Buoyed by a wildly enthusiastic introduction as a concept car at GM’s New York 1953 Motorama debut in January, company executives put production of the Corvette on a fast track to capitalize on the favorable public and media opinion. After months of frantic activity, production on the 1953 Corvette got underway, with the initial target set at just 50 cars a month — a maximum of 300 units for the balance of the calendar year.

Each 1953 Corvette required considerable
hand labor on the makeshift Flint,
Michigan, assembly line, which was
housed in the same factory that turned out
Chevy passenger cars. Due to variances
in the supplied fiberglass components,
body fit-and-finish were inconsistent,
especially during the first
model year.

Actually, much of the 1953 model-year’s run of 300 cars would be hand-built, as more-efficient production processes for assembling the vehicle’s fiberglass body were still being perfected. [...]