Today in History—January 17: From Concept Car to Cultural Icon

On this day in 1953, GM’s Motorama traveling auto show rolled into New York’s Waldorf Astoria. It was a lavish production that included dancers, models, and musical numbers. Among the glitzy concept cars and current models was something unexpected: the Chevrolet Corvette, which was neither pure concept nor standard model.

The car was the dream of design executive Harley J. Earl, who wanted to create a (relatively) affordable version of the sleek sports cars cruising around Europe—and around the village streets of Watkins Glen, New York, where he had attended a Grand Prix in 1951. He’d been impressed by how much Americans loved the cars, and he decided they deserved their own.

Enter the Corvette, soon to be America’s sports car. Earl and GM never intended to produce it, but the public reaction to the display car changed everything. Police had to do crowd control when 45,000 people showed up to view the Corvette and other dream cars on opening day.

The first Corvettes were assembled by hand in Flint, Michigan. Each had a white exterior, a red interior, a black ragtop, a heater, and a radio. The Corvette C1 became the first all-fiberglass-bodied sports car mass-produced in America, and it hit the market that June. It cost $3,498 (about $42,000 today), but to generate press, Earl gave many to celebrities as unofficial rolling advertisements.

Corvette production soon shifted to St. Louis, where it really kicked into high gear (though these Corvettes were two-speed automatics). Over the next few years, the Corvette got its signature V8 engine, manual transmission, and revamped front fascia, among other design shifts, under the guidance of engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov. His influence vaunted the Corvette from humble roadster to premier sports car and earned him—and Earl—the title “Father of the Corvette.”

Eventually, Corvette production found its home in Kentucky, where it still roars off the line today. Eight generations and some 2 million Corvettes later, what started as a white fiberglass experiment has become a legendary symbol of American ambition and ingenuity.

And if you’re wondering about that first C1 displayed at the show? It met an unfortunate end: The chassis was repurposed to test a station wagon, and the body was literally set on fire as part of fiberglass flammability tests.