Chevy
Over eight generations and more than 70 years, the Corvette has been many things: An evocative show car, a world-beating race car, a hairy-chested horsepower beast, and most recently, a mid-engine tour-de-force that can hang with Europe’s best exotic cars—all available at your local Chevy dealer. Here’s what you need to know about the past, present, and future of the Chevy Corvette, America’s sports car.
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What’s in a Name
Image Credit: Chevy The Corvette’s name comes from naval history. The term refers to small, high-performance warships built for speed and maneuverability. In modern warfare, corvettes are used for coastal patrol, missile launching, and near-to-land offensive attacks. The term has roots in Latin, Dutch and French, and was re-popularized during World War II by Winston Churchill, then serving as the head of the British Royal Navy. Today, the navies of Russia, China, France, Norway, and dozens of other nations include corvettes in their fleets.
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The First Corvette
Image Credit: Chevy The Chevy Corvette was first seen as a show car, the star of General Motors’ 1953 Motorama, held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City in January 1953. It was unlike any car that General Motors had ever shown in public: A low, sleek, two-seat convertible, with an elegant body made of fiberglass rather than steel. The Corvette concept car was a smash hit, leading GM to put the model into production in June of that same year.
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Zora Arkus-Duntov
Image Credit: Chevy Born in Belgium, raised in Russia, and trained in engineering in Germany, Zora Arkus-Duntov was the cosmopolitan European who defined the Corvette as America’s sports car. Arkus-Duntov had emigrated to the U.S. after WWII, launching a high-performance engine-parts company and racing throughout Europe. In 1953, after seeing the Corvette concept car at Motorama, Arkus-Duntov wrote a letter to Chevy’s chief engineer. His suggestions about the Corvette’s potential got him hired, and in 1955, Arkus-Duntov succeeded in convincing General Motors to install a small-block V8 in the Corvette, earning him the nickname “the father of the Corvette.”
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A Cruiser, Not a Bruiser
Image Credit: Chevy The first-generation Corvette hardly resembled the high-performance sports car to come: It featured a straight-six engine transplanted from Chevy’s mid-range family sedan, backed by a 2-speed automatic transmission. The Corvette had been conceptualized as a way for Chevy to capture the minds of World War II veterans, who had come back from Europe with a newfound fascination for small, open-topped sports cars. But it would take the introduction of a V8 engine for the Corvette to truly become a performance car.
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The Sting Ray Era
Image Credit: Chevy The first-generation Corvette was built from 1953 to 1962, with continual engineering and styling updates. In 1963, an all-new Corvette debuted. Known internally as the C2, the second-generation Corvette featured radical new styling by Larry Shinoda, taking cues from a 1959 show car penned by GM styling boss Bill Mitchell. Mitchell had been inspired by seeing stingrays while deep-sea fishing; the C2 Corvette was the first to wear the Stingray name, with its side scoops and split rear window evoking the sleek marine animal. The C2, built from 1963 to 1967, featured numerous improvements championed by Arkus-Duntov, including independent rear suspension, four-wheel disc brakes, available fuel injection, and a 396-cubic-inch big-block V8.
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C3 Malaise
Image Credit: Chevy The third-generation Corvette arrived in 1968 with styling lifted from the Mako Shark II, another concept car inspired by powerful deep-sea creatures. Initially, the C3 offered engines with as much as 430 horsepower, but soon, newly-enacted pollution laws strangled the Corvette—and nearly every other high-performance vehicle on the US market. By 1975, the base-model Corvette made a paltry 165 horsepower, and the big-block V8 was discontinued. Not only that, new bumper laws required Chevy to ditch the chrome bumpers in favor of urethane bumpers that could withstand a 5-mph impact without requiring repair. The C3 soldiered on until 1982, but for many enthusiasts, later models were seen as a mere shadow of what the Corvette had once been.
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A New Corvette for a New Era
Image Credit: Chevy The C4 Corvette, introduced in 1984, was the model’s first complete redesign and re-engineering in more than 20 years. Ditching the curvy lines of the previous generation, the C4 had cutting-edge styling with a creased, angular, wedge-shaped silhouette that screamed 1980s. With features like a digital dashboard, the C4 was tech-forward, and updates to the engine, transmission, and suspension made it a race-track hero. Soon, the Corvette would get a six-speed manual transmission, and even an optional twin-turbo engine upgrade engineered by Callaway. In 1990, the C4 made the basis of the Corvette ZR1, with a dual-overhead-cam V8 engine designed by Lotus making 375 horsepower. Production of the C4 continued through 1996.
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C5, the Modern ‘Vette
Image Credit: Chevy After another complete redesign, the fifth-generation Corvette debuted in 1997. It was a huge leap forward in quality, technology, and performance. Base-model Corvettes got an all-aluminum Gen III LS1 small-block, which was soon upgraded to make 350 horsepower. In 2001, Chevy introduced the Corvette Z06, a high-performance model whose name derived from a limited-production race-ready ‘Vette devised by Zora Arkus-Duntov in 1963. The C5 was available in three body styles: Fixed-roof coupe, targa (with removable hardtop panel), and convertible, and was hailed as a hugely capable and refined sports car.
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C6 and the Supercharged Era
Image Credit: Chevy The C6 generation that debuted in 2005 was the first Corvette since 1962 that had fixed headlights (rather than pop-ups). Largely built on a modified C5 platform, the C6 featured sleek, modern styling, and eventually launched two high-performance variants: The 2006 Corvette Z06, with a 505-horsepower naturally-aspirated V8, and the 2009 Corvette ZR1. The ZR1 was the first production Corvette to use a supercharged engine; making 638 horsepower, the LS9 was the most powerful engine GM had ever put into a production vehicle.
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C7, the Last Front-Engine Corvette
Image Credit: Chevy The C7 Corvette, launched in 2014, was designed and engineered with a mission: To fight against the popular image of the Corvette as an “old man’s car.” Aggressive new styling, a more luxurious interior, and high-tech features helped to dispel the ‘Vette’s retiree associations. The base-model C7 made 460 horsepower; the C7 Z06, introduced in 2015, made 650 horsepower from a supercharged 6.2-liter LT4 small-block. In 2019, the ultimate front-engined Corvette debuted: The ZR1, with a 755-hp supercharged LT5 and a huge rear wing that generated actual downforce on the race track.
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C8, a New Mid-Engine Frontier
Image Credit: Chevy All the way back in the 1960s, Zora Arkus-Duntov had imagined a mid-engine Corvette. In 2020, his dream finally came true. After decades of rumors and false starts, the C8 Corvette became the first production car in the model’s history to use a mid-engine layout with the small-block V8 behind the driver and passenger. With 465 horsepower and a fast-shifting dual-clutch automatic, the base-model C8 Corvette Stingray was capable of supercar-like performance, with a sub-4-second 0-60 sprint and huge speed and grip on the racetrack. The 2023 Corvette Z06 took full advantage of the mid-engine layout, packing a naturally-aspirated 5.5-liter dual-overhead-cam flat-crank V8 making 670 horsepower and revving to 8,500 RPM. The C8 also introduced the first all-wheel-drive, hybrid Corvette, the E-Ray, with a small electric motor powering the front wheels. Combined with the small-block V8, the E-Ray’s electric motor gives drivers a total of 655 horsepower. The C8 is rumored to provide the basis for two new Corvette models with even higher performance: A Corvette ZR1, expected to use a twin-turbo version of the Z06’s engine to make 800 horsepower, and a Corvette Zora, with the E-Ray’s hybrid all-wheel drive and an expected 1,000 horsepower. If such a C8 is built, we think it’ll be a fitting tribute to Zora Arkus-Duntov.
