Chevrolet has been producing Corvettes for more than seven decades, since the ’53 CORVETTE: BIRTH OF AN ICON broke cover at the 1953 GM Motorama.
How do you chronicle a legend? How do you put on paper the story of an automobile that is so much more than the automobile itself? That the Corvette has been, is, and always will be something much more than the sum of its parts cannot be questioned. Perhaps a Campbell-Ewald advertising copywriter summed it up best when he wrote for a 1970 Corvette sales brochure, “When you buy a Corvette, you buy a lot more than a car.”
You buy an image, a car that looks all hood, wheels, and tires. A car that’s eager for the open road. A car with no compromises, like a back seat for the kids. A car that says, “I believe in engines, in gears and fat tires and feel of the road. It all started with the ’53 CORVETTE: BIRTH OF AN ICON.
And you buy a mystique. A Corvette mystique that continues since Corvette Godfather, Zora Arkus-Duntov, first enabled enthusiasts to road race a Corvette with the 1957 Corvette. It was the first to offer optional Rochester Fuel Injection, RPO 684 competition suspension, brakes, and steering, four-speed manual, and Positraction rear axle ratios. But it all started on January 17th, 1953, when the Concept Corvette was revealed at GM’s Motorama Show at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City. The other historical Corvette date is June 30th, 1953, when the first of 300 production 1953 Corvettes came down the line in Flint, MI.
Eric J. Savitz, editor-in-chief, GM News, celebrates the ’53 CORVETTE: BIRTH OF AN ICON @ https://news.gm.com/home.detail.html/Pages/topic/us/en/2025/oct/1017-Retro-Rides-1953-Chevrolet-Corvette.html