All Corvettes are Red: The Rebirth of an American Legend

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Feb 3, 1997 | by Eric Peters

Restyling an automotive icon such as the Chevrolet Corvette is risky business. If a generic family sedan fails, it's not good for General Motors but the company would survive. If "America's sports car" flames out, GM would suffer irreparable harm. Image, more than anything else, sells cars.

All Corvettes Are Red: The Rebirth of an American Legend (Simon & Schuster, 384 pp) by journalist James Schefter follows the half-decade odyssey that culminated in the fifth-generation 1997 Corvette, unveiled earlier this month.

Smartly written and extensively researched, Schefter's book gives readers a sense of the passion the Corvette inspires, even among staid "company men" whose sole concern is the bottom line. But the Corvette is more than mere transportation. It's the home team in an international competition for top honors as the baddest hot rod on the planet.

Since 1953, when the first-generation Corvette ("C1" in company argot) appeared, each successive generation has built upon the previous version, which has served as a testing ground for GM's latest engineering and styling innovations. Corvette was the first American sports car to receive four-wheel disc brakes, an independent suspension and fuel-injected V-8 power The 1963 "split-window" coupe remains one of the most recognizable and collectible Vettes ever -- but all Vettes are unique in autodom. Even during the dark days of the late 1970s, when the beautiful fiberglass body housed a wheezing 185-horsepower engine, Corvettes inspired awe.

Schefter labored for nearly eight years amassing the research that went into this book, spending countless hours meeting with the men who mid-wifed the C5 -- as well as those who actively tried to abort it. Readers are privy to conversations between GM executives and walk through ultra-secret display rooms where "styling bucks" (scale models) and "clown suits" (half-cars laid against a mirror to create the effect of a complete vehicle) are displayed for a nod of approval -- or a career-ending frown -- from corporate chieftains.

But he is best when describing the world of men such as John Cafaro, the studio chief charged with conceptualizing the 1997 Corvette. It was Cafaro's job to make sure the 1997 car eclipsed the fourth-generation Corvette that had been around since 1984.

This last model, the C4, was revolutionary in its day, reestablishing Corvette as a world-class sports car for the first time since the 1960s. Its low silhouette, wide track, "fast" windshield and clamshell hood gave it a stunning countenance that still looks good nearly 13 years later.

But GM had serious cash-flow worries-when Cafaro and his small staff were tapped for the C5 effort. It even appeared that management was thinking about killing the Vette. The original launch date for the C5 got pushed back from 1993 to 1995 and then finally to 1997.

In the meantime, competitors were nipping at the heels of the aging fourth-generation car. After 10 years on the market, the C4 was showing its age and losing market share to Japanese sports cars such as the Nissan 300ZX and Toyota Celica Supra. Was it worthwhile to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to redesign a car that sold only 25,000 units annually -- in a good year?

Then there were the engineering issues. Although it was a superb machine, the C4 rode like a tank, was prone to rattles and squeaks and was difficult to get in and out of. It leaked when it rained. For a $40,000 car, such defects were unacceptable.

C5 not only had to outperform C4 in a drag race and outhandle it on a road course, it had to do these things while delivering a comfortable boulevard ride besting the vibration and noise levels of an S-class Mercedes sedan -- and while achieving 24 miles per gallon on the highway and exceeding every emissions standard in the book. That GM eventually accomplished these goals is testament to the unheralded talent inside America's largest automaker.

Schefter introduces us to the engineers who made it happen, men such as Dave McLellan and Dave Hill. McLellan succeeded the august Zora Arkus-Duntov -- "Mr. Corvette" for the better part of the 1960s and 1970s -- to become only the second chief Corvette engineer. In 1992, he passed the mantle to Hill amid a tempestuous battle over costs, timetables and engineering minutiae. Hill had earned his spurs at Cadillac as chief engineer on the Allante two-seater and DeVille luxury sedan, but he quickly learned to live and breathe Corvettes.

We also are introduced to John Schinella, who in the 1970s created the look that made Pontiac Firebirds a big seller. Schinella was rewarded with a stint heading GM's Advanced Concepts Center in Southern California and later was charged with helping (actually, competing against) Cafaro's team, striving to make the C5 "as profound" as the 1963 Corvette.

Throughout the book, Schefter does a splendid job of decoding automotive jargon, assuming his readers are ignorant about antilock brakes and similar matters. We learn that each GM car is built on a "platform" denoted by a letter of the alphabet ("Y" for Corvette, "F" for Camaro/Firebird, "W" for Lumina and so on) and that engineers use water under extreme pressure (a process called "hydroforming") to give precise shape to support structures to minimize unwanted squeaks. In the process, the author makes clear that GM remains capable of ingenious innovation ... but respects tradition as well.