Do Corvette bodies still use fiberglass? It’s complicated – Jalopnik

Chevrolet rolled the first Corvette ever made off the Flint, Michigan assembly line in June 1953. Ultimately, Chevy produced 300 mostly handmade Corvettes for the 1953 model year.

Those first 300 Corvettes, the basis of the C1 generation, all had a red interior and a fiberglass body finished in Polo White. Chevrolet engineers chose fiberglass to create the intricate details and curves of the Corvette body, taking advantage of the fabric’s durability and light weight. These characteristics still underlie the materials chosen to create the latest C8 Corvette. However, Chevrolet has long since moved past the benefits that fiber optic offers.

The process for making the Corvette’s fiberglass body changed to a compression molding process with the introduction of the C3 in 1968, although the materials used remained similar. In 1973, Corvette body production evolved to using a plate-formed joint, with the material still consisting of fiberglass and resin. But the bodies of modern Corvettes, dating back to the C5 generation, are sheet-molded with carbon fiber-reinforced plastic.

While the C8 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray may bring back childhood memories of the older model ‘Vettes for some people, there is nothing childish about the materials used in its construction. The engineers who designed it have not strayed from the quest to build lightweight models with impressive power and technology. Carbon fiber is used extensively in aerospace and military applications. And in addition to the carbon fiber-reinforced plastic used in the C8 Corvette’s bodies, new materials were incorporated into other parts of the car.

Already in the C6 Corvette generation, models such as the Z06 and ZR1 were equipped with aluminum chassis components. The C7 Corvette debuted in 2014 with an all-aluminum frame. The Aluminum Extruder Council reports that approximately 97% of the C8 Corvette’s structure is aluminum: 18% cast aluminum, 39% stamped aluminum and 40% extruded aluminum. The rest is a mix of cast magnesium, carbon fiber and steel.