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Illustrated Corvette Series No. 1 - 1953 Corvette

When Zora Arkus Duntov saw the original Corvette show car, he called it the most beautiful car he’d ever seen! Fortunately for all of us, Duntov joined the Chevrolet team and started the process of adding teeth to the Corvette.

By 1953 standards, the Corvette show car was drop dead gorgeous. Post war America was beginning to develop a taste for a new bread of automobile from Europe called “the sports car”. Cars like Jaguar and MG captured our imagination. Harley Earl was in charge of GM’s Design Center and decided that there should be a reasonably priced, simply build American sports car.

The original show car went from full size clay model in April 1952 to a complete running car by January 17, 1953 GM Motorama. Almost four million people saw the original and the response was overwhelming. The only really new technology on the Corvette was the use of fiberglass as the body material. Although is was lighter than steel, the main reason for using the new material was the low cost of manufacturing the body parts. Everything else on the car was directly off the Chevrolet parts shelf. Because of this, the car was essentially a “regular” 1952 Chevy that looked like a million bucks. Even though the standard Chevy inline six engine was juiced up with solid lifters, a new cam shaft, and three horizontal Carter carbs, power was way off the mark. Probably the softest part of the running gear was the two speed Powerglide automatic transmission.

Because of the huge public support for the Corvette show car, Chevrolet pressed the Corvette into production almost “as is”. Once word got around about the average to poor performance, sales went flat. Of the 314 cars produced, only 183 were sold. Not long after Duntov joined Chevrolet, he took charge of what was becoming an unsuccessful sports car. Having come from a strong racing background, Duntov set about correcting the original deficiencies. It was all up hill from here. - K. Scott Teeters