Why was 1983 the year without a Corvette?

welcome back to another episode of our CR stories this video is a sequel to my previous video Harley Earl and the birth of the Corvette of course I'm also trying to construct these episodes in a way that is self-contained so that you don't have to have seen the previous episode to understand what's going on in this one but I would argue that it's helpful and maybe even more enriching to go back and watch the previous video first because there will be some references to events and people mentioned in the previous video and while I do try to give a small primer it doesn't go as in-depth as the previous video so check out that video if you haven't link is in the description and come back here and enjoy this story and I do hope you enjoy it now let's get to it with the early years of the Corvette in the rearview mirror Chevrolet had to step up its game with the retirement of Zora arkus-duntov and the death of Harley Earl we had a changing of the guard when it came to the custodians of the Corvettes legacy not that Chevy seemed all that eager to usher the c3 out the door since it was the most successful generation of the Corvette up to that point even in spite of the seventies oil crisis leading to the rise of smaller more fuel-efficient cars and as the Corvette entered the 1980s we saw emission control systems gain more widespread usage with the 1981 c3 offering computer control command to regulate air fuel mixture and ignition timing 1982 brought a remodeled exhaust system and in tank electric fuel pump which is great but enthusiasts bristled at the standard automatic transmission these late models were stuck with things could have been better but they also could have been a whole hell of a lot worse and yet with the Corvette in the 1980s you would think we'd get a full-scale push for a greater technological advancement and we did but on a bit of a delay you see with the intended departure of the c3 in nineteen - it was expected we'd get an imminent announcement on the next generation but some unexpected events led to something no one could have anticipated for the 30th anniversary here of one of the most important American cars ever made there would be nothing to show nothing released so let's dive in and explore a curious footnote in automotive history as 1983 became the year without a Corvette chief engineer Dave McLellan had been working on the c4 with lead designer Jerry Palmer since September 1978 the c4 was initially planned to release for model year 1982 but like an average RCR story it got delayed because of the outsized ambitions of the person making it upgrades and ideas that Chevrolet wanted to implement and test meant that the car would release in the fall of 1982 for model year 1983 yet that didn't exactly happen either one of the issues with the development of the c4 was the amount of planning time necessary to bring it to life normally you'd want to plan everything out in advance and extensively at that so that you work out all the kinks early and can get a fully-formed satisfying product out as soon as possible because you can't really approach car development the way george RR martin approaches writing a novel sometimes it helps to be a gardener who lets things develop organically but sometimes you just have to be an architect and start laying down structure so you can get the damn ball rolling however the c4 took more time than usual because it's sat at the intersection of these two philosophies a car that had to be extensively planned out yet also serve as an organic reaction to the period in which it was developed let me explain one of the legends surrounding the development process is that the team needed more time to re-engineer the powertrain for the c-4 since the initial design didn't take into account the belt tightening emissions regulate particularly with regards to California with state emissions laws suddenly restricting displacement to the 305 cubic inch v8 in the early 1980s not the end of the world but the best way to get people wanting more and rebelling against regulations is to tell them that no you can't have more and also these are the regulations and you'd better follow them to the letter or else but was that really the cause of the c4s delay Korff sport comm writer Josh Boyd offered an explanation in his article the car that never should have been the story of the 1983 Corvette he writes quote perhaps the most widely believed theory for this mysterious delay comes from tales of a late insistence by former GM general manager Lloyd ruse to dump a previously planned t-top design in favor of a tardis style top this last-second design change was said to have caused a lack of structural rigidity this required a complete redevelopment of the c4s frame rails to offset this change and ultimately consumed an excessive amount of time what had become certain during the lengthy design process of the c4 was that a delay in the intended late 1982 release date was imminent posed with the question of how best to confront this issue GM execs decided to forgo the 1983 production year in its entirety instead focusing on the c4 s release as an early 1984 model as a result no true production run of 1983 Corvettes was ever built and quote and that my friends is how 1983 ended up being the year without a Corvette and yet there's always a caveat to every never in this case while a proper 1983 production Corvette was never built for distribution GM still had 43 pilot cars produced for research and testing at their Bowling Green Kentucky assembly plant naturally these cars were scheduled for Destruction after they'd served their purposes and the majority of them were destroyed but one managed to survive to make a long story short the surviving 1983 Corvette was transported from Bowling Green to the GM Milford proving grounds where it served its function as a research prototype assigned the ID number rbv zero nine eight the car and its brethren were instrumental in the development of the c4 so when it was returned to the bowling-green assembly plant it's rumoured that some sentimental workers decided to rescue our bv0 9/8 from destruction after all this was the 30th anniversary Corvette for better or worse sure it wasn't a production model but this was the only birthday cake the Corvette was going to get for its big three-o so the workers allegedly secret at the car out of the assembly plant and kept it hidden under a car cover at an undisclosed location inside the facility the plan was to keep it from being destroyed and then cutting a deal later with GM to ensure its preservation perhaps by buying the prototype off of GML right or making the argument for the historicity of the model you know the whole argument of it's the only one of its kind we got to save it the future generations or the future generations can know when and you know it's something where there aren't always people who are thinking about history in the manufacturing of something but either way these GM employees had a plan that they put in action because it's better to ask forgiveness than to ask for permission but another legend tells a very different story for the gap year Corvettes rescue you see in 1983 the Quality Manager of the bowling-green assembly plant was a man by the name of Ralph Monteleone it was his job to make sure that each of the prototype Corvettes was destroyed I mean an on-site crusher was even transported to the plant by GM for this exact purpose but on the day the crusher was brought to the plant a nasty storm rolled in with it Monteleone who'd just spot a fancy new pair of cowboy boots didn't want to go wading through puddles in the nicest pair of shoes a 1983 automotive assembly plan had ever seen so he ordered a stay of execution for RB V's zero nine eight except by the next day GM had taken the crusher back having assumed all the models had been destroyed Monteleone didn't know about it until it was too late and suddenly he had a 1983 Corvette sitting on his lot with no way to destroy it so he parked it in back through a car cover over it and just sort of left it there when Monteleone successor Paul shnoz took over in 1984 he asked what the deal was with the random Corvette sitting him back when he was told the story of Monteleone and the tell-tale cowboy boots she knows realize just what he had on his hands before long the bowling-green assembly negotiated official ownership of RB v zero nine eight from GM that 1983 Corvette remained on display at the plant until 1994 when it took up residence at the National Corvette Museum nearby a cute story all things considered of course ohmy Monteleone could verify the truth of it and luckily he did in a rare interview with Corvette online for LSX magazine ralph Monteleone stated that these test Corvettes were quote validation vehicles or cars in the final step before production but because they were built with parts intended for production each 1983 Corvette had a VIN plate however this didn't actually mean they were suitable for sale they had all sorts of problems from body fit issues to inadequate emissions control systems it's only natural that people would wonder why you'd want to send a car with such clear future historical significance as a 1983 Corvette to the scrapheap but in the context of Monteleone s comments it makes all the sense in the world why GM would want these cars destroyed as he noted the engines on those validation pickles were notoriously underpowered due to the incompatibility between the small-block Chevy v8 and the crossfire injection in addition to the aforementioned problems there were also issues with the instrument panel and electronics and Lord only knows what else by Monte Leone's own admission destroying validation vehicles was basically the industry standard so what incentive would there have been to risk one's career just to save one car what sense would that have made well to put it bluntly none it wouldn't have made any sense the final season of dark would have made more sense but it begs the question if the cars rescue wasn't intentional how was the car saved is the legend of Monteleone scow boy boots true as it turns out yes yes it is but it's only part of the story while Monteleone confirmed the truth of the legend he would add that he doesn't know why GM never followed up on the vehicles VIN plates since one would assume if the company was really so militant about seeing every validation vehicle destroyed they would have checked all the VIN plate numbers and noticed one car was missing as Monteleone states quote I had all intentions to follow up and make certain that all vehicles were gone I already made sure that the paperwork was complete on all the others and pulled from the vehicles that we had on site we brought in all the other 1983's and used a die grinder to cut the windshield and remove the VIN plates and then turned them in to the finance department next we took them to the car crusher on site at the time but the darn rain hit so hard and that last white 83 Vette was sitting out in about three inches of water the parking lot held a lot of water during rain so I figured as soon as it stopped and the water went down I could go out I did get it moved to another location which made some think they were all destroyed thing is I had on this pair of brand-new out-of-the-box cowboy boots which costs two hundred dollars and that was a lot of money in 1983 at least for me somewhere along the way word spread that all vehicles were gone finance I guess did not count the VIN plates and figured they had them all in the manila folder they were in and the car crusher had wrapped up their equipment he would have thought they would have asked about vehicle plates but I can't answer why they didn't and quote and so there you have it the 1983 Corvette made it through the year without a Corvette basically on a fluke for what it's worth Monteleone is an interesting guy in his own right he first joined GM as part of the st. Louis Corvette plant in 1968 in a part-time summer job as an end-of-line inspector but before long he was taking newly manufactured Corvettes onto the test track for an 18 year old auto enthusiast dude was pretty much living the dream you could argue that by the time he took over as quality manager of the bowling-green assembly plant in the 1980s there was no one better qualified to do the job given how long he'd been with GM by that point and how many fresh off the line Corvettes he'd driven and he offered a common-sense ideology that lined up with GM's approach to validation vehicles since no one is really thinking about preserving test models for posterity as Monteleone says quote where would you stop why would you save them what would you do with them they did save many of the concepts show vehicles but most of those went to the shredder not one single person said hey these are 1983 vehicles we better keep one someone might want to see it the truth is we did not want people to see the poor quality the instructions given to me were make them all go away there is a formal General Motors procedure to make that happen end quote and that's exactly what did happen save for our BV zero nine eight the ultimate survivor a car that escaped the crusher avoided being forgotten in the waterlogged and narrows of the bowling-green plant and later survived the infamous 2014 sky dome sinkhole collab at the National Corvette Museum countless iconic Corvettes lost yet the sole 1983 model was not among the casualties rbv zero nine eight miraculously endured once again illustrating that a good car can be as hard to kill as it can be to find but as the year without a Corvette wound down the height behind the c4 would only grow now given the title of this video you did technically stop it here because we've already covered the year without a Corvette but its implications created sort of waves that went on into the c4 generation because if you're gonna take that much time to get a vehicle right then damn it when it rolls out it better be right now one could argue that GM had enough of a car to work off of that they might have been able to release a c4 in 1983 after all but Monteleone disagrees making a point of stating how bad first impressions have killed such cars as the Etzel and the aztec sure the Edsel wasn't a pre-existing model with a heritage to it and the Aztec is like 17 whole last years after the period we're talking about now but the point remains people were already looking for reasons to get out of the Corvette business not just consumers but GM executives as well you'd think for a car that had gone so far out of its way to prove itself the Corvette wouldn't have constantly found itself in danger of being shelved yet like the shortest guy on a basketball team the Corvette was constantly having to own its spot so McClellan and his team really had to stick the landing on the launch of the c4 they saw the date for the model year change knew they wouldn't make it and adjust it accordingly it was just common sense business Monteleone even reflects on this stating quote in the automotive manufacturing world as you know model year changes have been pretty standard the july/august time is pretty much a written rule or it was in those days for when the next model year is released actually some Corvette owners think they have a night in 83 model year vehicle versus the 1984 that they actually have title to in some cases they do not understand that timing they see manufacture date 1983 on the certification labels on the door face and think they have a 1983 but it was in 1984 after sitting through many meetings filled with very high daily doses of stress from reading product reviews and realizing how many issues that the vehicle had this unpopular decision was made if that major model change failed it could have been the death of the Corvette end quote the ambition with the c4 was to not just stand toe-to-toe with the Ferraris and Porsches of the world but to surpass them Chevy just needed more time to implement their changes however this meant the c3 would live on for an extra year while engineers tried to figure out how to fully realize this car they had been designing since the late 70s you had a car with a different chassis than the c3 with bumpers and body panels that ditched fiberglass in favor of molding plastics the car would feature other significant departures from models past as Auto List explains in their history of the c4 Corvette quote unlike the body-on-frame construction of earlier Corvettes the c4 was built with a uniform not to be confused with a unibody assembly in which the exterior body panels are structural members the uniform combines critical elements of the car such as the windshield frame into one welded unit and quad it was a departure from the Zora arkus-duntov era as the c4 fastback coupe was not only the first production Corvette with a glass hatchback it also offered a clear acrylic removable roof panel option if you didn't want the standard fiberglass the c-4 also steered into the ever-growing futurism of the 1980s super chevy.com author Brian Brennan details this in his article Corvettes forgotten high-tech dashboard see for electronic liquid-crystal quote the belated 83 Corvette now the 84 was the first automobile to offer a tronic instrument cluster with three separate liquid crystal displays as standard equipment it was manufactured by the AC sparkplug division of General Motors it was used in Corvettes from 1984 to 88 it is based on the microprocessor based LCD cluster that displayed speed fuel and RPM instantly the speedo and tach along with the speed and RPM are presented in digital form as well as in an analogue graph that changes colors from green to yellow to red as you climb the rev range along with this the center section that is displayed directly over the steering column is called the Driver Information Center and is equipped with analog fuel level display and for multifunction digital displays that are displayed at your will actually at the flip of a switch allowing for eight separate digital readouts they break out into oil pressure / temperature coolant temperature / voltage instant / average fuel economy and trip odometer / range / distance traveled on reserve fuel end quote naturally the article goes on to detail the litany of problems consumers ran into with these units in the years ahead such as intermittent lighting failures or instrument panels that went dark all together even in our review of the c4 mister regular describes it as a rainbow once the instrument cluster suffers any sun damage since the colors all sort of just blend together but the cforce technological leaps were more notable than just what was done with the dash McClellan wanted to get away from the lateral movement of the C threes design something that was clearly a Corvette but also an artistic statement in its own right in addition to the electronic dashboard and displays the c4 offered all independent lightweight suspension aluminum calipers for the brakes and light transverse fiberglass mono leaf springs to replace the coils of the previous generation and all coming together to create a car that was more aerodynamic owing to a height sitting 8.5 inches shorter than the see three and a wheelbase decreased by two inches it was shorter wider and yet still wider so people complaining about storage space had a little more to work with as far as transmission options it was pretty much the four-speed automatic unless you took the option only offered in the first four years of the sea for the Doug Nash four plus three transmission which took a four-speed manual paired with an automatic overdrive on the top three gears granted power wasn't a blow away on the 5.7 liter small-block v-8 engine options but that wouldn't be as big of a detractor for some as long as the car made up the difference in handling and ride quality and as time went on the 250 horsepower performance of the l98 fell by the wayside in the wake of the second-generation Chevy lt1 small-block which boosted the c4 to 300 horsepower overall the z4 was a critical success as Corin driver raved about the zero to sixty acceleration and it's one at a 40 mile per hour top speed quote the Corvette is a truly stout automobile it is all that the fevered Acolytes so desperately wanted their fiberglass fossil to be a trueborn world-class sports car loaded with technical sophistication end quote Motor Trend proudly declared it the car of the year for 1984 and it was a commercial success as well selling some fifty one thousand five hundred forty-seven units in 1984 alone at a price tag of around twenty one thousand eight hundred dollars and over the years the improvements continued with a fairly rapid progression like the L 83 v8 being ditched in 1985 in favor of the l 98 that shared the tune two point fuel injection of the Chevy Camaro or 1986 marking the return of the convertible the introduction of anti-lock brakes electronic climate control and a third brake light for 1987 offering roller hydraulic lifters and a b2k twin-turbo engine conversion that could boost output to 345 horsepower and 465 torque this ties into Chevrolet's aim with the evolution the c4 they wanted to make the world's fastest production car and so they enlisted the aid of UK engineering consulting company group Lotus to build the zr1 which debuted in 1990 as an optional performance package it went from zero to 60 in 4.6 seconds with top speeds of 175 miles per hour on the strength of the LT 5 engine which made in the ballpark of around 375 brake horsepower Chevrolet had a goal and that's exactly what they achieved with this zr1 on March 1st 1990 at the test track at Fort Stockton Texas the zr1 broke several world records the numbers which were verified by the FIA included 24-hour world speed endurance runs of 5,000 kilometers at 175 point 7 100 miles per hour 5,000 miles at 173 point seven miles per hour and 4221 miles at 175 point eight eight five miles per hour naturally having achieved their goal GM had to sell this zr1 package at a cost commensurate with its technical accomplishments at a price tag of 59 thousand dollars which is equivalent to around 137 thousand two hundred seven dollars today it was the most expensive Corvette ever at the time it sold roughly 3,000 units in its first year as the package was hurt by the same things the c3 was able to succeed in spite of you see once again the US was in the midst of a recession this time has the result of factors like the excessive debt accumulation of the 80s and the oil price shock of 1990 throughout the 90s c4 is generally hovered between 20,000 and 23,000 units in sales peaking in 1994 with 23,000 330 units sold but then again you know the gears in between saw milestones such as the millionth Corvette to come off the factory line in 1992 the 40th anniversary c4 in 1993 a symbolic belated birthday for the brand which skipped its 30th and there was also the addition of mass airflow sequential fuel injection to the lt1 engine in 1994 some modest tree stylings in 1995 and the end of the c4s production cycle in 1996 with the introduction of the obd ii diagnostic system to the fleet as well as the Corvette Grand Sport based on the 1963 model of the same name and the 96 collector's edition in Sebring silver the corvette c4 might not have sold the way GM might have hoped but it represented the biggest leap forward the Corvette had yet seen paving the way for the Corvettes contemporary identity it truly connected the various periods between the eras of Harley Earl Zora arkus-duntov Bill Mitchell Larry Shinoda you know it brought that modern look performance and character that's come to be associated with the Corvette in the last 25 years or so and yet because there's always an end yet while the mid 90s marked the end of the c4 they signaled the departure of a man regarded as the savior of the Corvette because it may take a village to bring a car to life but sometimes it only takes one man to save it from its millionth date with the proverbial crusher all right so let me back up a bit you see Jim Perkins was a Chevy executive who took a proactive approach in virtually every aspect of his career it all started in 1960 after he graduated from Baylor University a Texas native Perkins shared more than a bit in common with Ralph Monteleone in that Perkins also fancied a fine pair of cowboy boots and a bit of professional gumption he tried to get an interview at the Chevrolet office in Dallas but was rebuffed at every turn yet he refused to give up in an approach I'm not sure it would work today and I'm kind of surprised work demon men Curtin's basically just spent the entire day approaching people in the lobby talking to anyone who would hear him out and eventually it worked he was able to smooth talk his way into a warehouse job that amounted to disposing of defective parts that had been returned under warranty not as glamorous as Monteleone job but you got to start somewhere you know and once he got started man he got started Perkins was beneficiary to one of the most meteoric Rises in corporate America at the time or at least that I know of getting out of the warehouse and into a sales position where he excelled to such an extent that he quickly found himself weaving his way through senior sales into an executive position maintaining his high standing through a combination of ambition charm and knowledge of the ins and outs of the auto industry within 20 years from soliciting an interview in the lobby of a regional Chevrolet office as a kid who was fresh out of college Perkins was the general manager of the entire friggin company which is why it's so surprising that he would then piece out within the five years that followed as Toyota made him an offer he couldn't refuse under Toyota he was placed in charge of launching the Lexus brand in 1989 and it was a fairly prestigious gig considering what the brand would end up becoming yet there was a personal attachment to Chevrolet for Perkins beyond the fact that they had given him his start in the auto industry he'd grown up loving Chevy's in his youth which is why he even applied at the regional office in Dallas in the first place coming straight out of college one would think he had options but he wanted to work at Chevrolet and that's what he did see the dream be the dream I guess now you would think having left Chevrolet after being promoted to regional manager would have soured his reputation in the auto industry but that wasn't really the case not even when he left Toyota within five years of leaving Chevrolet in order to return to Chevrolet as general manager and he talked about gutsy and yeah they took him back he was Jim Perkins maybe he wasn't universally loved but he was trusted to get things done whether it was in sales or in helping launch worldwide brands so he was back in a top position and not a moment too soon basically by this point sales of Chevy's fleet were taking a hit least relative to the competition those sales numbers I listed earlier for the c4 in the 90s hovering around 21 to 23 thousand units yeah those numbers weren't good by GM standards to the extent that GM wanted the Corvette scrapped altogether declaring it a non-essential part of their fleet it goes back to that argument I see online all the time about how automakers don't really manufacture enthusiast cars for the mass market anymore well it's not a new argument really because even then automakers were bristling against the idea of investing in these athletic vigorously handling high trim package offerings because while they weren't profitable they were expensive to make and people weren't buying enough of them to justify the expense and even though the Corvette had roughly 40 years of history behind it by then history doesn't mean a damn thing if the prestige that's supposed to come with the lineage adds nothing to the bottom line so General Motors intended for the Corvette to go the way of the Corvair and the El Camino and wait how many times it isn't now that they've almost killed the Corvette I'm losing track you know that was the plan until Jim Perkins Jim Perkins stepped in to work his Texas magic let's expand on this basically Ralph Kramer was the director of public relations for Chevrolet during Perkins tenure and he recalled the Texans ingenuity in getting the c5 off the ground in an interview with Automotive News quote it was perkins who found the money to go ahead and get the prototypes built if it wasn't for that that car was destined to be shelved he had the opportunity to move some funds around and he did that surreptitiously causing no end of anguish among the auditors and the quote but how was this put on perkins radar in the first place Joel Spielman who headed up the midsize car division was horrified at the possibility of losing the Corvette he knew Perkins was as big an enthusiast as he himself was and so he reached out for help Perkins apparently met with GM president Lloyd ruse and a 20-18 article by gary whitson bird of car and driver gets into the specifics quote perkins met with GM president lloyd ruse who told him we need the capital and engineering resources to do the new full-size sedan platform so we can't do Corvette the resources instead went toward the 1992 to 1999 Pontiac Bonneville Buick LeSabre and Oldsmobile 88 not exactly a murderer's row that Spielman then asked Russ McLain director of manufacturing for GM in Mexico to return to the states to save the Corvette MacLaine's responsibilities as a platform manager were similar to those of GM's current vehicle line executives known as VL ease and included product engineering manufacturing / plant engineering purchasing quality service parts and finance when I took over in February 1992 McLane told Car & Driver the CFI program was not approved we were at the bottom of the heap on quality and customer satisfaction and we're losing a significant amount of money on each car built McClellan's team was already working on a revolutionary replacement for the aging c4 with a longer wheelbase a rear mounted trans axle and a much stiffer backbone structure to keep that work funded and on track perkins clandestinely tapped his Chevrolet marketing budget jim came up with a million dollars out of his advertising budget Spillman says and i looked across the rest of my organization and found half a million here a hundred thousand there and put enough together to build a working mule with a new structure under the old car end quote and so they made a prototype c5 out of a hydro formed backbone and a rear transaxle shoved onto a c4 body perkins continued working alongside Spielman and dave hill who had taken over from dave McClellan as Corvettes chief engineer in 1992 to get members of the North American strategy board to experience the mule car they had built Perkins then had his guys add up all the magazine covers the Corvette had gotten in its lifetime a number exceeding 800 it laid the foundation of Perkins argument that the Corvette was quote an American icon that they had no right to cancel and quote Perkins completed a proposal and other documentation such as sales projections that were some 250 percent better than the c4 and so he was approved and Russ McLane's team got to work on the c5 when the car launched in 1997 it kicked off a trend of Corvettes never dipping below 32,000 units per year in sales in the decade that followed and with good reason although the fifth generation marked a new beginning for the Corvette and with its significant changes these changes still managed to maintain the spirit of the car as enthusiasts had come to know it from Christie's article for Auto lists c5 Corvette the complete reference facts and history quote the Corvette c5 s chassis was completely redesigned from previous versions of the car the previous multi-piece welded frame was replaced with a one-piece hydroformed chassis with a composite balsa core floor and cast aluminum windshield frame that added a great deal of rigidity it was so stiff that no extra supports had to be added to make the convertible handle well the c5 was produced and sold for most of its lifespan with few changes to the fundamentals of the car the engine became more powerful more options packages were offered and there were cosmetic updates but the car did not changed significantly despite the engine's large displacement and empower the Corvette c5 achieved decent fuel economy numbers 18 miles per gallon city and 25 miles per gallon highway with the automatic transmission those ratings helped the c5 avoid the gas guzzler tax that many other vehicles in the class are faced with the Corvette c5 slow curb weight of under 3,300 pounds and the low drag coefficient are thanked for boosting the car's fuel economy and for making it the most fuel-efficient Corvette yet end quote the c5 saw production numbers hit nearly a quarter million making it among the more commonplace Corvettes you can find but that doesn't mean there weren't unique variants 2001 saw the introduction of the successor to the zr1 in the form of the familiarly named zo6 corvette which shared its moniker with the c2 from 40 years earlier while the retuned ls1 engine made less horsepower than the zr1 review suggested superior performance due to its smaller weight improved handling and ride quality that was increased through the implementation of an upgraded efi for suspension it wasn't the only high performance offering of the fifth generation as the 50th anniversary edition our poz 25 would follow in 2003 and the 24 Hours of LeMans commemorative edition c 16 would follow in 2004 but despite the success of the c5 and its revitalization of the corvette brand jim perkins wouldn't be around for the actual launch of the car he managed to get greenlit he retired in 1996 at the age of 61 making him basically one of the only prominent figures in these Corvette related RCR stories who wasn't shoved out by GM's mandatory 65-year retirement age but he left Chevrolet and resigned himself to a quiet life at his home in Fort Worth once again another legend entering the annals of the Corvettes parentage so many different people could lay claim to having fathered different eras of the Corvette and as any good father would one the creation would live on long after its creators were gone after the original file corvette Harley J Earl passed away in 1969 we saw changes as the brand entered a new era we saw this through the body style that lasted with gradual variations from the late 60s to the early 80s the C form marked a considerable departure from what many had considered a Corvette to be and one could argue it assured in the modern Corvette crystallizing an image of what many think of when they think Corvette but while Harley Earl set the tone for the Corvette we also had men like Zora arkus-duntov who popularly held the title as father of the Corvette helping to establish the vehicle as a legitimate domestic sports car we had Bill Mitchell the man behind the Stingray and the Mago shark concept cars and Larry Shinoda the designer who helped shape the look of those Mach o sharks and the c3 and of course Jim Perkins who left the auto industry all together after he helped insure the Corvette survival into the c5 generation that is until he got the offer to run Hendrick automotive group within three months of his retirement suddenly he was in North Carolina managing the dealership group and rising to the rank of CEO and leading such programs as a 2009 initiative to rebuild retired racecars and other high performance classics like the Chevy Camaro zuv his early tenure at GM and this is what he did for the rest of his life up until his final retirement perkins passed away at the age of 83 on December 28 2018 but his legacy lives on through his actions in saving a vehicle that has become as synonymous with Chevrolet as any vehicle they've ever produced perhaps more so is strange to think back on the c4 and c5 eras of the Corvette we saw great advancement in both technology and performance yet this period was also characterized by the loss of so many titans of the Corvettes history I know I wanted to keep each episode of this trilogy relatively self-contained which is hard when you'd have to go back to Harley Earl and the birth of the Corvette to get the history behind most of these men yet here we are when Bill Mitchell retired as chief stylist in 1977 he went out on the 1977 Pontiac phantom concept yet like so many people in these RCR stories retirement didn't mean his departure from the auto industry in the aftermath of his retirement from GM he was outspoken about the direction the Corvette had taken having once said quote that square box is pretty near plastic the instrument panel Dracula's dressing room it rides like a truck it isn't a style car it's a machine car engineers are running it Earl would never let that I would never let that happen and I condemn the guys for it and quote this was in 1988 over a decade after his departure from GM but he seemed to acknowledge that time had passed him by when he would add to his critique quote my time is over end quote yet Mitchell kept himself busy in the years immediately following his retirement running a private design consulting firm William L Mitchell design until 1984 it showed that Mitchell had the soul of a designer even if his best-known saying was quote I got gasoline in my veins end quote I'm like 900 percent sure he didn't say it anything like that though his mark on the legacy of the Corvette is unmistakable and it's reflected in every c2 or c3 Corvette still on the road if not in details of the Corvettes still being released today on September 12th 1988 Bill Mitchell died from heart failure at the age of 76 less than a decade later he would see the passing of one of Mitchell's most noted colleagues mr. Larry Shinoda a man worthy of his own full RCR story Shinoda was a racing enthusiast who got kicked out of the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles but still managed to get jobs at Ford Packard and then General Motors all in rapid succession designing such vehicles as the Mach Oh shark and honing the look of the original 19th c3 Corvette Stingray but then Shinoda also found himself locked in a bitter lawsuit over his work as a contracted designer for AMC to develop the vehicle that would become the Jeep ZJ or Jeep Grand Cherokee Shinoda would claim his design pitch for the Grand Cherokee was stolen by AMC executives and that he got stiffed on the pay after Chrysler bought out the company in 1997 Chrysler came to a settlement of over $200,000 yet Shinoda didn't live to enjoy it beyond the moral victory that came with it as he passed away of heart failure on November 13th 1997 at age 67 but of all the men profile both in this video and the previous entry in the Corvette saga the man who is second only to Harley Earl is Zora arkus-duntov arkus-duntov retired in 1975 just two years before the passing of another Chevy legend small-block v8 developer Edie Cole he was succeeded as Corvette chief engineer by Dave McClelland yet Zora arkus-duntov remained prominent in the automotive community in particular as an inductee into the automotive Hall of Fame the drag racing Hall of Fame and as one of the guests of honor at the 1992 rollout of the one millionth Corvette to come off the line at the Bowling Green assembly plant our Gaston Tov's legacy wasn't just in getting the Corvette a manual transmission pairing it with Edie Cole's Chevy small-block v8 or developing the first mass-produced American car to have four-wheel disc brakes no he put forth the argument that saved the Corvette from the axe in its first decade by issuing an internal document that made note of how Ford was beating them to the punch in terms of sporty vehicles capable of extensive customization and modification now wait those terms are redundant know whatever the kid stays in the picture without Zora arkus-duntov this video doesn't exist because every year after 1957 would have been the year without a Corvette arkus-duntov was instrumental in keeping the brand alive he made a public appear at the National Corvette Museum for its groundbreaking in 1994 where a nearby Street had been named in his honor two years later he was a guest speaker at an event celebrating the uniquely American legacy of the Corvette this despite battling cancer however six weeks after this guest appearance on April 21st 1996 Zora arkus-duntov died from kidney failure related to his battle with cancer he was 86 Pulitzer Prize winning author George Will eulogized arkus-duntov by declaring that quote if you do not mourn his passing you are not a good American end quote yet arkus-duntov himself never really understood the hype around his supposed legacy telling the LA Times in a 1991 interview that quote a man puts his pants on one leg at a time so the fuss about me is out of proportion I really didn't create anything genius huh I just make a good car end quote yet he wasn't shy about expressing his disappointment with all the goals left unfulfilled with regards to the Corvette quote I know that I give lots of people joy and I'm happy for that but my satisfaction with the car was never really full because I was always constrained today's Corvette would be a mid-engined car and four-wheel driven four-wheel drive for better traction needed in a high-performance car mid-engine for better balance more efficient braking end quote it was a dream Zora arkus-duntov would never live to see fulfilled but it was fulfilled it just took another 23 years to happen of course the things we want don't always happen when we want them to sometimes they don't happen at all or if they do they're unfulfilled and yet a Corvette is very much the product of its time period perhaps a mid-engine Corvette missed its peak however time is funny like that history is funny like that I mean the universe is funny like that because well in the last video I wondered aloud how we'd ever get our hands on a c8 Corvette just no idea but here we are and perhaps the weight will have been worth it it has with every aspect of the Corvette since its birth only time will tell you

Channel: RegularCars

Views: 109,415

Keywords: Regular, Car, Reviews, #Corvette #Chevy #RCR, Corvette, C4 corvette, C4 corvette history, no corvette 1983, 1983 corvette, 4th generation corvette, corvette documentary

Id: cG634rvHC5w

Length: 49min 4sec (2944 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 14 2020