Photos courtesy National Corvette Museum.
When a sinkhole opened up under the National Corvette Museum last February, damaging or destroying eight cars in the museum’s Skydome, most people familiar with the museum showed primary concern not for any of the eight, but for the 1983 Corvette in the museum’s collection – the only one in existence from that model year. It escaped the sinkhole unscathed and now, with the Skydome undergoing repairs, the museum has given it pride of place with a new dedicated exhibit.
Under development since the late 1970s as a replacement for the aging third-generation Corvette – which used a basic chassis that dated back to 1963 – the fourth-generation Corvette was slated to use an entirely redesigned chassis and body and to debut amid the Corvette’s 30th anniversary celebrations in 1983. “We were trying to figure out how to bring the car back to date in all aspects,” said David McLellan, chief engineer for the Corvette at the time. “There was new technology that hadn’t been used in Chevrolet or in any automotive yet.”
While a lot of the whiz-bang gadgets packed into the fourth-generation Corvette – like the digital readouts on the liquid-crystal graphic displays and the Doug Nash 4+3 transmission behind the Cross-Fire small-block – got the lion’s share of the press’s attention, it was the work that McLellan and his crew did in optimizing the Corvette’s handling by moving the drivetrain back in the chassis that really refined and modernized the Corvette.
However, the goal of producing an all-new Corvette ended up precluding the goal of introducing it for the 1983 model year. Chevrolet went so far as to create a brochure for the 1983 cars, but had to push back production from the fall of 1982 to January of 1983 and as a result decided to introduce the fourth-generation Corvette as an early 1984 model year car; a number of reasons for the delay have been reported since then, including issues with retooling and with meeting more stringent emissions regulations.
As with any car, though, Chevrolet built a number of prototypes and pilot cars to test the fourth-generation Corvette before it hit production. According to McLellan, Chevrolet built 18 of the former and 43 of the latter, almost all of which were destroyed during testing or subsequently crushed. Only one – serial number 1G1AY0783D5110023 (also known as RBV098) – survived, if only by happenstance. National Corvette Museum materials peg RBV098 as the fourth pilot car built and note that Chevrolet assigned it to the GM Milford Proving Grounds in August and September 1982.
Eventual Bowling Green plant manager Wil Cooksey and paint department employee Sam Robinson with the 1983 Corvette.
Chevrolet then returned RBV098 to the assembly plant in Bowling Green for use as a training car and fixture trial car. Once production ramped up, plant employees then set it aside, leaving it to languish outside. According to the museum, plant manager Paul Schnoes then noticed RBV098 in 1984 and ordered it cleaned up and brought inside. For a while it wore a stars and stripes-themed paint scheme, but upon its donation to the museum in 1994 – where it went on display during the museum’s grand opening – it reverted back to its original white with blue interior.
Made possible by a gift from the Dyer Family Foundation, the new exhibit for the 1983 Corvette separates it out from the rest of the Corvettes in the museum with retaining trusses and special displays, including a video of McLellan talking about the car.
For more information about the National Corvette Museum, visit CorvetteMuseum.org.
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