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INTRODUCTION

Author Steve Magnante’s only Corvette (so far) changed his life.

Owning a Corvette changes your life. I know; I lived it. Back in 2006 I was living in Los Angeles, California, and I drove a baby blue 1979 Ford Pinto every day. Yes, a Pinto. Sure, I had some cool cars in the garage (a 520-inch Hemi Dart, an altered-wheelbase 1963 Nova funny car, and others), but I intentionally chose the disposable Pinto for the daily 62-mile run to and from my job as tech editor at Hot Rod.

Aside from instinctively reaching for gauze bandages whenever I heard cars skidding behind me in traffic, the only things I care to remember about the Pinto were how slow it was and how other drivers generally treated it, and its occupants, like dirt. Getting cut off and passed in traffic were daily events, and I noticed distinctly that gals on the sidewalk averted their eyes when I drove by. No joke. Little did they know that the “loser” behind the wheel had a good job and owned two houses, five very cool other cars, and 14 cats. Their loss, right? But it was L.A., where “you are what you drive.”

And so, on February 25, 2006, I paid $6,062.74 for a nice, original, white 1985 Corvette hatchback with an automatic transmission and base-level suspension. Instantly, my world changed. Loading groceries into the hatch at Vons supermarket often triggered random conversations with female shoppers, freeway and surface traffic seemed to part around me, and, yes, gals on the sidewalk even gave me a second look. I’d like to think we’re all above such materialistic instincts, but in my opinion it cannot be denied: A Corvette adds excitement to your life. And mine was a 20-year-old model at the time! Based on that small taste of things, I totally understand why some folks buy Corvettes.

But the real reason is because of how they perform. With its 230-hp Tuned Port 350 and base suspension, my C4 wasn’t the 10-second thrill machine that my Hemi Dart was, but it cornered like nothing else I’d ever driven, and its big disc brakes were always up to the job. I grew to love late-night drives up the Angeles Crest Highway, a narrow two-lane twisting, turning route that led up into the mountains above L.A. Although the Gatorbacks were half-bald, the C4 had amazing grip, and mine was built one year before anti-lock brake systems were standardized, so stopping was never a concern.

Although my personal Corvette ownership experience didn’t revolve around a particularly rare big-block model or a much more advanced C5, C6, or C7, I get it. Corvettes are a breed apart from everything else on the road. Amazingly, Chevrolet didn’t build Corvettes by the dozens or hundreds like certain foreign supercars. Instead, Chevrolet cranked them out by the tens of thousands every year. Regular Joes and Jills with half-decent credit could actually own them.

Even exotic varieties with Rochester fuel injection, triple Holley carburetors, solid lifter camshafts, 32-valve DOHC heads, titanium connecting rods, and superchargers were built by the thousands in the years they were offered. Despite a handful of super rare models (1963 Z06, 1969 ZL1), even the hottest Corvettes were available to the masses. There was no years-long waiting list.

Finally, while some Corvette historians lump the 1953–1962 cars into a category generally called the C1, I feel that finer divisions are warranted. Here, the 1953–1955 cars are considered as one group, while the 1956–1962 models are treated as another. Thus, this book uses eight chapters to cover the eight distinct generations as I see them.

Keep in mind that with a project like this, the most challenging task is deciding what to leave out, not what to include. Each chapter is divided into five sections: Legend and Lore, Body and Interior, Engine and Driveline, Suspension and Brakes, and Number Crunching and Press Commentary. In each, I’ve loaded an interesting cross section of data. But again, I barely scratched the surface of all there is to know and learn about America’s original sports car. I hope you enjoy the book as much as I enjoyed writing it!