You’re in a Hawaiian shirt speeding down Ocean Drive, with upbeat rock-n-roll playing from your car’s speakers. The sun insistently bakes the back of your neck – it seems your car is missing a roof. It’s the late ’60s, and you live (as it seems to you) in the most stable country in the world, capable of handling any adversity. Ladies on roller skates, whose swimsuits allow tan lines in the most unexpected places, literally fall over, turning back at you. You’re basking in the echoes of the golden era of the economy, with a car under you whose cult status would be hard to dispute even 50 years later. It could have been a Ferrari, but no – it’s a red Corvette C3. Now your nation can make its own sports cars.
After World War II, most European and Asian car manufacturers were solely focused on creating small or even micro-sized vehicles for the common people. There wasn’t just a lack of money for anything luxurious, but also for not the cheapest gasoline. The USA hardly knew such problems: fuel was cheap, the economy was doing great and ensured an unprecedented baby boom, the consequences of which would only be felt decades later. Yet, the center of the world’s automotive industry was not in a hurry to produce sports cars for the dandies: even 2-door coupes were based on 4-door sedans, often of an outdated frame construction. Even installing gigantic engines didn’t help the situation, and buyers wishing to have a small rocket at their disposal were forced to place orders overseas.
But in the early ’50s, the bosses at General Motors had an idea to create a car with no domestic competitors. Abandoning all mass-market developments, in 1953, His Majesty Chevrolet Corvette – the first American sports car designed and assembled in America – was born. It’s hard to overestimate this event: Ford’s competitors, for many years to come, up until the partnership with Carroll Shelby and the creation of the Shelby Cobra, gnashed their teeth watching the rise in prestige and sales of Chevrolet. A small car with a big engine and a fiberglass body, which weighed nothing compared to its contemporaries, quickly gained popularity among young people and various speed enthusiasts.
Surviving 2 generations, the appearance of C3 was planned by the end of the ’60s. Initially, the Corvette represented a classic layout: the engine in front, the drive at the back, a satisfied piece of meat, as Jeremy put it, in the middle. But the new car’s concept spent a lot of time considering the possibility of switching to a mid-engine or rear-engine layout: to someone in the engineering department, this idea seemed quite logical after the appearance of the Corvair. The problem was that the Corvair model became one of the most scandalous in history: due to its rear-engine layout, unthought-out suspension, and poor driving qualities, it caused a mass of accidents, including fatal ones. After the book “Unsafe at Any Speed,” GM received lawsuits from victims and, apparently, an allergy to experiments. The final 1965 concept, changing its name from Manta Ray to Mako Shark during the process, once again received a front-engine, rear-wheel-drive scheme, which is only to be celebrated.
The C3 model shared most of its components with its predecessor, C2. Engineers could have been accused of simple restyling if the car’s appearance hadn’t been so deeply reworked, and every 2 years, a package of improvements and corrections was additionally introduced for the most demanding customers. Just think, up until 1982, there were 21 different engines!
The C2’s 327 cubic inch engine was replaced by a new small-block of 350 cubic inches, or a hefty 5.7 liters in the metric system. The same happened with the big-block 427 – it became 450 cubic inches or 7.44 liters! For us, it sounds almost like a truck engine, but for America at the end of the ’60s, it was perfectly normal: as long as the gas tank was big enough, it could even be from that very truck. Even the 5.7-liter version was capable of hitting the first hundred in 5.9 seconds, and more powerful cars could do the quarter-mile in less than 11 seconds. Even by modern standards, that’s fast, and back then, the Corvette was one of the models that created mass drag racing. Simple guys could compete at every traffic light in the acceleration of their self-propelled wagons. Iron blocks were bolted to aluminum heads, and a supercharger was attached to an already powerful engine, but all this couldn’t save the sports car from the main enemy.
In 1973, the USA found itself at the epicenter of the oil crisis. Some oil-producing countries announced an embargo on oil imports to the states, leading to a multiple increase in fuel prices. Moreover, gasoline became scarce for a long time. However, we’ve already referred to these events more than once, but on the sales and prospects of a powerful sports car, this could have put a big question mark, but… In many ways, the Corvette saved the prestige of GM, which simply couldn’t kill a car that had already become synonymous with luxury in the American way.
Before the crisis, another important event occurred: Americans changed the standards for measuring engine power. Thus, from the gigantic 425 hp, it could become less than 300, which much more accurately reflected the actual situation. To cope with such powers, the customer was offered a choice of even manual transmissions. Predictably, such configurations never enjoyed particular demand. At least there, across the ocean, where manual transmission remains the best anti-theft system to this day.
Look at this low body silhouette with the characteristic slope of the front part. The development of aerodynamics then did not proceed by leaps and bounds, as it did in the ’80s and ’90s, but the wedge shape, facing downwards, seemed sufficiently advantageous in terms of compensating for lift. In the photos, you see a convertible with a soft top, but for an extra fee, a hard removable roof could be proved. The second body option was a notchback – a sedan with removable roof panels. If you look at its photos, it becomes clear that the almost vertical rear window remained from the design of the mid-engine Corvette version.
The car’s interior – flashy, screaming – perfectly complemented the image of a dashing guy, a conqueror of women’s hearts. Interestingly – this interior simply cannot lose its relevance, classic needle gauges and 3-spoke steering wheels will never go out of fashion. Functionality? It’s unlikely that behind the wheel of such a car, you would think about the capacity of the glove compartment, and the vinyl door trims shouldn’t necessarily have pockets for tissues. Perhaps, you would think of wiping the tears of yet another competitor after a “traffic light start.”
No matter how you spin it, C3 became one of the most recognizable bodies in the history of Corvette. “Pop-up” headlights, which the model managed to retain until the mid-2000s, became almost a calling card for many – few knew other American cars with such a feature. And yet, the Corvette is alive and well to this day, unlike many competitors, and what’s more important – it continues to rack up sales, making the already most popular sports car even more mass-market.
The material was worked on by:
Owner: dorzhiev_life
Photographer: mccarthy606
Text: its_sokol