As the world continues to live in the grip of C8 fever, we figured it would be a good time to take a peek back into the annals of Corvette history and see what we could find. One of the more revolutionary/evolutionary leaps that Corvette made was from the C3 to the C4. The process was so ugly that there was no 1983 model spoken of as the C4 was being perfected for sale. The C4 was a quantum leap ahead of the aged C3 platform that debuted in 1968 and closed up shop 12 years later. Externally the cars evolved but internally? Not really.
The future would prove the necessity of Chevrolet to keep one-upping themselves as successive models rolled out. C4 to C5 was really something and C6 to C7 was monster. Then came the C8 that changed it all.
Looking back to an era where 16-second cars were fast, and when the most important things that Corvette did was to add and openable glass hatch, stickers, and an oil temperature gauge to the car, the C8 seems even more titanic a move forward. Add in the Cross-fire fuel injection that this thing has and you’ve really got a case.
Corvette has never gone backwards. C8 needed to keep that streak alive and it did. Check out this cool history.
The C3 platform appeared in 1964. It was supposed to appear in 1963, but problems kept a live axle under the C2 until the 1964 model year. That said, the 1964 frame is interchangeable all the way to 1982 (though there were some improvements in 1979, the attachment points are the same)…