(9) It being a mass-class sports car, the Corvette’s excellent engineering tends to be obscured by some rather garish styling gimmicks that make the uninitiated wonder if the car is a fake—a lurid, bulging, silicone-filled, automotive Playboy Bunny. This confusing identity is the result of a confrontation on the part of Chevy engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov, who is well and truly the patron saint of all Corvettes, and the Chevrolet styling department. Duntov’s primary aim in his professional life is to make the Corvette the finest sports car in the world. The styling department views his car as a unique opportunity to fool around with the swoopy shapes and flashing lights that somehow to them mean “sport.” It is within this minor tempest that the Corvette encounters trouble: Duntov on the one hand viewing his automobile as a purposeful, well-balanced sports car, while his rivals see it as a Flash Gordon Thunderbird for the Hugh Hefner school of mass-cult glamor.
(10) Because of this identity dispute, habitability of the car has traditionally suffered. Only recently has the driving position and control placement become acceptable (forward visibility on the styling department’s first version of the present Stingray was so bad that Duntov and his engineers had to delay its introduction for a full year), and the jazzy coke-bottle shape means limited passenger room and a deplorable absence of luggage space.
(11) Despite its hefty cost—approximately $5000 to $8000, depending on options—the Corvette is not a hallmark of quality. Components tend to come loose and detailed coachwork is generally below average for a car of this price (although no worse, it might be noted, than on some European exotica).
(12) Originally intended only as an image-builder and “loss leader,” the Corvette has been a pleasant sales success for Chevrolet and produces a substantial annual profit. In 1969, sales should reach 30,000.
The particular subject of this test was something more than the average Corvette. It was one of the aforementioned 435-hp monsters (the L-71, with three 2-barrels, cast iron heads and the optional transistor ignition), with a sprinkling of options, that ran the gamut between form and function. As an example of the identity problem that exists within the Corvette marketing structure, our test car was equipped with power windows and “off the road” (read “racing”) external exhaust pipes. Within this framework of logic, Cadillac should be planning the Eldorado as a Grand National stocker.
Despite any efforts to soften its latent toughness with such niceties as power windows and an AM/FM radio, our Corvette came across as one thundering, hammering brute of an automobile. In bright red, the car had its share of scratches and rips in the fiberglass, giving it the appearance of a race-worn Ferrari (there is a Corvette cruising the streets of New York with Ferrari name plates affixed, as a matter of fact). Its giant exhaust pipes, its fat, blackwall tires and its disheveled surface gave it a fierce countenance indeed, but the incredible power of the beast didn’t become apparent until its giant engine began to turn. Then it became a truly visceral experience to motor along in the Corvette—at any speed. Tires whining, the awesome rumble of the exhaust sweeping through the cockpit, the emission pump pulley screeching, the fiberglass body creaking; the sounds of a genuinely exciting vehicle. Enough sounds, incidentally, to render the radio useless and to severely limit conversation with the windows down, but worthy entertainment unto themselves. And after all, if the sensation of driving a potent machine like the Corvette isn’t fun by itself, one is a fool to own it in the first place.
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