Born in the USA

On January 5, 1953, a severe ice storm hit the northeastern U.S.   Four inches of ice were produced in Pennsylvania.  Another three inches coated southeastern New York State.   In southern New England the ice lay atop a 20 inch deep coat of snow. The storm resulted in 31 deaths and 2.5 million dollars in damage.

Mother Nature was upstaged later in January by two major events...Dwight Eisenhower being sworn in as President of the United States and the January 16th kickoff of the GM Motorama at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. 

What made this Motorama especially significant?  This was the first all-GM Motorama but more importantly, the first generation (C1) of Corvette was about to be born. 

If you were there, you would have seen Chevrolet Design Chief Harley J. Earl's "Dream Car" on display.  Eventually, the GM Motorama moved to other cities in the United States including Chicago, Dallas, Miami and San Francisco.  In all, over four million people saw the Corvette.

Of eleven million registered cars in 1952, only slightly over eleven thousand were sports car.  Nevertheless, interest in sports cars was surging.  Earl, after seeing the popularity of Jaguars and MGs rise dramatically in the post-World War II USA, decided to do something about it.  In 1951, he began developing an American sports car.   (Ford began working on the Thunderbird in 1951 also, but wouldn't show the Thunderbird to the American public until early 1954.) 

Usually the Jaguar XK-120 is defined as the stylistic precursor to the 1953 Corvette.  However, Dave McLellan in Corvette from the Inside makes a case for the influence of the 1947 Cisitalia 202 Nuvolari roadster on Earl's design of the 1953 Corvette.  The front and rear (see below) show some similarity to the Corvette.  Indeed Earl counted among his friends, Penin Farina, who was involved in the design refinement and building of the car.  In the end, Earl no doubt had many influences...with both the Jaguar and Cisitalia cars part of the mix.

Earl's "Special Projects" crew was tapped to complete the work.  The project's code name was "Opel."  Originally slated to be called "Corvair," the name of the car was changed to Corvette in time for the '53 GM Motorama.   The car known internally in GM as EX-122 was renamed Corvette after a suggestion by Myron Scott, a photographer employed by Chevrolet Public Relations.

One who did attend the show was a talented engineer and former race car driver named Zora Arkus Duntov.   Zora was impressed by the Corvette, although a little under whelmed by the engine.  He wrote Ed Cole, Chevrolet's chief engineer, about working on such a beautiful car and included a paper proposing an analytical method of determining a car's top speed. 

Initially, GM executives were thinking of a steel-bodied Corvette.  Ultimately rejecting steel because of higher costs and the longer ramp-up time to produce steel stamping dies, the 1953 Corvette became the first volume-produced fiberglass-bodied car.  Chevrolet used a new material called Glass Reinforced Plastic (GRP) which we know as fiberglass.   The cars were, in effect, hand-built. 

Bob McLean, a novice designer, designed the general layout of the car.  The shell and floor plan were comprised of over 60 pieces.  (Notice the hash faces down on the Motorama Corvette, but the hash faces up on the production Corvettes.)   The first issue of "Life Magazine" in 1953 opined, "Owners will like its lightness and ease of repair:  if the tough plastic is punctured in an accident it can usually be patched with a blowtorch for a couple of dollars."

The frame was designed by former Rolls-Royce engineer, Maurice Olley.  Originally, Robert Bartholomew (an interior designer at Chevrolet in 1953) designed the emblem below for the prototype that was to appear at Motorama:  crossed American and checkered flags. 

In March, GM applied to the US Patent and Trademark office for a trademark on "Corvette," in a cursive style.  Not until two months after production began would the trademark be approved. 

Four days before the Corvette was to be displayed at the GM Motorama, Chevrolet realized that the proposed emblem was illegal for commercial use since it depicted the American flag.  (You can see the original emblem at the National Corvette Museum.)  

Redesigned emblems were quickly created and put in place for the Motorama show on the front hood and the steering wheel.  The new emblem still retained the checkered flag on the right side.   The left side, however, contained a white racing flag, red bow-tie and a fleur-de-lis.  The emblem was used ad interim until a new one was designed prior to beginning production in late June. 

Although the crossed flags emblem on the Corvette has changed over the years, several design elements remain including some form of a checkered flag and a bow-tie emblem.  Occasionally, a fleur-de-lis also shows up.  Chevrolet was busily working on emblem designs in 1953 including research into the Louis Chevrolet family's heraldry.  Although the research yielded little, Chevrolet developed an affinity for the fleur-de-lis and its meaning of purity and peace.  

Oh yes...Ed Cole invited Zora Arkus-Duntov to Detroit.  Zora was subsequently hired by Chevrolet Research and Development.   On May 1, he started as an assistant staff engineer.  Two years later, he was assigned to the Corvette team.  (In 1968, he would become Corvette's Chief Engineer and responsible for saving the Corvette program.)  Within a few months of his arrival, he was driving an Allard at Le Mans.   ...whic didn't meet with Olley's approval.  By the end of the 1953, he would write the milestone memo to Chevrolet management, "Thoughts Pertaining to Youth, Hot Rodders and Chevrolet."   Racer, engineer and eventually Corvette savior, Zora had arrived just in time.

In June Mother Nature intervened again.   As Chevrolet was preparing for production of the Corvette, an F5 tornado tore through Flint killing over one hundred people.  Undeterred, on June 30, 1953, America's first sports car rolled off the production line in Flint, Michigan.  The small converted garage in Flint accommodated only six chassis at any one time.    The first Corvettes literally "rolled" off the production line.  Chevrolet was not prepared for grounding to fiberglass so the cars would not start. 

Today, 255 of the original 300 are accounted for.   The serial numbers for the 300 Corvettes were from E53F001001 through E53F001300.  E53F001003 is assumed to be the oldest extant Corvette.

Assembly of the first few Corvettes took three grueling sixteen hour days.  Even after the start-up problems were smoothed out, until the end of July, only one Corvette was produced daily.  Between August and the end of the production year, Chevrolet produced a high of three Corvettes daily. 

Not everything was perfect on day one.  The first five new Corvettes off of the production line didn't have a side view mirror.  Those first five and possibly the next twenty Corvettes used 1953 Bel Air passenger "baby moon" wheel covers because the Corvette wheel covers were not ready.  (Notice the "baby moons" in the Corvette ad.) 

Available colors?  The new Corvette was available only in Polo White (expanded to include blue, red and black exterior colors in 1954) with Sportsman Red vinyl interior (beige would be added in '54), red wheels and black canvas convertible top (beige would replace black in '54). 

The new car lacked roll-up windows and used primitive side curtains.  The chrome bumper and chrome-framed grill flashed in the sun between the recessed front headlights sitting behind wire protective covers.  The grill had 13 heavy, vertical   chrome bars. 

Originally Chevrolet desired glass covers for the headlights a la European show sports cars, but settled for the mesh screen approach because the glass covers were illegal.  The radio antenna in the '53 Corvette was mesh-screen fiber glassed into the inside of the trunk.  Two interior hood releases were included, one for each hood latch.  The windshield washer, initially foot-operated, was changed to vacuum operation within a couple of months.

Although the original target price was $1,800 nearly matching the $1,850 average cost of an American car in 1953, the Corvette turned out to be more expensive than a Jaguar ($3,345).  The Jaguar also had more horsepower, was 20 miles per hour faster and a one-second faster 0 - 60 time. 

Options were few with a base price for the Corvette set at $3,498 (Code 2934).  (In 1954, Chevrolet would cut the price to just over $2,700.)  An AM radio was available for $145.15 (Code 101B) and a heater could be purchased for $91.40 (Code 101A).  All 300 Corvettes were produced with both options.

Look closely at the Corvette above...there are no exterior door handles.  ...but it did have a tachometer, albeit mounted in the center of the dash making it less than practical.  ...and lasting through the 1958 model was a quixotic "cumulative engine revolution counter."  

With a 3.55 to 1 rear axle ratio, the first 'vette had a "conservative" top speed of 108 mph (with a speedometer that goes to 140) and a "0-60" time of just over 11 seconds.   The weight to power ratio was 21 pounds per horsepower.

Overall height was 47 inches and the center of gravity was 18 inches from the ground.  Weight distribution was 53% front to 47% rear with two people in the car and nothing in the trunk.  The ignition system was a 6 volt system.

Although Earl wanted a manual transmission, time and money dictated the use of an off-the-shelf two-speed, Powerglide automatic transmission with floor-mounted shifter. 

The Powerglide was matched with another Chevrolet stalwart - the "Blue Flame" engine which powered the 300 Corvettes.  The V-8 would have to wait for two more years.  The engine (evolved from one in a 1941 truck) was a 235 cubic inch, "inline" 6 cylinder producing 150 horsepower at 4200 rpm with three Carter YH one-barrel carburetors, model 2066S, and a compression ratio of 8 to 1.  Dual exhausts were included.  Brake and fuel lines were outside of the frame in '53 whereas in '54 models, they were inboard of the frame.

On Christmas eve, production of 1953 Corvettes drew to a close.  The production plant moved from a converted garage in Flint Michigan to Union Boulevard in St. Louis, Missouri where production of 1954 models began five days later.

At a time when Americans were paying twenty-one cents a gallon for gas, only a disappointing 183 of the 300 Corvettes were sold.  A good number were purchased by celebrities, of both sports and film fame, John Wayne for example. 

Although within 40 years one million Corvettes will have rolled off the production line, the "numbers" were to remain low for several years...jeopardizing the future of America's sports car.  Dave McLellan asserts that, ironically, the Thunderbird saved the Corvette. Thousands of Thunderbirds were sold annually, forcing GM to continue investment in the Corvette if Chevrolet was to continue in the sports car marketplace.

1953 Corvette Tech article from December 1953 Society of American Engineers (SAE) Journal

This site was last updated 08/07/04