I was already 10 years old when the Corvette appeared in the market. There was no secret history for me to ponder and eventually hear from the earlier proponents. There, of course, was the legacy of the six-cylinder engine which the Chevrolet brothers had considered a superior product to the more common four. That legacy went back to 1912. My splice into that history must have come in 1943 after I was born and my father got drafted and took the train to Chicago. When he got there, he was intercepted with a telegram from my grandfather telling him his application for Navy Officer Candidate School had come through. He told us to go to New York to stay with my grandparents and he went on to what I learned in his old age was the former Civil War fort at Throgg’s Neck, New York just North of Manhattan. My mother had a 1940 Chevrolet Master Deluxe four door sedan with a six-cylinder engine. It had overhead valves like a Buick and unlike a Pontiac. They kept that through the war and sometime in 1949 painted it with a brush and sold it for $850.00. That was enough to pay most of the price of a maroon 1949 Plymouth four door sedan. My mother was proud of how much bigger the Plymouth was. Each Winter there were always a few days when it would not start with its automatic choke and had to be towed to the Dodge-Plymouth dealer, Mason Motors. After sitting in the garage, it always started easily and soon was back home. This car had a L-head or flathead six which at one time had been considered high compression. It had floating motor mounts. We took it first to Cadillac and Lake Mitchell in the late fall and then West to Pikes Peak where the reverse gear in the transmission broke. It could not climb the steeply sloped highway over a dam in Wyoming without a second try backing up and then charging away with the roof rack and read seat loaded with canned goods and camping tent and canvas awning. There was a tractor there provided by the Wyoming Highway Department with a tow rig for anyone who just could not make the hill. We learned a lot about detours and construction. The gravel sections were not unusual in the Michigan North on the way to my paternal grandfather’s. They were most of the county roads that school busses ran on in the thumb where we lived after 1946. I met the Corvette in 1954. I remember it had two air cleaners. I have since learned that they had three side draft carburetors and the two air cleaners were connected by duct work in 1954 and 1955. Bob and Harold Goebbel owned the dealership and one of them, I think it was Bob came into the showroom as I was looking at this new appearance. It was white. I don’t remember too much of the conversation. This car had a six and an automatic transmission. It was a roadster and only held two people. The top was down on the showroom car. Bob wanted to sell me the car. I should bring in my father. He told me that Chevrolets were too expensive.??? My mother and he had owned one. The V-8 engine Corvette came out in 1955 and fuel injection and a four-speed transmission in 1957. No more of these showed up in Bad Axe until after I had exercised the GM special order and installed fuel injection parts in my worn out 265 cubic inch farm to market milk truck engine. A 1959 black car did appear in front of Goebbel’s. I never saw under the hood only a side view in passing. Corvettes had gotten dual headlight in 1958 along with a washboard hood of fake louvers and some gawky chrome trim on the trunk. The 1959 toned that all down but kept the dual head lights. Watching for something I might use in parts I saw in 1961 that the fuel injected Corvette not only now had 315 horsepower but the heads were aluminum castings with 2.02-inch intake valves. This would be a reliability issue where bronze inserts were used to wear proof valve seats and valve guides. This was the only year these heads were used. A different angular bustle tail was featured on the 1961 fiberglass body. I liked this better than the more rounded look that had change once between 1953 with its raised tail lights and little fins and the inset and then contoured taillights through 1960. What was the competition to this American sports car? The Pan American road race had attracted Lincoln and Cadillac entries. The Chrysler 300 came in 1955 and dominate NASCR oval stock car tracks. The name Kiekhaefer, a maker of Mercury outboard motors, announced perfectionism. Later looking at survivor cars from the 60’s at the yearly car show in the high-rise parking lot I took pictures of similar looking Corvettes. One had dark coves and was white with the molded in tail lights and two had the angular bustle rear and the dual headlights of the 1958-1962 era. One of the bustle tail cars had a silver grille and one had a blacked-out grille. If the cars were original I would choose the silver grille as a 283 engine 1961 and the black grille as a 327 engine 1962. I did not take close enough pictures to look for fuel injection text on the sides. This then is the second picture today from the three would be engineers at the curb in September 1961. British names like MG and Triumph are now gone with the heavier “perk” cars like Aston-Martin and Jaguar surviving as marques. Austin-Healey which confused me with 100-4 and 100-6 and then 3000 underslung roadsters is also gone. Two carburetors or three on a six? The four had two.