Harley Earl: Father of the Corvette

One of the great untold Twentieth Century stories is the genesis of the Corvette and Harley Earl's role as the father of the Corvette, who chose to incorporate Chevrolet's greatly enlarged manufacturing program, together with GM's unparalleled resources, to turn a powerful new American sports car into reality. Fifty years have now past, and the best part of this story is finally coming to the surface.

There is only one loyal patriotic father responsible for the Corvette in 1955. The fact these cars were "red, white and blue" was not some haphazard coincidence. It was just one more elaborate devise Harley  used to communicate the message of one of his product designs through the language of vision. This unique car architect was responsible for creating a symphony of artistic masterpieces (dating back to the late 1920s) which literally lured millions of loyal car buyers to seek out GM's Corvette design. So, it's really no surprise that Corvette rolled out of this man's hybrid engineering studio doors and became the first all-American sports car to go in to production.

 The legend of Corvette clearly developed from the work Harley Earl did during World War Two, and thus why he code named this sports car after the German brand "OPEL" in its early concept phase or genesis years. It's important to note how the Opel name often receives a sentence or two in numerous books written on Corvette, but no author, journalist or auto historian has ever done a comprehensive job on where and why the name was used in the first place. This all has to do with Harley Earl's secretive nature and how he never put his mouth all over his Corvette. But thankfully, he left an incredible paper trail that is now finally coming forward, and once perused, straightforwardly debunks many of the detractor's claims on how and why the Corvette was created in the beginning.