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AUTOMOBILIA
At 50, a genuine US icon is still evolving
By Royal Ford, 9/21/2002
Not many models of cars can legitimately be the object of a meaningful anniversary celebration.
My list would include the Model T, the Volkswagen Beetle, the Ford Thunderbird, the Ford Mustang and, this year, its 50th anniversary, the Chevrolet Corvette.
I just spent a week in a 50th Anniversary Special Edition Corvette and came away impressed yet again at what a world-class, high performance sports car it is - and at a price (mid-50 thousands) that is far below the cost of cars in the herd with which it can roam.
In preparing the 10,000 or so 2003 Special Edition 'Vettes it hopes to sell, General Motors could have taken the easy/sleazy route and just slapped a few commemorative badges on the car and put it out for sale.
Ideally, a sixth generation Corvette, now in the works, might have been ready for the 50th, but it wasn't. That next 'Vette will be better than ever, you can be sure.
Instead, what GM did was take the standard 2003 Corvette and add to it a few glimpses of the future.
Sure, it got some special nonmechanical detail: the exterior badging (matched on embroidered seats and floor mats); a shale-on-champagne interior color scheme; champagne-colored wheels; and a liquid pool paint job that uses Xirallic paint technology. That paint job, rendered in red/purple for the Special Edition, uses aluminum oxide flakes applied in a first coat, and then a deep, red-tinted clear finish. The result is a car that sparkles like a ruby in the sun.
General Motors also made standard - for all 2003 Corvettes, not just the Special Editions - fog lamps, power sport seats, dual zone climate controls, and a parcel net and luggage shade for the coupe.
The coupe and convertible Special Editions are fine, enduring monuments to a car passed down and evolved through the hands of such GM legends as Zora Arkus-Duntov, Bill Mitchell, Ed Cole, Harley Earl, and Dave McLellan.
It was McLellan who took over at an inauspicious time in the car's evolution: the gas-starved mid-70s when the C3 Corvette was a weak throwback of a sports car.
It's not that 'Vettes were always wonderful or powerful. Remember, the Corvette started as a straight-6-engine, 150 horsepower car with a 2-speed transmission and ill-fitting body parts.
It was born in the mid-50s to satisfy the sporting eye of American men who, having seen sports cars in Europe during the war, looked for one they could call their own. Some settled for home-built hot rods and jalopies (true works of art in my book), but others longed for the fresh-off-the-line feel of an American sports car.
The problem was, Detroit didn't have a clue how to build one.
''Without a recent past of small sporting cars capable of carrying two passengers, American automakers and designers had no choice but to look across the Atlantic,'' McLellan writes in his book, ''Corvette from the Inside.''
And so they looked to German and Italian autos for their design inspiration.
Quick to adapt exterior lines, Detroit was not as swift at innovation or quality.
McLellan writes, ''Detroit was slow to copy such innovations as double-overhead-cam engines, fully independent suspension and disc brakes.
And other than a weird Henry Ford attempt to make cars out of soy bean-based resins, there was ''no history of building fiberglass car bodies in volume.''
Into this pit of ineptitude and conservatism stepped the Corvette engineers.
The problem was, McClellan asserts, engineers did not deal with the manufacturing side of the business. The result was a sloppy early rendition of the Corvette.
''The most serious error Chevrolet made was allowing the cars to go to the dealership with body panel fits that were, to put it mildly, awful,'' he writes. ''Doors were out of flush by as much as three-eighths to one-half inch, and there was no way to seal such a gap from severe water intrusion.''
Road & Track magazine, reviewing the early Corvette, wrote, ''The amazing thing about the Corvette is that it comes so close to being a really interesting, worthwhile and genuine sports car - yet misses the mark almost entirely.''
It was an introduction a manufacturer could never survive today.
McLellan points out that it was a good thing that the early 'Vette was white because that made the body deformities less noticeable. In fact, on the Special Editions' Xirallic paint job, the gaps of poor fitting body parts would look like looming, dark canyons.
But that is not a problem on what is truly a sleek, fine automobile.
The Special Editions come with the 5.7-liter, 350-horsepower V-8 engine that sits in other 2003s (you'll need to buy a Z06 for the 405-pony pouncer and that doesn't come as a special edition though all 2003 models do get special badges).
The engineering feat that comes with the Special Edition (optional on other '03s) is Magnetic Selective Ride Control.
We're talking a long way from fighting for independent suspension and good-fitting body parts here, folks.
The ride control system is a variable-damper-rate setup (used in Cadillac STS) in which dampers are filled with Magneto-Rehological fluid. What that is is synthetic oil with millions of bits of iron suspended in it. A sensor and onboard controller monitor each tire and use an electromagnetic coil inside the piston of each shock/damper to ''shock'' and change the consistency of the fluid. Thus, the ride can be very soft or rock hard, depending on the charge to the iron bits in the fluid.
The wonder of this system, particularly for New England and its winter-beaten roads, is that while the 'Vette can still behave like a stiff hot-lap performer, it can also soften its own ride to absorb heaves, bumps, and cleavages of everyday travel.
Of course, for those who insist on a constant, chattering sense of road feel, there is the option to switch from Tour to Sport mode and keep the suspension stiff.
So here I am, chattering about firing electricity into iron balls inside a shock absorber to change the viscosity of a fluid instantly and without limits change the suspension on a car that once had anemic power, bad brakes, poor-fitting body parts, and a two-speed transmission.
That I am writing this 50 years after the car first appeared is testimony to the folks at GM who have kept this American icon not only alive, but technologically thriving.
Royal Ford can be reached ford@globe.com.
This story ran on page D1 of the Boston Globe on 9/21/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
At 50, a genuine US icon is still evolving
By Royal Ford, 9/21/2002
Not many models of cars can legitimately be the object of a meaningful anniversary celebration.
My list would include the Model T, the Volkswagen Beetle, the Ford Thunderbird, the Ford Mustang and, this year, its 50th anniversary, the Chevrolet Corvette.
I just spent a week in a 50th Anniversary Special Edition Corvette and came away impressed yet again at what a world-class, high performance sports car it is - and at a price (mid-50 thousands) that is far below the cost of cars in the herd with which it can roam.
In preparing the 10,000 or so 2003 Special Edition 'Vettes it hopes to sell, General Motors could have taken the easy/sleazy route and just slapped a few commemorative badges on the car and put it out for sale.
Ideally, a sixth generation Corvette, now in the works, might have been ready for the 50th, but it wasn't. That next 'Vette will be better than ever, you can be sure.
Instead, what GM did was take the standard 2003 Corvette and add to it a few glimpses of the future.
Sure, it got some special nonmechanical detail: the exterior badging (matched on embroidered seats and floor mats); a shale-on-champagne interior color scheme; champagne-colored wheels; and a liquid pool paint job that uses Xirallic paint technology. That paint job, rendered in red/purple for the Special Edition, uses aluminum oxide flakes applied in a first coat, and then a deep, red-tinted clear finish. The result is a car that sparkles like a ruby in the sun.
General Motors also made standard - for all 2003 Corvettes, not just the Special Editions - fog lamps, power sport seats, dual zone climate controls, and a parcel net and luggage shade for the coupe.
The coupe and convertible Special Editions are fine, enduring monuments to a car passed down and evolved through the hands of such GM legends as Zora Arkus-Duntov, Bill Mitchell, Ed Cole, Harley Earl, and Dave McLellan.
It was McLellan who took over at an inauspicious time in the car's evolution: the gas-starved mid-70s when the C3 Corvette was a weak throwback of a sports car.
It's not that 'Vettes were always wonderful or powerful. Remember, the Corvette started as a straight-6-engine, 150 horsepower car with a 2-speed transmission and ill-fitting body parts.
It was born in the mid-50s to satisfy the sporting eye of American men who, having seen sports cars in Europe during the war, looked for one they could call their own. Some settled for home-built hot rods and jalopies (true works of art in my book), but others longed for the fresh-off-the-line feel of an American sports car.
The problem was, Detroit didn't have a clue how to build one.
''Without a recent past of small sporting cars capable of carrying two passengers, American automakers and designers had no choice but to look across the Atlantic,'' McLellan writes in his book, ''Corvette from the Inside.''
And so they looked to German and Italian autos for their design inspiration.
Quick to adapt exterior lines, Detroit was not as swift at innovation or quality.
McLellan writes, ''Detroit was slow to copy such innovations as double-overhead-cam engines, fully independent suspension and disc brakes.
And other than a weird Henry Ford attempt to make cars out of soy bean-based resins, there was ''no history of building fiberglass car bodies in volume.''
Into this pit of ineptitude and conservatism stepped the Corvette engineers.
The problem was, McClellan asserts, engineers did not deal with the manufacturing side of the business. The result was a sloppy early rendition of the Corvette.
''The most serious error Chevrolet made was allowing the cars to go to the dealership with body panel fits that were, to put it mildly, awful,'' he writes. ''Doors were out of flush by as much as three-eighths to one-half inch, and there was no way to seal such a gap from severe water intrusion.''
Road & Track magazine, reviewing the early Corvette, wrote, ''The amazing thing about the Corvette is that it comes so close to being a really interesting, worthwhile and genuine sports car - yet misses the mark almost entirely.''
It was an introduction a manufacturer could never survive today.
McLellan points out that it was a good thing that the early 'Vette was white because that made the body deformities less noticeable. In fact, on the Special Editions' Xirallic paint job, the gaps of poor fitting body parts would look like looming, dark canyons.
But that is not a problem on what is truly a sleek, fine automobile.
The Special Editions come with the 5.7-liter, 350-horsepower V-8 engine that sits in other 2003s (you'll need to buy a Z06 for the 405-pony pouncer and that doesn't come as a special edition though all 2003 models do get special badges).
The engineering feat that comes with the Special Edition (optional on other '03s) is Magnetic Selective Ride Control.
We're talking a long way from fighting for independent suspension and good-fitting body parts here, folks.
The ride control system is a variable-damper-rate setup (used in Cadillac STS) in which dampers are filled with Magneto-Rehological fluid. What that is is synthetic oil with millions of bits of iron suspended in it. A sensor and onboard controller monitor each tire and use an electromagnetic coil inside the piston of each shock/damper to ''shock'' and change the consistency of the fluid. Thus, the ride can be very soft or rock hard, depending on the charge to the iron bits in the fluid.
The wonder of this system, particularly for New England and its winter-beaten roads, is that while the 'Vette can still behave like a stiff hot-lap performer, it can also soften its own ride to absorb heaves, bumps, and cleavages of everyday travel.
Of course, for those who insist on a constant, chattering sense of road feel, there is the option to switch from Tour to Sport mode and keep the suspension stiff.
So here I am, chattering about firing electricity into iron balls inside a shock absorber to change the viscosity of a fluid instantly and without limits change the suspension on a car that once had anemic power, bad brakes, poor-fitting body parts, and a two-speed transmission.
That I am writing this 50 years after the car first appeared is testimony to the folks at GM who have kept this American icon not only alive, but technologically thriving.
Royal Ford can be reached ford@globe.com.
This story ran on page D1 of the Boston Globe on 9/21/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
