After the pops of the flashbulbs and after the gathered Chevrolet workers and managers returned to their stations on the hastily thrown together assembly line in a General Motors garage in Flint, Michigan, the very first production Corvette rolled out of the garage and into mystery. Some claimed it was destroyed, the natural aftermath of torture testing at the hands of GM engineers. Others believed it could have been restyled as a Motorama show car. But, as early Corvette restorer and researcher Corey Petersen claims to have proved, that VIN #001 car still exists and has made its way to his Utah garage in preparation for full documentation and restoration.
“I’ve been sniffing around for it for 15 to 20 years,” Petersen said. “It’s been a fun chase.”
In fact, Petersen said it wasn’t his intention to find, let alone buy, the car all along. Instead, he and fellow Corvette researcher John Amgwert simply set out to document the three pre-production Corvette prototypes and the first dozen or so Corvettes that Chevrolet built on the Flint assembly line. Every 1953 Corvette came equipped in the same configuration – six-cylinder engine, Powerglide automatic transmission, Polo White paint, Sportsman Red interior, and whitewall tires – but as with many other cars, the earliest production versions of the Corvette had minute differences from the rest, and Petersen and Amgwert wanted to know exactly how the Flint-built cars differed from the rest of the 1953 production cars built in St. Louis.
As Karl Ludvigsen wrote in “Corvette: America’s Star-Spangled Sports Car, 1953-1982,” Ed Cole and his staff at Chevrolet were under a tight deadline. Harlow Curtice, then the president of GM, wanted the Corvette in production in June of 1953, just a year after it was approved for production. That meant a number of changes had to be made on the fly, including the decision to build the production cars out of fiberglass rather than steel and the conversion of the garage located on Van Slyke Road in southwest Flint previously used for Chevrolet customer deliveries into an assembly line while the St. Louis plant was being readied for production.
While production did indeed commence on June 30, 1953, the rush to get underway meant the earliest cars differed from the later cars in a number of subtle ways. Most people point to the wheel covers – domed to begin with, but eventually replaced with the more recognizable knockoff style – and Petersen already knew of other differences like a change in the convertible top design and the switch from foot-operated to vacuum-operated windshield washers. “Some changes were made late in 1953, others in ’54, and that was largely due to the inventory stock,” he said. “They didn’t want to throw away what they had, so they used up the ’53 stuff until it was gone.”
![1953 Corvette No. 001]()
![1953 Corvette No. 001]()
![1953 Corvette No. 001]()
![1953 Corvette production in Flint]()
![1953 Corvette production in Flint]()
![1953 Corvette production in Flint]()
![1953 Corvette production in Flint]()
![1953 Corvette production in Flint]()
![1953 Corvette production in Flint]()
Follow the Research
He’d also known that the first three cars off the assembly line that June 30 didn’t go directly to customers. In fact, of the first nine cars off the assembly line, only three left GM, and those three – serial numbers 004, 005, and 006 – went to members of the Du Pont family or to executives in the Du Pont organization. The rest all went out for further evaluation to GM or Chevrolet engineering departments. Petersen figured the work orders produced by the cars’ time in those engineering departments should shed some light on his research, so he started to collect all of the relevant work orders he could from GM’s Heritage Center. Fortunately, Petersen said, Jim Perkins had Art Armstrong gather as much Corvette documentation from throughout the company as possible “just to get the Corvette community off his back,” otherwise many of those materials would have remained inaccessible or lost.
While it had long been presumed that the first two production-line cars had been destroyed after their times in the engineering departments, Petersen discovered different fates for them in some work orders he only obtained a couple months ago. The second production car received a designation of 3951 and was ultimately used to test the viability of installing a V-8 engine instead of the Blue Flame six-cylinder engine. The first, VIN 001 received a designation of 3950 and set aside for a few different uses. It served as the go-to car for various GM executives who wanted to experience the new Corvette sports car; it was on hand when GM announced the 1954 Corvettes at the Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia; and most significantly, Chevrolet let a whole battalion of GM engineers pick it apart to look for various deficiencies that had made it through the rushed development and production process.
In total, those engineers found 22 items to fix on 3950, according to the work orders that Petersen dug up. Those items ranged from minor rattles and adjustments to design improvements that Chevrolet would go on to implement on later production cars. Among the latter, three in particular stood out to Petersen: an order to make more room between the seat and the steering wheel by both lowering the seat 1-1/4 inches and by raising the steering column, an order to revise the fuel filler box and its hinge for better body clearance, and an order to cover the exposed rivets seen in the recessed license plate box.
Those three in particular stood out to him because he’d seen all three on a 1953 Corvette once before, and he knew exactly where that car rested.
Forgotten and Pushed Aside
Exactly where 3950, the first production Corvette, went after it left GM remains a mystery. According to the paperwork Petersen rounded up, the MSO on the car was not triggered by a dealer, as would be expected for a production car, but by the manufacturer, Chevrolet. As Petersen pointed out, GM employees had purchased other early Corvettes after their times with the engineering departments (VIN 002 went to Russ Sanders while VIN 008 went to designer Waino Hosko), so it’s likely another GM employee managed to buy VIN 001.
Rumors within the Corvette community had the car in the Cincinnati area sometime in the Seventies, but not even the most ardent of Corvette historians were able to gain an audience with the family that supposedly owned it.
Still, 1953 Corvettes are few and far between and thus generally well known to Corvette enthusiasts. Amgwert, along with other founders of the National Corvette Restorers Society, had already tracked down VIN 003 and sent it to Lloyd Miller’s shop in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for a full restoration. That restoration, in turn, led another 1953 Corvette owner to send his car to Miller’s shop. That car, however, came with a number of oddities that nobody could explain at the time, and the East Coast-based owner had made some noise about the car possibly being VIN 002, which drew Petersen’s attention.
He and Amgwert examined the car after it arrived in Miller’s shop, about 20 years ago, and couldn’t reconcile what they saw with any production 1953 Corvette. The floor under the driver’s seat had been cut out and lowered. The firewall had been notched at the steering column. It had the 1954-style fuel filler box and hinge. Woven fiberglass cloth covered what remained of the rivets they expected to find in the license plate box. Because those alterations didn’t make any sense at the time, Petersen figured the car was an anomaly, likely a later production car, and nearly forgot about it. Miller and the owner of the car nearly forgot about it too; shortly after the restoration began, the owner turned his attention to health issues within the family and de-prioritized the Corvette’s restoration. Miller pushed it to the back of his shop and the two lost touch.
![Corvette floor section]()
![Corvette fuel filler box]()
![Corvette license plate box]()
The Corvette’s History Uncovered
With the work orders seemingly confirming that the car in Miller’s shop was 3950 all along, however, Petersen arranged for another viewing, during which he re-examined the lowered seat, the firewall notch, and the fuel filler box. He found a few other oddities undocumented in the work orders as well, including fabricated plugs in place of the exhaust openings in the tail panel. Unfortunately, because the car had been stripped of many of its parts and sat without a drivetrain for many years, he couldn’t confirm many of the other work orders that, for example, called for a bronze gear on the distributor drive or a revised tachometer cable.
He reached out to the owner, initially just to help “get the car moving along,” Petersen said. “The car deserves to be finished up, so let’s get to work on it and see if we can prove what it is.” His conversations with the owner eventually turned to buying the car and, with a title in hand, he retrieved the Corvette earlier this month.
With another 1953 Corvette restoration (VIN 087) under way and the Utah snow making it difficult to jockey cars around, Petersen said he hasn’t been able to more fully examine the car since bringing it home or even to lift the body off the frame to find the VIN stamped on the latter. However, while emptying out the parts stuffed in the Corvette’s trunk, he happened to look under one of the flaps on the bottom of one of the cardboard boxes and found a door jamb VIN plate with a serial number ending in 001. He also put together a presentation on the car for his local NCRS chapter, which has since been uploaded to YouTube.
Petersen’s plans call for a full restoration. “The car is plain and simply not for sale,” he said. “I think I’ve got one more restoration left in me, and I think I already have everything that I need to complete the reassembly and restoration. Restoring a car such as this, you have to think through what point in time you are going back to. Are you going to include all of the engineering changes? I think you have to. That’s one issue that has to be resolved before the restoration can be done.”
![EX-52, the Waldorf Corvette]()
Is It the Oldest Corvette?
Should Petersen’s continuing research on the car absolutely verify the car’s status as the first production Corvette, it may also prove the car to be the oldest Corvette known to exist.
According to Amgwert’s research, Chevrolet assigned five engineering car numbers – 852, 853, 854, 855, and 856 – for the development of full-size operational pre-production Corvette prototypes but ultimately used just three. Car number 852 became EX-52, distinguished by tiny scoops on the tops of the front fenders, which went on to become the Motorama car shown to the public at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. Car number 853 became EX-53, another Motorama car that primarily toured Canada. Car 856 went on to be used at the GM Proving Grounds.
EX-52, after its Motorama tour, was ordered to be stripped of its body, which was then sent out for a burn test. The chassis, meanwhile, went on to be stretched and placed under the Corvette Nomad concept car, which Corvette historians believe no longer exists.
Work orders directed EX-53’s body to be placed on 856’s chassis. The latter, after its time at the proving grounds, started to look shabby, and GM executives wanted it to look nicer for visiting dignitaries. The chassis of EX-53 and the body of 856 were ordered to be crushed, and neither the body of EX-53 or the chassis of 856 have surfaced in the years since. “This is still an ongoing research project,” Petersen said.
As for the naysayers who doubt Petersen’s research and claims about any of the pre-production or early production Corvettes, Petersen said he hopes that by bringing this particular car to light, it’ll spur others to offer further evidence for examination. “I get that this is a controversial subject,” he said. “But I welcome other points of view with documentation to back it up.”
He said he expects the restoration of the car to take four or five years.
