Future Corvettes Of The Past

All cars start as ideas. A few start as dreams.

The lusty Dodge Viper did just that in the early '90s. But during the early '50s, an even more impressive feat occurred-a two-seat fiberglass sports car sprang from the dreams of a manufacturer noted for stodginess, not inspiration. Ever since, the Corvette has been used again and again as the platform upon which General Motors (through Chevrolet) has expressed its automotive ambition.

The first Corvette dreamer was Harley J. Earl, GM's chief designer (formally the head of the Art and Color Section) and the man who invented the "dream car" with the '38 Buick Y-Job. After the grim tasks of WWII, Earl eagerly looked forward to expressing once again his automotive love. By the fall of '51, with the industry back on track, Earl had imagined an open sports car that could sell for the price of a regular American sedan-about $2000. At first, the ideas were hazy and inchoate, but once Earl handed the assignment over to Chevrolet Chief Engineer Robert F. McLean, the concept came into focus, and a car emerged.

Keeping costs down, McLean used mostly off-the-shelf Chevy components. By placing the engine and the car's occupants as far back as possible, McLean achieved a 53/47 front-to-rear weight distribution over the car's 102-inch wheelbase. The suspension was essentially the '52 Chevy sedan's, and the engine was the dutiful-but-unexciting inline-six that powered all Chevys, though this version was equipped with a higher compression ratio, triple Carter side-draft single-barrel carbs, and a more aggressive cam to produce 150 horsepower. Because of McLean's fear that no Chevy manual transmission could handle the hopped-up engine's "tremendous" output, a two-speed Powerglide automatic was installed. To minimize tooling expense, Earl produced the body from fiberglass, a substance often experimented with, but never used in production.

Still, what Earl and McLean designed was only intended to be a showcase star at GM's Motorama exhibit at the 1953 New York Auto Show. Before the car made it to that venue, however, it was viewed by Chevy's then fledgling Chief Engineer Ed Cole. Cole, at work during that time period developing the legendary '55 "small-block" V-8, is said to have literally jumped up and down with enthusiasm for the Motorama Corvette. So as the car was prepped for the show, and after some corporate politicking, the engineering began in preparation for production.

Public response to the '53 Motorama Corvette was electrifying. Thousands demanded to know when they could buy one, and in record time, only six months, they could-as a '53 model, as an almost exact duplicate of the Motorama prototype. (Clearly, it was easier to pump out cars in the era before government regulations such as crash standards.)

Over the marque's 42-year life, Corvette dream cars have often led to production realities. From the '54 Corvette Nomad to the '92 Stingray III, Corvette show cars have revealed what future Corvettes would be-as well as what they could have been.

1956 Corvette SR-2
Harley Earl's last Corvette prototype was the SR-2 racer (illustrated on previous page), which started its career with a 152.866-mph blast down Daytona's beach course. Bill Mitchell, who would succeed Earl as GM's top stylist, added the white scallops.

1954 Corvair, Nomad, And Hardtop
Enthusiasm for the '53 Corvette had been so intense that Harley Earl's designers boiled over with three variations for the 1954 Motorama.

Most significant of the three was the bolt-on hardtop and roll-up glass windows of this roadster. Both these improvements would be in production on the '56 Corvette.

Most intriguing was the fastback coupe variation known as the "Corvair." Built on the standard 102.0-inch wheelbase, it both previewed the name of a Chevy yet to come, and gave some-very slight-hint of the Corvette coupe that would eventually appear in 1963.