The seven best Chevrolet road cars
Celebrating its 110th birthday in 2021, Chevrolet is as all-American as an apple pie cliche and apart from a brief foray into Europe from 2005 to 2015 has always been General Motors’ domestic mainstay.
Started by Louis Chevrolet and William C. Durant in 1911 after the latter was ousted from General Motors, the bow tie brand made a fast enough start that it was able to engineer a reverse merger of GM in 1918. After Durant was kicked out for a second time a year later, Chevrolet became GM’s volume brand, overtaking main rival Ford in sales in 1929. Here’s a round-up of the best car’s from the company’s colourful history.
Chevrolet Royal Mail Roadster – 1914
The first car to wear the famous Chevrolet ‘bow tie’ emblem, the Royal Mail Roadster was part of the H2 Chevrolet range introduced for the 1914 model year. At a time when cars varied widely in terms of their features and, indeed, how they worked, the Roadster offered a number of features familiar today such as an overhead valve engine, speedometer, headlights, horn and a spare tyre.
By 1916 the car even included an integral boot and fuel tank. The five-seater version was called the Baby Grand and although intended to compete with the Ford Model T was considerably more expensive and could be had with such new-fangled luxuries as an electric starter. The H2 series went upmarket shortly afterwards with the Chevrolet 490 taking the price fight to Ford instead.
Chevrolet Carryall Suburban – 1934
There have been many iterations of the Suburban’s basic idea over the decades from manufacturers all over the world, but there is a reason the original has become the longest running nameplate in automotive history: practicality. The name had been used by a number of companies to designate an estate body atop a truck frame but Chevrolet made it its own.
Introduced in 1934 for the 1935 model year, the Chevrolet Carryall Suburban was one of the first all-steel bodied station wagons, built on the same chassis as the company’s half-ton pick-ups and intended, as the name suggested, to allow American families to travel with any and all accoutrements. They have loved it ever since. Now in its 12th generation the Suburban has its own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame having appeared in nearly 2000 films and TV series since 1952.
Chevrolet Corvette C1 – 1953
It was the legendary GM design chief Harley Earl who saw the need for a small two-seater sports car to compete with the European machinery that had become beloved of GIs stationed over the pond. The resulting concept was unveiled at the 1953 General Motors Motorama and such was the strength of public reaction it was on sale six months later, albeit at a much higher price than Earl had envisaged for his stripped-back roadster.
Made of the latest lightweight material, fibreglass, the Corvette launched with a 3.8-litre straight-six fuelled by triple carburetors and producing 150PS (110kW). Because there was no Chevrolet manual transmission able to handle such a whopping output the car came with a two-speed Powerglide automatic. The Corvette gained the legendary Small Block Chevy (SBC) V8 in 4.3-litre capacity in 1955 and enlarged to 4.6-litre in 1957. It was offered with mechanical fuel injection making it one of the first American engines to achieve a specific output of one horsepower per cubic inch. Nearing its 70th birthday, the Corvette has become a car that has almost outgrown its parent, with plenty of speculation over the years that it would become a brand in its own right.
Chevrolet Nomad – 1955
The years 1955 to 1957 were seminal for Chevrolet, beginning with the introduction of the small block V8 and a handful of cars produced in that period have become known as the ‘Tri Five Chevys’ with their own dedicated fan following. Of these, the Nomad was originally a concept car unveiled at the 1954 Mototorama with a Corvette front-end allied to a sporting estate body with a slanting B-pillar and dramatic wraparound rear window.
For production the Nomad was enlarged to sit on the larger, mass-produced Chevrolet A-body chassis, losing its Corvette-aping front. The original concept is said to have been destroyed but several reproductions have been created over the years. The Nomad was top of the Tri Five tree; available only in top Bel Air trim with the small block as standard, it was the second most expensive Chevrolet after the Corvette.
Chevrolet Corvair – 1959
Chevrolet was always the brand most willing to push the envelope, not only among the GM stable but the Big Three more widely. A case in point is the Corvair, to this day America’s only mass-produced rear-engined and air-cooled car. It was the brainchild of Ed Cole, chief engineer and later general manager of Chevrolet who spotted that with the literal growth of American cars during the 1950s, there were no longer any compact and more affordable models available for American families.
While Ford and Chrysler effectively shrunk their full-sized models and fitted them with underpowered fours and sixes, Chevrolet got radical with the Corvair. With monocoque construction, a largely aluminium horizontally-opposed air-cooled flat-six mounted at the back of the car driving the rear wheels and latterly all-independent suspension the Corvair would be radical for Detroit today. Heck, it didn’t even have any tail fins or a chrome grille. Sold as a saloon, coupe, convertible, estate van and pick-up truck more than 1.8 million Corvairs were sold in just under a decade. Unfortunately the Corvair is best remembered today for being the subject of the book Unsafe at Any Speed, an excoriation of the US auto industry’s then approach to safety by consumer rights advocate Ralph Nader.
Chevrolet Camaro – 1966
The success of the Ford Mustang caught the rest of Detroit on the hop and kickstarted the movement away from the full-sized muscle cars to the smaller, more affordable pony cars. Two years after the Mustang, Chevrolet came back with its own, arguably better looking rival, the Camaro. Developed under the codename Panther, an animal which preys on Mustangs, the Camaro name was adopted to evoke camaraderie and " the comradeship of good friends, as a personal car should be to its owner" according to Chevrolet’s then GM Pete Estes.
Chevrolet already had a two-seater sportscar in the Corvair but realised that without a V8, it would be unable to compete with the Mustang for sales. Built on the new but conventional front-engined, rear-wheel-drive F-body platform the Camaro had curvaceous ‘coke bottle’ styling in contrast with the more straight-lined Mustang and a wider array of powerplants from the entry-level straight-six all the way to a 6.5-litre V8. In handing terms, top of the line was the Z/28 package that was touted as ‘ready to race’ and came with front disc brakes, a four-speed close ratio manual gearbox and a 4.9-litre V8 to qualify for the Trans-Am series.
Chevrolet Bolt – 2016
Another example of Chevrolet being ahead of the curve and introducing a mass-market electric car to V8-loving Americans. GM Korea began developing the Bolt in 2012 and the consumer model was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in 2016. With a 66kWh battery pack and 200PS (147kW) electric motor the Bolt will accelerate to 62mph in less than seven seconds and keep going between charges for a little under 250 miles. It is rumoured that Chevrolet takes a hit of several thousand dollars on each Bolt. Tesla tends to gather the headlines and plaudits but for several years now it has been Chevrolet selling Americans a compact, affordable and sensible electric car. Not a Plaid mode in sight.
Corvette images courtesy of Bonhams.
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