The new Corvette makes an appearance at GMs Motorama car event in 1953.General Motors That the Corvette is here at all is a marvel. Designed as a plastic dream car purely to dazzle car-show-goers, the Corvette has survived multiple GM mutinies and a corporate bankruptcy. Along the way, moments passed that inarguably define Corvette.This is our list of the occasions and innovations that made the Corvette the fast, enduring and lovable car it is today.The V8Its common knowledge the Corvette was launched with the laggardly and un-sexy Chevrolet Stovebolt six-cylinder, so nicknamed for the shape of its head studs. But what GM really wanted to use was Cadillacs 331-cubic-inch OHV V8. Cadillac was then truly the Standard of the World, and was revolted by the idea of sharing its fine engine with a lowly Chevrolet. Thus, the Corvette soldiered on with the straight-six warbling through triple single-barrel carbs.But by 1955, a savior had arisen. The small-block Chevy V8 was nothing short of a revolution. Back then, it measured 265 cubic inches, it was light, it was compact and it was powerful. The Corvette had finally found its engine. The V8 added a much needed dose of power, and a new-for-1955 three-speed manual helped it scoot along even better. The Corvette was inching closer to becoming a real sports car.Literally Zora Arkus-DuntovZora Arkus-Duntov was undoubtedly a mechanical genius and a born racer. His first motorized vehicle was a 350-cc motorcycle that he raced. His parents worried this was too dangerous and told him to buy a car, which they believed would be safer. He bought a race car. He started working at General Motors in 1953, and by 1957 he had developed a performance camshaft for the Corvette that became known as the Duntov Cam; it was used in the gnarliest Corvette engines right up until 1963.Whereas most of GM management was content to let the Corvette stay a sporty-looking boulevardier, Duntov insisted it be a true sports car of the highest order and rarely settled for less. Mr. Duntov may not be the reason the Corvette still exists, but he is the reason it became a real sports car.His fingerprints are all over Corvette innovations, and he was a fixture in the Corvette world, giving his last Corvette presentation just six weeks before his death. His ashes are buried at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky (Im not kidding) and he will always be Mr. Corvette.The Fuel InjectionThe first fuel-injected production car was the world-beating Mercedes 300 SL Gullwing of 1954 complete with lambskin fuel filter! Just two years later, in 1956 (for the 1957 model year), Chevrolet made the second-ever fuel-injected production car engine when it installed a Rochester mechanical fuel injection system onto its top-spec 283-cubic-inch V8. The engine made exactly 283 hp, said GM, or one horsepower per cubic inch, a feat few had achieved in a production engine.The fuel-injected engine made the Corvette downright fast, and with acceleration gears, zero to 60 mph could be pulled off in under 6.0 seconds, a staggering number for the late 1950s. Though the injected 283 established the Corvette as a global leader in engineering, it wasnt exactly perfect. The mill was difficult to tune and very sensitive to adjustments, and most shops couldnt figure out how to work on the space-age piece of equipment.As such, most street cars and race cars removed the injection setup for the less efficient but doubtlessly practical dual four-barrel carburetors. Nonetheless, the fuel-injected classic Corvette soldiered on until 1965, reaching a peak output of 375 hp from 327 cubic inches.The Independent Rear SuspensionRace car tech has always had a way of trickling into street cars, and in the early 1960s, the tech the best cars had to have was independent rear suspension (IRS). Jaguar had lead the way on that front with the 1961 E-Type, a year that still saw live axles under cars like the Ferrari, Maserati and Corvette. By 1963, only one would adopt the new tech Corvette. The IRS system had been lobbied for heavily by Duntov, but Chevy execs were finding trouble seeing the value of making an entirely new rear suspension not shared with any other GM model.Various mid-engined CERV prototypes were made to prove the efficacy of the new setup and in the end, the bean counters acquiesced as long as Duntov agreed to use off-the-shelf parts for the Corvettes front suspension to save money. The rear suspension of the C2 (and C3) Corvette uses the half-shafts as the upper suspension arms, and then has typical lower suspension arms.The unique part is the Corvette uses a single transverse leaf spring to suspend all of this instead of two upright coil springs. The transverse leaf keeps the weight of the spring itself lower in the chassis and intrudes less into the cargo space. The independent rear suspension sprung the Corvette into the next era of sports cars.The Big-Block EnginesCorvettes had always been fast, but
Origin: These innovations defined the Corvette as we know it