{"id":57476,"date":"2013-01-18T16:04:04","date_gmt":"2013-01-18T21:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=57476"},"modified":"2013-01-18T16:04:04","modified_gmt":"2013-01-18T21:04:04","slug":"from-c1-to-c7-60-years-of-corvette-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2013\/01\/from-c1-to-c7-60-years-of-corvette-history\/","title":{"rendered":"From C1 to C7: 60 Years of Corvette History"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
The C7 Corvette at its unveiling last weekend.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TheDetroitBureau.com\u2019s resident historian, Mike Davis was yet to get his license when the first Corvette rolled into GM\u2019s private auto show, known as Motorama, 60 years ago. But he\u2019s been watching and reporting on every \u2018Vette since then.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Davis recently released a series of books on the history of Chevrolet and with the new 2014 \u201cC7\u201d Chevrolet Corvette winning kudos as the star of this year\u2019s Detroit Auto Show, we asked him for some remembrances about the Corvette, as well.\u00a0 Here\u2019s his tale.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Last Word!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What in heck does C7 mean?\u00a0 It\u2019s the seventh reincarnation of America\u2019s only regular production sports and racing car.\u00a0 As shown in my Chevy V.1, as I refer to it, the first Corvette\u00a0 (C1) began as a \u201cconcept car,\u201d a one of-a-kind auto show queen, at General Motors\u2019 Motorama at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York in January 1953.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The covers for Mike Davis's new Chevrolet histories.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The reception to the little white roadster was so tremendous that GM decided to put it into production as soon as possible\u2014which became a remarkable six months later.\u00a0\u00a0 Only 300 of the C1 Corvette were produced that year.\u00a0 For one thing, no one knew how to speedily produce a fiberglass body such as sported by the C1.\u00a0 Moreover, the car was ill equipped\u2014with s triple-carbureted version of the standard 235.5-cid six cylinder Chevy passenger car engine combined with Powerglide automatic transmission\u2014to fit the image of an American sports car.<\/p>\n

Ironically, as a college student, I drove with a buddy to New York to see the queens of GM\u2019s own auto show\u2014but \u00a0I have to confess I have no memory of the \u2018Vette..\u00a0 When Chevrolet introduced its famous small-block V8 for 1955, Corvette was first in line.\u00a0 The \u201955 \u2018Vette with standard V8 was priced at $2,934, a reduction from the \u201954 model\u2019s $3,523.\u00a0 V8s have been standard in Corvettes ever since and led Chevrolet\u2019s change from a value purchase to a performance king.<\/p>\n

Begging your pardon for being so self-serving, I\u2019ve filled in the gaps in my memory by going back and re-examining the history of Chevrolet for a series of three books I\u2019ve had the chance to see published in just the last year \u2013 joining another dozen I\u2019ve attached my name to since 1990.<\/p>\n

Certainly, for Corvette fans, the latest two tomes: Chevrolet 1911-1960, released last August, and Chevrolet 1960-2012, which Arcadia Publications put on sale in December, are the most relevant.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The original Corvette concept at GM's Motorama.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These two volumes provide a good summary of the various predecessors to the new C7 Corvette being revealed to the media on January 13 in a preview of its public appearance at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) at Detroit\u2019s Cobo Hall the week of January 19-27.<\/p>\n

(For the inside story of how the new C7 Corvette came back from the brink as GM collapsed into bankruptcy, <\/em>Click Here<\/a>.)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Intro of the C2 Corvette didn\u2019t come until 1962 with the fabulous Stingray fastback, described (along with Chevrolet\u2019s more mundane cars and trucks) in my Chevy V.2.\u00a0 Together the two pictorial histories of the bow-tie brand present a total of 454 memorable images of Chevrolet cars and trucks, plants and top executives.<\/p>\n

Fifty years ago, the most powerful auto industry exec in the world was the general manager of Chevrolet, managing his domain of engineering, manufacturing and sales.\u00a0 In more recent years, the position has been successively reduced in importance by GM reorganizations and today no longer exists as such.\u00a0 All this is described in the captions for the photographs of these two books, each sticker-priced of $21.99.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Apollo 12 astronauts with their identical '69 Chevrolet Corvettes.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Among this huge mass of Chevrolet photos, I endeavored to satisfy first the demands of automotive history.\u00a0 Chevrolet thus is used as a window into the challenges faced by the auto industry over the last half-century, a period of radical changes.\u00a0 First came product proliferation that demanded huge investments in new products not necessarily covered by sales.\u00a0 Trucks came to dominate vehicle sales, import brands outsold domestic cars, and all makers had to deal with a plague of US government regulations.<\/p>\n

(A C7 Corvette primer, (A C7 Corvette primer, <\/em>Click Here<\/span><\/a>.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Second, I addressed the interests of car enthusiasts by including every major Chevrolet model change.\u00a0 Thus, the C2 Corvette made its appearance in 1962, Gen 3 for 1968 and Gen 4 (after a year of no \u2018Vette production) as an \u201884.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t until 1997 that, for the first time, Corvette was officially labeled a \u201cC\u201d\u2014in this case, C5.\u00a0 The sixth gen was a 2005 model at the lofty price (compared to the \u201955 mentioned above) of $52,245.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of this report I mentioned a third book.\u00a0 Its title is The Gas Miser\u2019s Guide, and I was commissioned to write it 39 years ago during the first peacetime gasoline crisis, when Nixon imposed the hated 55-mph speed limit after the Arab Oil Embargo.\u00a0 But the crisis ended abruptly in March 1974 before the book got published.<\/p>\n

Ten years or so ago, in commenting about the then newest gasoline crisis\u2014probably triggered by the Iraq War\u2014I mentioned the book I\u2019d written about fuel economy back in the 70s.\u00a0 To my astonishment, I received a flurry of emails asking where it could be purchased.\u00a0 So I contacted the guy who had originally paid me for GMG, wondering whether the final manuscript and clever cartoon illustrations still existed.\u00a0 Several years later, he called to tell me he\u2019d found most of it while looking for something else in old files.<\/p>\n

To end this tale, we decided to post a moderately revised version as an eBook, mostly to see if any buyers were really out there in cyberspace at a couple of bucks a copy.\u00a0 So if you want to buy (as a download to your electronic reader) The Gas Miser\u2019s Guide, go to smashwords.com.\u00a0 You can look at the first 20% of the book for free.\u00a0 Even though some of the data has been exhumed from a literary grave, it still has a lot of useful tips for saving gas, something especially useful for beginning drivers.<\/p>\n

(To purchase Mike Davis\u2019s Chevrolet histories from Amazon.com, <\/em>Click Here<\/span><\/a>.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TheDetroitBureau.com\u2019s resident historian, Mike Davis was yet to get his license when the first Corvette rolled into GM\u2019s private auto show, known as Motorama, 60 years ago. But he\u2019s been watching and reporting on every \u2018Vette since then. Here’s his tale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":57164,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"make":[],"post-state":[],"category_old":[151],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57476"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57476"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=57476"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=57476"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=57476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}