Chevrolet Corvette

The Chevrolet Corvette is a sports car first manufactured by Chevrolet in 1953. It is built today exclusively at a General Motors assembly plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky, U.S.A., where the National Corvette Museum is also located. It was the first all-American sports car built by an American car manufacturer.

The Corvette is widely regarded as "America's Sports Car". For more than 50 years, Corvettes have combined very powerful engines and affordability, especially when compared with more prestiguous marques of similar abilities. Older generations of the Corvette have been criticized for being crude and lacking in refinement by European sports car standards, and their on-limit handling is a divisive issue, garnering both praise and reproach. Recent generations of the Corvette are widely seen as being much improved in these areas.

Corvettes tend to emphasize simplicity over technical complexity. Where nearly all competing marques rely on smaller displacement, more complex engines, the Corvette uses a simpler overhead valve (OHV) design coupled with a larger displacement. The result is often both lighter and physically smaller than the more complex arrangements, as well as cheaper to manufacture. Another example of this philosophy is the continued use of transverse leaf springs in the suspension. This lack of sophistication is sometimes viewed as a negative by automotive purists, and has fueled the aforementioned "lack of refinement" argument.

Recent Changes

 * March 10, 2010, Chevrolet announced a 500 unit special edition Z06 called the Z06 Carbon to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Corvette's first appearance at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Differentiating it are equipment from the ZR1: carbon-ceramic brakes, carbon-fiber body panels and magnetic ride active damping system. Also, as the name implies, the Z06 Carbon's skin is swathed in carbon fiber. It will go on sale in the Fall of 2010 and will only be available in two colors: Inferno Orange and Supersonic Blue.


 * For 2009, Chevrolet released a 600 unit special edition model of the Corvette to celebrate the entry of the Corvette C6.R into the GT1 class of ALMS this year. The Corvette GT1 Championship Edition is based on your choice between the Corvette Coupe 4LT, Convertible 4LT or Z06 and builds on it by giving the cars a visual package similar to the livery of the race car it celebrates. Underneath the bonnet, non-Z06 models also get the Z51 Performance Package and NPP Performance exhaust so as not to embarrass customers who will be shelling out a $7,840 premium over standard 'Vettes.