VetteFacts · People

The Personalities Behind the Corvette

Seventy years of production numbers and RPO codes tell you what was built. These stories are about who — the engineers, stylists, racers, and true believers who fought for America's sports car, sometimes against their own company.

• Profile No. 1 · 12 chapters Zora Arkus-Duntov (1909–1996) Racer, refugee, engineer — the man who made the Corvette matter. From revolutionary Petrograd to a Le Mans podium, from a letter written to a stranger at Chevrolet to a thirty-year war for the soul of the car, this is the full story.
• Profile No. 2 · 7 chapters Harley Earl (1893–1969) The Hollywood coachbuilder who invented the auto styling department, gave Detroit its tailfins, and put a white two-seater on a Motorama turntable in 1953 — betting the Corvette into existence.
• Profile No. 3 · 7 chapters Bill Mitchell (1912–1988) Earl's hand-picked successor gave the Corvette its two most legendary shapes — the split-window Sting Ray and the shark-inspired C3 — while fighting Zora Arkus-Duntov for two decades straight.

More profiles are on the way — Ed Cole, the Chevrolet boss who kept saying yes, and Betty Skelton, the "First Lady of Firsts" who sold America on the idea that a Corvette could fly.