The Chevrolet Corvette rolled out of Flint, Michigan in 1953 and has never stopped— eight generations, no domestic rivals left standing, the only sports car still continuously produced on American soil. It nearly didn't happen. Chevrolet was bleeding market share, and brand manager Thomas Keating saw a sports car as the only remedy. Developed as Project Opel, it was America's answer to the lean British roadsters of the postwar years: fiberglass over a 3.9-liter straight-six, two-speed automatic. It debuted at GM's 1953 Motorama show in the Waldorf-Astoria to an immediately won-over crowd and made it to production—though the 300 hand-assembled units that followed found almost no buyers, a quiet, uncertain beginning for what would become America's sports car.
1972 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray Convertible — Power craters in 1971. Octane requirements drop as the industry braces for the coming unleaded mandate, and the big-blocks feel it. Then Chevrolet answers with the LS6: 425 horsepower, raw and barely civil. We test four powertrain variants. The entry-level 270-hp car with its three-speed automatic still manages 60 mph in 7.1 seconds—respectable. The LS6 does it in 5.3. It does not feel like a number. It feels like something has been decided about you before you had a chance to think.
