Classic and Concept Corvettes Comparison

It was our first one and it was our only one for way too long, so it got as tightly woven into the fabric of our nation as television, the microchip, and the space program. National pride may explain why generations of American car enthusiasts, even though most could never own one, have taken such an inordinate interest in the Corvette. For a half-century, General Motors has fed this insatiable fascination with a steady stream of concept cars, leaked drawings, and unofficial factory rumors, each of which could be relied upon to produce a flurry of magazine covers asking the timeless question "Is this the new Corvette?"--Motor Trend's included.

Most of these pinup fantasies never lived to leak oil on suburban driveways, but each has an interesting story to tell. Many established new trends in sports-car styling. Some explored technological dead-ends. Some great ideas got ash-canned when their champions lost corporate political battles or ran afoul of the cost accountants. All have interesting tales, and many are still around to tell them.

Corvette Timeline 1956-1992 Cool Mules Our focus here is on full-blown concepts and prototypes. Photos 1959 Sting Ray 1973 XP-895 Reynolds 1977 Aero-Vette 1990 Cerv III 1992 Sting Ray III

So, now, let's pry open the doors of GM's Heritage Museum and take a drive in five of the world's most storied Vette prototypes and concepts.

Light, agile European sports cars began making inroads in the U.S. just after WWII, but few of the decision-makers in Detroit had ever driven one. Fewer still were interested in shifting resources away from the big, profitable sleds the public was voraciously buying in the early 1950s. Design chief Harley Earl was an avid sports-car fan, however, and he wielded enough power within GM to have his own secret sandbox. In 1952, his team holed up in that box and built the EX-122 show car, named it after a fast Royal Navy warship, and put it on display in December as one of the dream cars at the GM Motorama auto show in New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel. Audience reaction was so overwhelming that the car was rushed into production by June 1953.

That it survived its first few years is largely thanks to a Russian Motorama attendee born in Belgium. Zora Arkus-Duntov loved the Corvette's design but was so bothered by its pushrod-six-cylinder, two-speed automatic drivetrain that he talked his way into a job at GM. Within a few years, Corvettes were winning races and the sporty-looking slowpoke had earned its reputation as America's sports car.