lan B. Shepard (center) with GM Styling President William L. Mitchell (left) and Chevrolet General Manager Edward N. Cole (right) with Shepard’s 1962 Corvette.

Shortly after returning from his historic flight to space in 1961, Alan Shepard got a surprise gift from General Motors — a dazzling white 1962 Chevrolet Corvette.

The gift would spark a budding relationship between NASA astronauts and the automaker, and experts say the association helped to define the Corvette as the iconic American sports car.

“In the 1960s, astronauts were the American heroes that every child idolized and every adult respected,” Corvette historian Jerry Burton told GM in a 2011 interview. “That so many of them drove Corvettes really helped establish the Corvette as America’s sports car.”

But the astronauts might not have settled on the Corvette had it not been for Florida Chevrolet dealer Jim Rathmann, who also won the Indianapolis 500 in 1960.

According to General Motors, Rathmann [...]

As Larry Fisette told it, “I couldn’t believe it was in there. That it had been sitting there all that time.” The story is, a couple bought the Vette in Chicago in 1964 and drove it home to Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. Then, the husband began the restoration project. So, the ’54 Corvette roadster had been parked and torn apart until 2014, over 50 years. “He had jacked the body off the frame and pulled out the motor,” Larry recalled.

Fisette believes life is sometimes more about luck than skill. He’s already known in the hobby as the man who found 21 trailers full of Chevrolet muscle cars and parts. He calls this find luck, too.

One day a man and his wife walked into Larry’s business, De Pere Auto Center in De Pere, Wisconsin, to look for Chevrolet parts from these 21 trailers. The wife then revealed, “We have a ’54 Corvette, as well.” Fisette [...]

By: Susan Cameron

Few new cars have ever caused the stir that whipped up around the 1990 Corvette ZR-1. It started with fuzzy spy photos and Detroit gossip about a high-powered, “King of the Hill” model. Chevrolet was coy, neither confirming nor denying the grist of the rumor mill.

Rumor became fact at the 1989 Geneva Auto Show, when the ZR-1 officially debuted. It was a time when performance cars were only beginning to regain some of the performance enjoyed during the heyday of the muscle car, and the ZR-1’s 375-horespower (280 kW) LT5 V-8 engine – with its DOHC configuration and four-valve heads – was an intoxicating breath of high-octane excitement.

The all-aluminum LT5 engine’s design was a collaboration of GM and Lotus Engineering, sharing only a 5.7-liter displacement with other small-block engines. The engine was built by Mercury Marine, which was renowned for its aluminum machining capability. Engineers were justifiably proud of the [...]

Last week, Corvette Chief Engineer Tadge Juechter attempted to slam the door on whispers Chevrolet is working on a mid-engine version of the Corvette. Of course, it’s going take more than reasoned argument and denial from anyone—even automotive royalty like Juechter—to extinguish one the industry’s longest running rumors. Especially given these incriminating spy shots.

Read More About the Mid-Engine Corvette from Motor Authority

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Used with permission from Motor Authority | Article by John Coyle | March 25, 21015

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Russ McLean held many different positions in his career at General Motors, but none may be as historically significant as his time in the mid-1990s working on the Corvette team.

With GM in transition, the company had decided to shut down Corvette production to focus on other more popular models.

“They told me to let the car die,” McLean, of Rochester Hills, said. “I wouldn’t do that.”

McLean recognizes the decision to discontinue the iconic sports car was strictly business and intended to strengthen the company financially.

“They weren’t thinking about five years ahead, they were thinking about survival today,” he said.

Bob Bubnis, editor of America’s Sportscar, a publication of the National Corvette Museum, confirmed the company considered ending the Corvette on multiple occasions.

“The people up top were saying ‘let’s let it die,’ ” Bubnis said. “Lots of key people who loved Corvettes kept the program going.

McLean and others worked diligently in [...]