Chevrolet Corvette

About

As of 2026, it's 73 years old.

America didn't really have a sports car until 1953, when Chevrolet rolled out the Corvette: a curvy fiberglass-bodied roadster named after a nimble little warship. The first ones were hand-built, painted Polo White, and honestly a bit underwhelming, saddled with a wheezy 150 hp 'Blue Flame' six and a two-speed automatic. But the legend had to start somewhere.

The Corvette grew into America's sports car across eight generations, and a few stand as all-timers. The 1963 C2 Sting Ray with its one-year-only split rear window is arguably the most beautiful Corvette ever, and one of the most collectible. The 1984 C4, by contrast, is the gloriously 1980s one, with its sci-fi digital dashboard glowing like an arcade cabinet.

For decades the recipe stayed the same: big V8 up front, rear-wheel drive, attainable price, supercar-troubling performance. The Corvette was the bargain that embarrassed exotics costing three times more, the working person's Ferrari, and it wore that chip on its shoulder proudly.

Then in 2020 Chevrolet finally did the thing engineers had dreamed about since the 1960s: it moved the engine behind the driver. The mid-engine C8 launched at under $60,000, hit 60 in under three seconds, and made genuine exotics nervous. Seventy years on, the Corvette's core promise, absurd speed for the money, has never been truer.

Chevrolet Corvette through the years