HISTORY OF CORVETTE

There have been six generations of the Corvette produced so far, sometimes referred to as C1 through C6, and various versions with differing features within each generation; the current C6 generation includes the ZR1, which has the most powerful engine used in a production Corvette to date. We look back at the Corvette History on this very website.

1953 Corvette History
The first ever Corvette was built on June 30, 1953 at the Flint, Michigan assembly plant. At the time of its introduction it was America’s only two-seater, and for decades was unchallenged as the premium domestic sports car of its day. These Corvettes were constructed in an area at the back of Chevy’s customer delivery garage on Van Slyke Ave, the first Corvette was designed by Harley Earl and named by Myron Scott after the fast ship of the same name. 300 cars were produced and about 200 are still in the hands of collectors, the 1953 corvettes remain the rarest with the first two cars are missing. By early 1954, Chev said that 315 Corvettes had been built and that production had moved to the assembly plant in St. Louis, Missouri. They predicted that 1000 Corvettes per month would be built in St. Louis by June 1954 and that 10,000 per year could be built and sold. Zora Arkus-Duntov joined Chevrolet Motor Division in 1953 and would become the chief engineer of Corvette.