Beschreibung:

1953 was probably the greatest of all years for the fabulous General Motors Motorama, the posh show which opened in New York on January 17, 1953 and toured the country’s auditoriums and fairgrounds. Sports cars were the headline vehicles, with Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac introducing their own versions of Detroit’s take on the sports car concept. Though famous, the Starfire, Skylark and Eldorado 4-seat convertibles fit no one’s definition of a sports car. The one GM division which got it right was Chevrolet, which introduced a 2-seat 102” wheelbase roadster which it called Corvette. It didn’t have the overhead valve V8s of its divisional rivals, relying instead on Chevy’s well-proven inline overhead valve six, by now vastly improved from its introduction twenty years before and incorporating refined full pressure lubrication, aluminum pistons, insert bearings, a stronger crankshaft and well developed cylinder head with big valves and ports. Corvette’s most actively debated feature was its Powerglide 2-speed automatic, something which took a great deal of heat for years but earned at least some redemption with Jim Hall’s all-conquering Chaparral sports racers a few years later. The other Motorama concept cars would see their concepts diluted until they disappeared in all but name. Corvette however was enthusiastically received and became an American institution, surviving to the present day in a series of increasingly sophisticated, comfortable and fast automobiles that remained true to Corvette’s statement of the basic sports car characteristics: two seats, high power-to-weight ratio, good roadholding, responsive handling and visually exciting. Chevrolet had intended to build the first Corvettes as 1954 model but it was received so well that a few were rushed into pre-production for distribution to magazines, celebrities, GM executives and important dealers to capitalize on the excitement of Corvette’s introduction. A pilot production facility was set up in the back of Chevrolet’s customer delivery garage in Flint, Michigan where each of the 300 Corvettes built that year was individually hand assembled. The pilot pre-production run had another singularly important advantage by demonstrating the desirability and practicality of the pre-production 1953 Corvettes’ fiberglass bodies, adding another unique attribute to Corvettes’ history. The few surviving 1953 Corvettes are the most important of all Corvettes, the bedrock of the Corvette legend, rare and high desirable both to Corvette collectors, among whom a ’53 is indispensible in any serious collection of Corvette history, and to collectors of important milestones in automobile history. Like a Gmünd Porsche, a parallel bonnet Silver Ghost or an alloy XK-120, the 1953 Chevrolet Corvette is emblematic of a sea change in the history of the automobile. This freshly-restored, highly accurate 1953 Corvette Roadster is only the 44th built out of the year’s production of 300. It has had only three owners since new. The first was a minister in the Columbus, Ohio area from whom Clyde Jones acquired it. The next owner bought it in 1970 and stored it until the specialists at Tony’s Corvette Shop in Gaithersburg, Maryland were commissioned to restore it to top notch condition, a process that was completed in 2003. After being refined and perfected it earned the National Corvette Restorers Society Top Flight Award in its first NCRS judging on April 15, 2007 and it remains today in pristine condition as it would have proudly graced its first selling dealer’s showroom in 1953, one of very few 1953 Corvettes to survive and one of even fewer which have been restored to such fresh, accurate and showroom-ready condition. Finished in Polo White with Sportsman Red leatherette interior as were all the 1953 Corvettes, it has the Black cloth top and side curtains with which all ’53 Corvettes were supplied. Having been judged only once by NCRS its next owner has the pleasure of taking a prov