‘Vette still nifty at 50

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/07/2003 (8340 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NASHVILLE — “Success in the car business can be measured by the enthusiasm of your customers,” says Rick Baldick, marketing director for the Chevrolet Corvette. “So when you throw a 50th birthday party for your car and 20,000 people show up, you have to conclude that you have one of the most successful brands in the business.”

No arguments from me.

Fifty years. That’s half as long as Ford has been in business, and more than half as long as General Motors has been in business.

Corvette is also the longest-running brand name in Chevrolet’s portfolio.

It began with a pair of show cars built for GM’s Motorama travelling car shows in the early ’50’s. Inspiration for GM design chief designer Harley Earl to build a two-seater sports roadster came from the Jaguar XK-120.

Fiberglas, then a somewhat unusual material, was chosen for the body — the first of many technological innovations on Corvette’s resume.

Reaction to the car was good enough that a short production run of 300 Corvettes was built for the 1953 model year. All were Polo White with red interior. The six-cylinder engine was mated to a two-speed Powerglide automatic transmission — not exactly a fireball.

The 1954s can be identified by a series of arcane-to-anyone-but-a-‘Vette-fan details. The car was less than a huge hit. At year-end a bunch of cars remained in dealer inventory, so the 1955 production run of 700 cars was the second-shortest (after 1953) in the car’s history.

But 1955 also saw the introduction of the new small-block Chevy V8 engine as an option. That was the beginning of Corvette’s performance history, which continues to this day.

Estimates of the number of Corvettes that showed up for the Nashville party varied from 6,000 to 10,000, with upwards of 20,000 people dropping in.

Whatever the final counts, a whole bunch of plastic fantastic sports cars from almost every state in the U.S. (Hawaii was there; Alaska was, at time of writing, the only one unconfirmed; maybe it was a coincidence, but there seemed to be an inordinate number from Nebraska), as well as from Canada and as far away as Australia converged on Music City, U.S.A., last weekend for the birthday bash.

Most of the cars made their way to the Corvette factory in Bowling Green Ky., about an hour north of here, in a series of caravans from all across the country.

One car from each of the 50 years of production was selected by the organizers to participate in a parade through downtown Nashville on the Friday evening. The rest then moved on to the site of the Nashville Coliseum, home of the NFL’s Tennessee Titans, on Saturday for a full day of product presentations, seminars by current Corvette engineers and designers, vendor displays, restoration lessons, souvenir pin trading — anything car enthusiasts could think of to entertain themselves.

The grand finale was a Saturday night concert by ZZ Top.

But mostly, they came to share stories about their cars with other fans of the brand.

The enthusiasm Baldick spoke of was everywhere. During the Friday night parade, a woman sitting on the sidewalk in front of me yelled, “There’s an ’04!”

“How do you know?” I asked her.

“It’s the new Le Mans blue colour, the commemorative edition!”

I should have known that. After all, that was the car (and the colour) I wrote about in my other story (see page E1). The fact that this woman knew all about it, well, that’s the level of detailed product knowledge you’d expect from a real enthusiast.

Every owner at an event like this has a story to tell. One of the better ones just happened to involve a pair of Canadian Corvettes from Stratford.

Ron Deichert, a financial planner, had always wanted a Corvette. He came home one day and mentioned to his wife Debbie that he knew of a 1988 yellow coupe that was for sale.

“We had four kids in college,” he told me, “and I knew we shouldn’t really do it.”

Debbie then called the vendor, and said she wanted to buy the car for Ron.

“Shouldn’t you talk to him first?” she was asked.

“No, I know he wants it.”

He received it three years ago, as a Father’s Day present.

Ladies, the Father’s Day present ante has just been upped…

Their friends, Dave and Sheila Wittig, got their 1985 black coupe in a somewhat more conventional way.

“I bought it for myself as a 40th birthday present!” said Dave.

“Better than him having a girlfriend?” I asked Sheila.

“Yes!” she smiled in return.

The two couples had joined the caravan leaving Flint, Mich., early Wednesday morning, eventually hooking up with another bunch of cars and heading south.

In Aurora, Ind., late afternoon, the Wittig car developed brake problems.

“The master cylinder seized,” Dave related. “We called the local Chev dealer, who told us, ‘If you can get it here in half an hour, we can take a look at it.’

“Well, I couldn’t drive it and they didn’t give me any ideas on where to get a tow truck — not very helpful.

“Then a 1968 Chevelle SS396 stopped to see if we needed help. Turns out that Ron — we never did catch his last name — was a local town councillor and was running for mayor. Even though we couldn’t vote for him, he was there to help us.

“We told him what was wrong. He loaded our luggage and us into his car, and drove us to Rick’s Auto, a small garage on the other side of town.

“Rick got on the phone, arranged a tow truck, got the car into his shop and told us to leave it there. ‘Trust me,’ he said. We were a bit nervous, but we had little choice.

“By 8:00 the next morning they were already working on the car. By 8:40 Rick was on the phone again. He found the required parts in Cincinnati, a little under an hour away. He sent his son to get the bits, and by 2:30 that afternoon we were on the road again! And the price was more than fair, considering he really had us over a barrel.

“The Riverside Hotel desk clerk let us stay in our rooms way past checkout time. She even loaned us her own car to get around until ours was fixed!”

Unbelievable hospitality.

“We were only six hours late getting to Bowling Green.”

I reminded the foursome that foreigners — like Canadians — tend to see Americans through the lenses of TV and movie producers in New York and Los Angeles. When you get into the heartland, you meet the real Americans.

Just don’t make any jokes about the fact that in Canada, the guy who gets the most votes wins the election… (Actually I don’t think this is necessarily true.)

You could actually tell these two couples were Canadians — theirs were the only two cars in the main parking lot whose tops were off. All the American cars were locked up tight.

Another Canadian car, a white ’67 coupe owned by Scott and Kay Sinclair of Bolton, is one of only 606 out of the 15,000 members of the National Corvette Restorers Association to be awarded the Duntov Mark of Excellence, signifying that the car has successfully passed a stringent series of cosmetic, mechanical and performance standards. The award is named in honour of Zora Arkus-Duntov, longtime chief engineer for Corvette. Only 1953 through 1974 Corvettes are eligible.

LeMans star present

The most famous Canadian Corvette driver is, of course, Mississauga’s own Ron Fellows, whose C5-R racing car finished third in class at Le Mans’ 24-hour race a few weeks ago, co-driven by Johnny O’Connell and Franck Freon. Fellows wasn’t at the birthday party: he was busy helping the Corvettes qualify one-two for Sunday’s American Le Mans Series race at Road Atlanta.

But the car driven by his teammates Kevin Collins, Andy Pilgrim and Oliver Gavin, which placed second in class at Le Mans, was in Nashville, with the French as-raced dirt still in place.

Corvette fanciers were disappointed that the American cars couldn’t complete the “three-peat” — they won their class the past two years. But the Prodrive Ferrari 550 Maranello was fast, and enjoyed a magical trouble-free run to take the win.

Rumours abound that this may be Corvette’s last year at Le Mans, although Baldick would neither confirm nor deny it. He said “racing is part of Corvette’s DNA,” but that they will have to wait and see what rules and regulations the race series organizers come up with before committing to next year.

The Corvette owners’ enthusiasm has special significance to Dave Hill, chief engineer and vehicle line executive for both the Corvette and the new Cadillac XLR roadster.

“We have a policy of continuous improvement,” said Hill, who is no small hero to Corvette owners.

“We’re always trying to add new features, and the factory keeps finding ways to build the cars better.

“When I meet a customer who had a 2001 Corvette and they buy a 2003, and tell me how much they appreciate the changes, well, that really means a great deal to our whole team.”

The passion for the cars is also reflected in the gear Corvette owners wear. I’d guess that about three-quarters of the participants in the 50th Anniversary party had logo-bearing shirts, either honouring the Corvette, some iconic moment in its history (like the Le Mans or Daytona race victories) or identifying the wearer as a member of a Corvette owners’ club.

Following the Saturday activities, many of the 50th Anniversary participants returned to the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, directly across from the factory, for additional celebrations, plant tours, plus a series of Corvette-only drag races at nearby Beech Bend Racepark.

On Monday, former Corvette chief engineer Dave McLellan helped cut a huge cake honouring the car he helped develop.

Then it was time to head home, wherever “home” might be.

Except for the Aussies — they were heading to Florida. When it takes so long to get from there to here, they aren’t going back until they see as much as they possibly can.

Will there be a Corvette Centennial? With lots of kids in attendance in Nashville, with at least two companies manufacturing Corvette pedal cars, and with hundreds of American kids as young as six years old having entered Corvette drawing and essay contests, you can count on it.