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Chevrolet Corvette is a sports car first manufactured by
Chevrolet in 1953. It is built today exclusively at a
General Motors assembly plant in Bowling Green,
Kentucky, U.S.A.. It was the first all-American sports
car built by an American car manufacturer. The National
Corvette Museum is also located in Bowling Green,
Kentucky.
The Corvette is widely regarded as "America's Sports
Car". For more than 50 years, Corvettes have combined
very powerful engines and affordability, especially when
compared with more prestiguous marques of similar
abilities. Older generations of the Corvette have been
criticized for being crude and lacking in refinement by
European sports car standards, and their on-limit
handling is a divisive issue, garnering both praise and
reproach. Recent generations of the Corvette are widely
seen as being much improved in these areas.
Corvettes tend to emphasize simplicity over technical
complexity. Where nearly all competing marques rely on
smaller displacement, more complex engines, the Corvette
uses a simpler overhead valve (OHV) design coupled with
a larger displacement. The result is often both lighter
and physically smaller Corvette than the more complex
arrangements, as well as cheaper to manufacture
Corvette. Another example of this philosophy is the
continued use of transverse leaf springs in the
suspension. This lack of sophistication is sometimes
viewed as a negative by automotive Corvette purists, and
has fueled the aforementioned "lack of refinement"
argument. |
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