The first American sports car

October 17, 2025Newsletter Archives

It’s now been more than seven decades since General Motors debuted the first Chevrolet Corvette, the world’s longest running continuously produced passenger car – and the ultimate American sports car, oozing speed, style, power, and sex appeal. In the latest edition of Retro Rides on GM News, we take a look back at where it all began. 

On January 17, 1953, we unveiled the Corvette on the opening day of GM’s Motorama auto show, in the swanky Waldorf-Astoria hotel in Midtown Manhattan. After the New York edition of the show, Motorama hit the road, visiting other large cities, attracting more than 4 million people in total. And the Corvette concept car was one of the stars of the show.

The Corvette emerged from a secretive task force led by GM design chief Harley Earl called “Project Opel.” Noting the success of imported European sports cars from automakers like Jaguar and MG, Earl and his team began work on an affordable two-seater for GM in 1951. 

Partly for expediency, the designers chose an underpowered straight-six “Blue Flame” engine, which was based on a truck engine called the Stovebolt Six that dated back to 1929. That prototype ‘Vette was capable of 150 horsepower (compare that to the max 1,250 combined horses1 from the 2026 Corvette ZR1X), sported a two-speed automatic transmission and had a top speed of 108 miles per hour.  

GM built 300 fiberglass-bodied Corvettes in a facility in Flint, Michigan by the end of 1953, hitting showrooms in June. This was the first mass-produced car with a plastic-laminated fiberglass body. All came in “Polo White” paint with a “Sportsman Red” interior. 

The first Corvette was intended to be a speedster for the masses. The Chevrolet press release announcing the launch of the ’53 Corvette said Chevy was offering optional radio and heaters, but that all came with “windshield wipers, turn indicators, electric clock and other conveniences not commonly associated with vehicles of this type.” (Hard to imagine a world where a heater - for a car built in Michigan - was an optional feature.) The original price: $3,498, equal to about $42,000 today.

And the story has grown steadily from there. In 1954, a second color choice was added – blue. In 1956, Corvettes switched to V-8 engines. Not until 1963 were Corvettes offered as a hard-top coupe. Other changes and variations followed. In a 2013 press release marking the Corvette’s 60th anniversary, one GM exec said it had become “the car of choice for movie stars, musicians and astronauts.”

And the Corvette continues to make history. The current lineup ranges from the entry level Corvette Stingray to the Corvette ZR1X supercar. Earlier this year, the ZR1X set a record for fastest lap time ever by a non-professional race car driver at Germany’s Nürburgring. That car goes from zero to 60 in under two seconds.2 GM President Mark Reuss last year drove a Corvette ZR1 233 mph, the highest speed ever recorded by any production car priced under $1 million. And you know Harley Earl would be smiling about that. 

-- Eric J. Savitz, Editor-in-Chief, GM News