrari and Mercedes, Arkus-Duntov created the Corvette Grand Sport Program in 1963, bringing Corvette to the highest levels of international competition. Arkus-Duntov retired from GM in 1975; he died in 1996, at the age of 86.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The 1 millionth Corvette, a white LT1 roadster with a red interior and a black roof\u2013the same colors as the original 1953 model\u2013rolls off the assembly line in Bowling Green, Kentucky on this day in 1992. The Corvette, America\u2019s first all-fiberglass-bodied sports car, made its splashy debut in January 1953 as part of General Motors\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3510],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-automotive"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7780\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}