Le prototype EX-122 fait son apparition au Motorama de General Motors, à New York en janvier 1953. La première Corvette sort de la chaîne de production le 30 juin et est présenté à la presse en septembre.
   La corvette de cette première génération, est un cabriolet deux places, elle est équipé d'une grille de calandre à dents verticales et de protège-radiateur..Les flancs aux lignes douces de la carrosserie se terminent par une paire de feux arrière en forme de fuseaux réacteurs, coiffée de mini-ailerons. De courtes allonges de tuyau d'échappement double sont montés à l'intérieur des ailes arrière.L'intérieur est exclusivement de couleur rouge Sportman, avec un encadrement de tableau de bord inférieur blanc et un volant blanc. La capote souple se loge sous un chassi encastré. Les portes n'ayant ni poignées, ni bouton poussoir, le conducteur doit passer la main à l'intérieur pou pouvoir entrer.
   Le véhicule tire sa puissance d'un moteur six cylindres Blue Flame de 3,8L, qui développe 150 chevaux à 4500 tr/mn.
   Toutes les 53 ont une radio à recherche de station Delco, un chauffage à eau chaude, et un compte tour.
   Outre le blanc polo d'origine, qui représente les 4/5 de la production, la deux place de l'année 54 était proposée en bleu Pennant, en rouge Sportman et en noir.
   Parmi les modifications, on remarque une serrure de capot à poignée unique, et des canalisations d'essence et de freins mieux protégées.
Aubert Christophe
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   While the style of a car may be just as important to some as to how well the car runs, automobile manufacturers did not begin to pay attention to car designs until the 1920s. It was not until 1927, when General Motors hired designer Harley Earl, that automotive styling and design became important to American automobile manufacturers. What Henry Ford did for automobile manufacturing principles, Harley Earl did for car design. Most of GM's flamboyant "dream car" designs of the 1950s are directly attributable to Earl, leading one journalist to comment that the designs were "the American psyche made visible." Harley Earl loved sports cars, and GIs returning after serving overseas World War II were bringing home MGs, Jaguars, Alfa Romeos and the like. Earl convinced GM that they needed to build a two-seat sports car. The result was the 1953 Corvette, unveiled to the public at that year's Motorama car show. The original Corvette emblem incorporated an American flag into the design; this was later dropped, since associating the flag with a product was frowned upon.
   Taking its name from the corvette, a small, maneuverable fighting frigate (the credit for the naming goes to Myron Scott), the first Corvettes were virtually handbuilt in Flint, Michigan in Chevrolet's Customer Delivery Center. The outer body was made out of a revolutionary new composite material called fiberglass, offering the strength of steel without the weight. The tradition continues even today, as no Corvette has ever had anything other than a fiberglass outer skin. Underneath that radical new body were standard Chevrolet components, including the "Blue Flame" inline six-cylinder engine, two-speed Powerglide automatic transmission, and drum brakes from Chevrolet's regular car line. Though the engine's output was increased somewhat, thanks to a triple-carburetor intake exclusive to the Corvette, performance of the car was decidedly lackluster. Compared to the Ford Thunderbird with its 312 in³ (5.1 L) V8 and British and Italian sports cars of the day, the Corvette was underpowered, required a great deal of effort as well as clear roadway to bring to a stop, and even lacked a "proper" manual transmission. Up until that time, the Chevrolet division was GM's entry-level marque, known for excellent but no-nonsense cars. Nowhere was that more evident than in the Corvette. A Paxton supercharger became available in 1954 as a dealer-installed option, greatly improving the Corvette's straight-line performance, but sales continued to decline.
   1957 Chevrolet Corvette roadster. Fuel-injected models were identified by badging on the side scalloping in the front fendersGM was seriously considering shelving the project, leaving the Corvette to be little more than a footnote in automotive history, and would have done so if not for two important events. The first was the introduction of Chevrolet's first-ever V8 engine in 1955, and the second was the influence of a Soviet emigre in GM's engineering department, Zora Arkus-Duntov. Arkus-Duntov simply took a 283 in³ (4.6 L) version of the new engine and backed it with a four-speed manual transmission. That modification, probably the single most important in the car's history, helped turn the Corvette from a two-seat curiosity into a genuine sports car and Thunderbird competitor. It also earned Arkus-Duntov the rather inaccurate nickname "Father of the Corvette".
   1958 Chevrolet Corvette roadster.There have been six generations of the Corvette so far, generally referred to as versions C1 through C6. The first generation started in 1953 and ended in 1962, with the noteworthy addition of optional fuel injection in 1957. This new induction system first saw regular use on a gasoline engine two years prior on the Mercedes-Benz 300SL "Gullwing" roadster. Although the Corvette's GM-Rochester fuel injection system used a single central plunger to feed fuel to all eight cylinders in contrast to a more direct means of delivery with a single plunger for each of the Mercedes' six cylinders, the system nevertheless produced 283 hp (211 kW) from 283 in³ (4.6 L), making it the first production engine in history to reach 1 hp/in³ (45.5 kW/L). In 1962, the GM Small-Block was enlarged to 327 in³ (5.4 L) and produced a maximum of 360 hp (268 kW).
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