CORVETTE BOWLING GREEN PLANT

FACTS

• The plant is over one million square feet under roof, or the equivalent of 22 football fields.
• The Bowling Green plant assembles more than 35,000 Chevrolet Corvettes and 4,000 Cadillac XLRs per year.
• Production each day ranges from 150 - 170 Corvettes and approximately 16 XLRs.
• There are 387 suppliers from which the plant receives 1,376 parts. Seventy-seven percent of the car is made in the USA and Canada.
• From start to finish, each Corvette spends approximately 36 hours winding seven miles of conveyor systems in the plant.
• In the paint department, body panels spend ten hours winding two miles on a conveyor system.
• Body panels receive three coats of paint: primer, color and clear coat. Corvette and XLR body panels are composite fiberglass, except for the front and rear bumpers, which are urethane.
• The Cadillac XLR is built on a separate line from the Corvette. They share the same frame and both use fiberglass body panels.

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.

THE PERSON WHO NAMED THE CAR CORVETTE

Myron E. "Scottie" Scott, will always be recognized as the man who gave the Corvette, its name.

In 1937, Chevrolet hired him as an assistant director for the Public Relations department, where he was responsible for photography of new cars, designing of press kits, graphics and special events. In 1953, a special executive meeting was arranged to find a name for a new Chevrolet sports car then in the developmental stage. The company wanted a name that began with a "C" and a review of over 300 names began.

None of the 300 names made the cut , then, that night at Scott's home when he searched the C section of the dictionary and stopped at the definition of "corvette" - "a speedy pursuit ship in the British navy". Scott suggested "Corvette" the next day and the group loved it. Myron Scott retired from Chevrolet in 1971. Scottie was inducted into the National Corvette Museum hall of fame.

CORVETTE INSURANCE

One very important thing to remember when purchasing a Corvette is the Corvette insurance that will also be necessary. Corvette insurance is not a luxury but a necessity. Corvette insurance not only help protects you in case of accident, but vandalism, theft, or if the Corvette is involved in a hit and run. It is important to have Corvette insurance because of the high value of Corvette cars.
To obtain your Corvette insurance, the first step is to contact a Corvette insurance company and discuss the type of insurance you will need and your financial situation with them. A Corvette insurance company will then review your driving history before offering you a Corvette insurance agreement. The Corvette insurance allows you protect or cover a Corvette in exchange for monthly installment payments. If you are involed in an accident, you must contact the Corvette insurance company, so you can get back on the road as soon as possible. Corvette insurance allows you to drive your dream car without worrying about what might happen.
Owning a Corvette, the original American sports car, has been a dream held by many luxury car enthusiasts since Chevrolet began producing them in 1953. From its original roadster attitude to its modern aerodynamic incarnation, the concept of the Corvette has become as part of the American psyche as baseball and apple pie. Sitting behind the wheel of such Corvette classics as a 1958 red and white roadster or the stealth-like Z06 is, to say the least, a dream of every luxury car enthusiast. Obtain Corvette insurance and start driving today!

THINGS TO LOOK OUT WHEN INSURING MY CORVETTE PART 1

Additional research revealed there are, in fact, two types of stated policies. One is a stated amount policy in which the premium is based on an amount stated by the insured. Losses, however, are still based on the actual cash value (ACV) of the property at the time of loss, but not to exceed the stated amount. To pay the stated amount automatically would create a moral hazard in that policy holders could overvalue their cars, thus making a profit. This is contrary to the basic principle of indemnity which is to restore a person to the position they were in before the loss. (Mr. Flippin contends, however, Nationwide effectively removed the moral hazard by having their agent inspect the car prior to issuing the policy.)

THINGS TO LOOK OUT WHEN INSURING MY CORVETTE PART 2

The other is a stated value policy, which is a true valued type of policy where both parties agree, in advance, as to the value of the property. In the event of a total loss, the company will pay the full face value of the policy. It turns out this is an Inland Marine type of policy generally used with works of art, boats and other marine equipment. There are a few companies, however, that do offer it as an automobile policy. This difference may be the reason for the wide misconceptions about stated value policies. Mr. Flippin asked eleven different Nationwide agents how the company would settle a stated value policy. None of them corrected him by saying they were actually *stated amount* polices, five of them said the company would pay the full stated amount and five of them did not know. Only one actually knew the company would not pay the stated amount in the event of a total loss. He said he chose not to sell that type of policy because the insured pays an additional premium and receives no additional protection. In fact, the insured receives less protection. The standard indemnity policy pays the ACV at the time of loss with no limit on the company's liability. The stated amount policy still pays the ACV at the time of the loss, but the company's liability is limited to the stated amount. For example: Assume a car has an ACV at the time of loss of $10,000. For an $8,000 stated amount policy, the company would only pay $8,000, where they would pay the full $10,000 under a standard indemnity policy. The insured pays an additional premium for the "privilege" of limiting the insurance company's liability.

2009 CHEVEROLET CORVETTE HATCHBACK

Often referred to as America's only true sports car, the Chevrolet Corvette is one of the world's best known and longest-running nameplates. Oddly, it had a rather humble beginning, starting life back in 1953 with a straight-6 engine and a two-speed automatic transmission. The first few years saw the fiberglass-bodied two-seater from Chevrolet earn praise for its handling but criticism for its relatively tame performance. (At the time, it was soundly outgunned by a variety of European sports cars in terms of performance.)

Thankfully, a V8 engine option debuted in 1955, and by the late '50s, the Chevy Corvette could hit 60 mph in less than 6 seconds. The intervening decades have seen the Corvette pass through multiple generations. Each decade has brought its own Corvette theme, including the muscle-bound '60s, the highly stylized '70s and the electronically aided '80s. More recently, the Chevrolet Corvette has improved enough in the refinement department that many finally consider it worthy to compete against the world's best.

Highlights of the Corvette's timeline include the '57 Fuelie (the nickname for the optional fuel-injected 283 V8), the '63 Sting Ray split-window coupe, the 1965-'67 big blocks (396 and 427-cubic-inch V8s), the high-revving LT-1s of the early '70s, the ultra-high-performance ZR-1s of the early '90s and the fast yet user-friendly C5s (fifth generation) of the late '90s. Of course today's Corvette, an outright bargain when compared to sports cars from Europe, should be acknowledged as well. The current Corvette offers the performance of an all-out exotic at a third to a quarter of the price

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History

Entering the 1950s, no corporation even came close to General Motors in its size, the scope of its enterprise or its profits. GM was twice the size of the second biggest company in the world — Standard Oil of New Jersey (forefather of today's ExxonMobil), and had a vast conglomeration of businesses ranging from home appliances to providing insurance and building Chevrolets, GMCs, Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles, Buicks, Cadillacs and locomotives. It was so big that it made more than half the cars sold in the United States and the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust division was threatening to break it up. In the vast 21st century, it's almost hard to imagine how overwhelmingly large GM was back then.

But it didn't make a sports car. The idea of a car coming from stodgy GM that could compete with Jaguar, MG or Triumph was almost absurd.

Still, there was room inside GM for dreams even if there wasn't any room for whimsy. Harley J. Earl, GM's chief designer (formally the head of the Art and Color Section) and the man who invented the "concept car" with the 1938 Buick Y-Job, was in charge of the corporation's ambitious musings. In the fall of 1951, Earl began ruminating about an open sports car that would sell for around the price of a mainstream American sedan — about $2,000. His ideas were rather nebulous, but he handed those notions over to Robert F. McLean, the concept came into focus and a concept car emerged.

While the car was conceived with rigorous attention to the bottom line and production feasibility in mind, it was still only intended to be part of GM's Motorama exhibit at the 1953 New York Auto Show. That is until Ed Cole, Chevy's then recently appointed chief engineer, saw it. Cole, then immersed in development of the world-changing 1955 "small-block" V8, is said to have literally jumped up and down with enthusiasm for the Motorama car. So before it even got to New York, and after some corporate machinations, the engineering to put it into production began.

But first Cole needed to name it. So he called Myron Scott, founder of the All-American Soap Box Derby and an assistant advertising manager for Chevrolet, into a special meeting of executives researching the name. Scott suggested "Corvette," Cole loved it and the rest is history.