This year's Back to the Bricks is celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Chevrolet Corvette, which first was produced in Flint.
FLINT, Mich. (WJRT) - This year the car lovers are celebrating the 70th anniversary of America's sports car -- the Chevy Corvette.
The Corvette got its start in Flint with the first 300 cars produced at a General Motors plant on VanSlyke Road. Now in it's eighth generation, the iconic sports car tops out at 194 mph and can go 0 to 60 mph in less than 3 seconds.
"It was America's first sports car and has remained the most iconic sports car," said Ed Piatek, GM's chief engineer for performance vehicles.
The Corvette has set the standard for performance, style and innovation for seven decades since the first models rolled off the assembly line in Flint on June 30, 1953.
"It was a dream car. it was a concept car," Piatek said.
The Corvette first made it's public debut at Motorama in New York under the code name EX-122 at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. The response was overwhelming and GM wanted to get it out on the road fast.
Plans were in motion to build the car in St. Louis, Mo., but GM's rapid timeframe to start production forced a move to an existing facility.
"They wanted to get production going quickly and they decided they would do a stopgap production plan and they needed a place where they had the right craftsmen to hand build or coach build just 300 cars," Piatek said.
That's when GM decided the Flint workforce was only right for the job. Workers at the plant on Van Slyke Road turned a dream car into reality and got the concept car on the road in a shot amount of time.
They skipped features like door handles and roll up windows.
"They came later too," Piatek said. "But in the rush to get the car into customers' hands, they left the design exactly how it was on the dream or concept car."
The sports has evolved over the past 70 years. It's gotten more stylish, more bells and whistles and of course faster. The Corvette is the longest running nameplate of any automobile on the road with no signs of slowing down.
"No one's come close to the Corvette and you know, its history and 1.8 million as have been sold," Piatek said. "So it's got a very special place as being the best sports car from America."
