Earlier this week there was an incident that managed to shock the American car industry, crossed the Americans into two camps, and touches on a car that most Americans can not buy a new one at all: Chevrolet has announced that it will produce an electric Corvette.
Chevrolet’s announcement was not exactly an announcement about the production of an electric Chevrolet Corvette, but rather a brief announcement about the production of an “electrified” Chevrolet Corvette, then another half mumble from senior General Motors about the future production of an electric Corvette. The explanation is simple: Chevrolet will produce a Corvette next year that will have an electric auxiliary mechanism that will help its petrol engine. But this is not the end: at a later stage, which will not come long after – Chevrolet will produce a Corvette that is completely electric.
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So far Chevrolet’s announcement about the new Corvette, but the truth is that this is an announcement that is much more than just an announcement of a new model. This is a message that for many Americans (who have never driven a Corvette) is anti-patriotic, because it concerns a car that is “America’s sports car” – but not just a sports car, but the “real” America’s sports car, which lies between New York and Los Angeles. Les, far from the city centers and closer to places where engaging in horse-drawn sports cars is pretty much all Americans have to fantasize about.
The Corvette’s story did not begin with the plan to produce a sports car that could defeat Ferrari and Lamborghini. It all started as an attempt by General Motors to fight the British car industry (yes, there used to be a British car industry). Originally it was Harvey Earl, head of General Motors’ design department who came up with an interesting fact: Young Americans who fought in World War II were exposed in Europe to a different breed of car than they knew in the United States: instead of the chrome-plated American monsters, Sports made in Italy, French and especially British, which were lightweight, decent without being chrome-plated and did not really boast high-volume and powerful engines.
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Chevrolet Corvette 1958
(Photo: Manufacturer)
Manufacturers such as MG, Triumph and others produced sports cars that were sold in huge quantities to the United States after World War II, and the American car industry had no answer to the light British cars, at least until the Corvette arrived. And the Corvette, introduced in 1953 to fight the British, was not a successful car, because the Americans did what they knew best to do: produce their own kind of interpretation of what a sports car should look like.
They took the wrong ingredients and built a sports car. The original Corvette was nice but first of all it was automatic. In those days fiberglass was considered a “futuristic” material and so fiberglass was chosen to build the chassis, and beyond that Chevrolet decided that since British sports cars were equipped with small engines then the Corvette also required a small engine – and what General Motors had on the shelf was the “Blue Fly” engine. Quite tired with six pistons with a volume of 3.9 liters, which is small in terms of the United States. Chevrolet improved the engine slightly to produce 150 horsepower and the result was embarrassing. The first Corvette crawled to 100 mph in 11.5 seconds and sales were poor.
In 1953, when Chevrolet still did not know exactly what to do with the Corvette, there were those who did know what to do with the unloved car: Zora Arcus Dantev (or by his original name “Zechariah Arcus”) was a car engineer, the son of a pair of Jewish immigrants from Russia who settled in the country United States. Arcus worked for several car manufacturers, most recently Chevrolet, and he knew exactly what he wanted when it came to Chevrolet: Arcus knew Chevrolet was struggling to keep the Corvette alive – and the result was a historic document that changed the way Chevrolet saw the Corvette, affecting all generations of The Corvette.
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Old vs. new – the incarnation of the Corvette
(Photo: Manufacturer)
The document, which was submitted to the management of General Motors, was entitled “My thoughts on youth, racing culture and Chevrolet.” In the document, Arcos explained to General Motors’ management that in order to completely change the Corvette and turn it into America’s sports car, only one change was required: the installation of an eight-piston engine. In practice, Chevrolet introduced its first eight-piston engine in 1919, so the design was not a problem at all.
What Arcus did was simply convince the company management to put a particularly powerful version of the engine into the first Corvette. And such an engine, with a volume of 4.3 liters which produced 195 horsepower, found its way into the Corvette. Very quickly Chevrolet began offering manual gearboxes in the Corvette. Arcus Dantov, later nicknamed the “Father of the Corvette,” became the head of General Motors’ performance program, and retired in 1975 with fame. When he died in 1996, Dantev received a rare honor: Afro was sealed at the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and the tombstone wall was marked as a Chevrolet emblem. An obituary read at his funeral, which illustrated the American people’s connection to the Corvette, stated, among other things: “If you do not mourn his death, you are not good Americans.”
From the point where Arcus Danutov introduced the “strong” Corvette, about three years after the introduction of the “weak” and original Corvette, it can be said that Chevrolet has never looked back: since Dantev’s first Corvette, no less than eight different Corvette models have been introduced, all without exception The rules were based on exactly the same characteristics: an eight-piston engine, a fiberglass body, a design that did not embarrass anyone and a performance that was usually quite frightening. During the decades of production of the Corvette there were better and less good generations, those who succumbed to the fuel crisis of the 1980s and did not produce much power and those who produced over 700 horsepower – but one fact is undisputed: the Corvette is “America’s sports car”.
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Corvette from 1988
(Photo: Manufacturer)
What makes the Corvette America’s sports car? First and foremost the fact that this is a car that every American can purchase at one point or another in his life. A Chevrolet Corvette from the 1980s or 1970s can be purchased in reasonable condition for a few tens of thousands of dollars, or in poor condition with a promise to renovate a parking lot, for a few thousand dollars.
Even the basic suspension geometry has remained unchanged and there is a reason for this: the Corvette is truly a car designed to bring the good news of sporty behavior and performance to what is known as Small Town America. That means even those who live in a small town in Minnesota or Indiana can purchase a Corvette, buy spare parts for it at most parts stores, work on it at home, and go out and tear up the nearby road. The Corvette, for most of its generations, may be a machine that looks outrageous, but it is fairly easy to care for and maintain, which is why it is a car that is the dream of so many Americans.
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The Corvette’s V8 engine from 2014
(Photo: Manufacturer)
And this is exactly where the problem lies that even General Motors will have to find a way to deal with it: the Chevrolet Corvette is a car that for many Americans is much more than a car. In fact, the fact that it is a very common car, and not a Ferrari, only works in favor of the Corvette. The fact that even a factory worker will one day be able to purchase one and also repair it at home is a significant fact, part of the American dream, no less. This is a piece of Americana – the Corvette symbolizes indulgence in nostalgic values on which millions of Americans have grown up: barbecue, a striped and star flag and a Chevrolet Corvette.
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A Piece of America: The Chevrolet Corvette Museum in Kentucky
(Photo: Manufacturer)
This is the difference between the ability to repair the car on your own at home, which many Americans see as an expression of personal freedom, and cars whose maintenance is moving further and further away from the neighborhood parking lot. It’s basically a fire extinguisher of the tribal bonfire – and another fire extinguisher which is carried out by none other than General Motors, the company that invented the Corvette.
General Motors will of course continue to produce an eight-piston engine Corvette, but the manufacturer’s approach is interesting: its competitor, Ford, did not dare to mess with the Mustang. When Ford was required to produce an electric car, it introduced the Mustang Mach E, an electric off-road vehicle between which there is no real Ford Mustang and nothing but perhaps the emblem. But at Chevrolet, a company that knows full well that it needs to be environmentally friendly, the situation is different. And here Chevrolet takes a huge risk, whether to split the Corvette lovers and lose its all-American image or whether to change phase and determine that in any case the future is electric, and those who do not want to join the journey can get out of the Corvette.
The answers to this question will have to be given by General Motors next year – when the electric version of the Corvette will be presented after the “semi-electric” version. In any case, Chevrolet will have to think of a way to rebuild the Corvette’s image as an all-American sports car. Given the popular customer base, it is possible that the move to electrify the Corvette may prove to be a suicide move for the company.