October 2020
CENTRAL HAWKE’S BAY BRANCH of the VINTAGE CAR CLUB of NZ (Inc) Lamb Country Branch Email: centralhawkesbay@vcc.org.nz
POSTAL ADDRESS
CHB Branch of the Vintage Car Club (Inc) c/-18 Wilder Street, Waipukurau. 4200
Club Nights—7.30pm 3rd Wednesday of every Month
The 1953 Corvette—By Robert Tate—Automotive Historian and Researcher The 1953 Chevrolet Corvette will always be remembered as the first model of a great American sports car that many consumers admired. During the post-war era, Americans were buying European sports cars like the popular MG TD, which had 7,449 units registered in the United States in 1952. The Jaguar XK120 was also popular in the U.S. as well.
GM staff pose with first Corvette produced in Flint.
Harley Earl, the head of General Motors design, was behind the development of the 1953 Corvette. In 1951, Earl had been thinking seriously about developing a lowpriced, sports car. At the start of the process, he assembled some great talent to make GM’s two-seater sports car a dream come true. The team included Vincent Kaptur, Sr who headed body engineering, Carl Peebles, the draftsman who made many of Harley Earl’s ideas a reality, Bill Bloch, a clay modeller, Tony Balthasar and a young engineer named Robert McLean, who laid out the unique chassis design. After the engineering and design team worked out a completed idea, it was announced that the body would be manufactured with fibreglass. In April 1953, Bob Morrison founded a new venture called the Moulded Fibre Glass Body Company who started planning and building a 30,000 square foot plant to manufacture the parts Chevrolet needed for the Corvette body assembly.
The first Corvette produced in Flint Michigan on June 30th 1953.