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" Ever since the was announced over a year ago, there has been much speculation over its competition performance potential. The die-hards, the pro-foreign advocates have been especially loud in their derision of the new car, maintaining that the Corvette is not a genuine dual-purpose sports car, but more of an effete high-speed touring type. Some have been more specific, claiming that nothing from Detroit could possible by any good - least of all from Chevrolet.   This extreme attitude was not corrected by the Chevrolet Motor Division&amp;#039;s ambiguous statement that their new sports car &amp;quot;is not intended to used as a racing car.&amp;quot; At this point it might be interesting to compare the attitude of Jaguar Cars, Ltd., at the time of the announcement of the XK-120. The roadster was intended primarily as a high speed touring car and they were quite surprised to find it being raced so extensively in America.   Furthermore, some people seem to feel that no car based on standard family car components can be much of a sports car. Nothing could be further from the truth, as can readily be shown by mentioning such famous makes as , , , Siata, Lancia, Gordini, Talbot and Jaguar - all of whom at one time or another built rather successful sports cars using a large proportion of major units from a mass-produced family type automobile.   So it is that the only fair approach to the Corvette must be on the basis of its all-around performance in comparison to other sports cars and completely ignoring the fact that it happens to stem from the world&amp;#039;s largest producer of automobiles.   The Corvette makes a favorable impression immediately on the score of clean lines with a minimum of chrome trim. It looks like a sports car, a very modern one at that, and its wrap-around windshield alone indicates the trend of things to come. When first driving the car there is a tendency to keep reaching for the gear shift lever and the total absence of a clutch pedal is disconcerting. The accelerator, like Chevrolets from the year one, has a very stiff return spring which makes you feel like you are working hard to force the car to its limit. The initial surge is just a little sluggish and there is no problem with unnecessary (and fruitless) wheelspin, on dry pavement. Rubber burning starts can be made by grandstand drivers using the technique of turning the engine at 2000/2500 rpm and pulling the powerglide selector level quickly from neutral to low range. Our acceleration times quoted were all made using drive range and normal starts. We experimented with &amp;quot;jerk&amp;quot; starts and found no better times from zero to any speed. The time for zero to 60 mph could be improved very slightly by placing the selector in low range. The car always starts in low anyway, but this procedure forces the transmission to stay permanently in first speed, where incidentally a speedo reading of just over 70 is possible with the tachometer well past the last calibration mark of 5000 rpm. Strangely enough the forced low gear technique with a quick shift to drive at an honest 60 mph gave slightly slower times to 70 mph.   Probably no part of the Corvette specification is more controversial than its torque converter with 2 speed automatic transmission. Admittedly it will convert a lot of people to sports cars, who have no desire to develop driving skill. Admittedly it gives a tremendous performance through a well graduated series of infinitely variable ratios. It might even work fairly well in a road race - up to a point. That point is the serious question of safety when taking a fast turn at the ragged edge of tire adhesion. Suppose you are doing 45 mph at the time and need more power to pull-out of an incipient spin. A jab on the throttle, if done too energetically, will force a downshift to low and the ensuing jerk will certainly cause loss of control.   On the other hand the Corvette is supposed to bring the sports car to the mass market since its price is only a little more than a fully equipped Chevrolet convertible. As it is, only a very small percentage of sports car buyers race their cars and perhaps the automatic transmission will sell more cars. But the fact remains that we, as well as the great majority of sports car fans, would much prefer to have a traditional sports car stepped transmission. Four close ratios, all synchronized, would be perfect but even a standard Chevrolet 3 speed unit should be made available. This would give overall ratios of 10.44, 5.96 and 3.55, with corresponding speeds of 28, 67 and 112 mph at 5000 rpm. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/reviews/a9774/1954-chevrolet-corvette-2/>