1953 Chevrolet Corvette

The first car to be put into production with a so-called ‘plastic’ body, the fibreglass-bodied Chevrolet Corvette was first shown to the world in January 1953 as a ‘dream car’ in the General Motors Motorama show. In every way, except for styling and its American-sized overall width, the Corvette was a copy of the Jaguar XK120.

Only six months after being proposed as an unobtainable “car of the future”, the Corvette was put on sale in June 1953. Available only with a definitely non-sporting two-speed ‘Powerglide’ automatic transmission, the Corvette was scorned by sports car aficionados for its lack of purity, and by enthusiasts because it was, in fact, rather slow.

Only a few hundred Corvettes were assembled during the second half of 1953, all of them white with red interiors. In the autumn of 1954 Corvette became available with a new 4.3-litre V8 engine, extremely cheap to manufacture and a marvel of efficiency – so much so that the basic engine architecture continues in production today, fifty years and more than 90 million units later. Restyled several times, the car gained displacement and power to become a real performer. Known to Corvette enthusiasts as the C-1 series, the 1953-62 Corvettes are highly prized by collectors today.

These extracts are taken from Auto Legends: Classics of Style and Design by Michel Zumbrunn, text by Robert Cumberford which was published in October by Merrell