There are anniversaries, and then there are ANNIVERSARIES! The ones ending in fives and zeros get more attention than, say a three or a seven, and seem, right or wrong, to mean the most. Tens are better than fives, and 25s and 50s are cooler still. This year marks VETTE's 25th (or Silver) Anniversary, the magazine's most significant milestone yet. So, light the candles on the cake and uncork a couple of bottles of bubbly while Team VETTE takes a drive back over the past 25 years, occasionally pulling off to the side of the road to raise a toast (since we're behind the wheel, we'll settle for Martinelli's Sparkling Cider) to the dedicated and enthusiastic folks who made this salute possible.
Over a quarter of a century ago a guy named Martyn L. Schorr sat down at a typewriter and composed the following:"After more than one year of meetings, presentations, and other dealings with the powers that be in the publishing and distributing worlds, CORVETTE Quarterly has finally made the transition from fantasy to reality. Corvette lovers the world over now have their very own internationally-distributed newsstand magazine--one printed on high quality coated stock with generous four-color editorial coverage. It's certainly about time!
Because of the very nature of the Corvette, it's only natural that Corvette Quarterly will present an extremely broad coverage of the performance field. To some, performance relates to roundy-round racing and solo events like gymkhanas, while others see performance in terms of quarter-mile dragging and street racing. Still others translate performance into car shows, GT touring, restorations, suspension engineering rallying and plain old-fashioned head-turning. Well, lovers of the crossed flag marque, we've got it all. Our aim is to keep everyone who owns, drives, races, shows, dreams or just likes to look at Corvettes pleased. And we're going to do it!"
CORVETTE Quarterly? Well, that's the title Marty used in his introductory editorial, called VIEW FROM THE TOP, in a new magazine that actually carried the title VETTE Quarterly on its cover. Below the title was a tagline "THE VOICE OF THE CORVETTE ENTHUSIAST." The cover date for the inaugural issue was SUMMER 1976, the cover price was a buck twenty-five, it was put out by Popular Publications, Inc. based in New York City, and the editor of this newly-minted magazine laid out some lofty goals.
Schorr went on in that first VIEW FROM THE TOP to list some of his credentials, which included over 15 years of experience in special interest and enthusiast automotive photojournalism, his ownership of an Iso Grifo (an Italian-built coupe with LT-1 Corvette small-block and Muncie four-speed), and membership in what he termed the "White Knuckle Fraternity," with initiation rites conducted by the frat's President Emeritus, one Zora Arkus-Duntov. And those rites of initiation? Rides with "the master" on the GM proving grounds ride and handling courses and the high-speed oval in numerous different Corvettes, including L88 street cars, racers, and experimentals and, as Schorr described it, all driven in his typical "flat-out, we-only-live-once-style." He also admitted to never having owned a Corvette, and promised to start shopping as soon as we can get squared away with upcoming editorial projects... He concluded with "And, don't forget--Save the Wave!"
Some things really don't change much over the course of 25 years. Some things have changed a LOT!
That first issue contained a total of 68 pages (that includes counting the covers as four pages), 12 of which were color (again counting the covers). By contrast, the past few years of VETTE, including during the final period of CSK's ownership, each issue has contained 84 pages including covers, with 52 of those being color. The largest issue we've found in the archives was November 1993, which contained a whopping 108 pages (as always, including covers), with 58 of those being color. During the early- and mid-'90s, the page count varied from month to month, with most issues being either 92 or 100 pages. The four-color editorial coverage has become quite a bit more generous over the years.
But, Marty Schorr & Co. packed quite a bit of material into those 68 pages--10 features, a test of a then-new '76 Stingray with an L82 and a mildly "tweaked" (by GM engineering--this was a press car) automatic trans and 3.55:1 gears, three tech-oriented articles, and two columns. Schorr's crew included Executive Editor Rich Ceppos, who would later write for Car & Driver and Automobile before winding up at Campbell & Co., a high-powered advertising agency with numerous contacts in the automotive industry, and Technical Editor Roger Huntington.
The articles in Volume 1 Number 1 provide a fascinating and illuminating look back at the Corvette hobby--and society in general--25-plus years ago. A quick glance is all that's necessary to remember that VETTE's first issue came out in the early stages of the disco era. That's right, just one year before the release of the definitive disco movie, Saturday Night Fever. High-performance cars were an almost extinct species, thanks to the Feds' safety and emissions standards, replaced with gaudy body kits, garish paint, and we won't even offer up any comments about the clothing and hairstyles.
The close-to-death status of performance cars was reflected in the article about the then-new '76 Stingray. (Before any of you Shark fanatics start firing off nasty letters or flaming us, remember that the author owns a '76 Stingray, and read what we quote from that original piece--it's an honest and even-handed evaluation of a Corvette model that successfully survived a difficult, nearly impossible era for enthusiast cars, with the marque's proud name unsullied.) Here's how that review started:
"For 1976, the Corvette Stingray is a mixed bag. It's more sophisticated, more luxurious and, according to government standards, is safer and "cleaner" than previous models. However, it is also heavier, slower and more expensive than last year's offering...What you get for your ten grand is as good an example as you can find of a dying breed of car. Since its inception it's been America's only real sports car and the '76, while it is a far cry from the solid-lifter, high-compression killer cars of days gone by, is still America's only entry in this elite marketplace. The Corvette Group, headed by Dave McClellan, has managed to make it through the government's obstacle course (emission, noise and bumper standards) and produce a car worthy of the Corvette nameplate."
The piece went on to detail the changes and, in a couple of instances, improvements, made to the '76 Corvettes, discussed its performance and what could be done to enhance it, and concluded with some of the following comments:
"Even with all the governmental interference, the '76 Corvette is still a fun car to drive and unquestionably the only one left in the domestic ranks. It's nimble, agile and offers enough stock performance to satisfy anyone's daily needs...Stopping power is still the best available in this country...It is quite evident that regardless of what restrictions the government or our economical conditions place upon us, the Corvette will come through with flying colors."
Oh yeah, during their testing, the VETTE Quarterly staff clocked a best of 14.96 at 92 mph in the quarter, and eked out 13 mpg of unleaded with the 3.55-geared, looser-than stock torque converter, L82-equipped Stingray. Indeed, some things have changed--a whole lot and definitely for the better!
The T.O.C. (table of contents) had four different sub-headings: STREET PERFORMANCE, COMPETITION, TECHNICAL, and NOSTALGIA. The '76 L82 road test was just one of the six articles listed under STREET PERFORMANCE. There were two distinctly different Motion Performance Stingrays, a '72 "Phase III" coupe with a seriously tweaked small-block, and a Hugger Orange '73 Mantaray, complete with some fairly radical body modifications and a thundering 466-ci Rat motor backed up with a four-speed, Hone overdrive, and 4.10:1 gears--a beast of the highest order in any decade! There was also a mild custom '64 roadster, a lightly tarted-up (pinstripes and custom wheels) '76, and a weekend road trip into New York's Lake George region with the Eastern Connecticut Corvette Club.
The COMPETITION section contained two articles. The first was a piece by Roger Huntington about how John Greenwood built ZL-1 (aluminum block and heads) big-block race engines for his wide-body GT racers--with a couple of great under-the-skin and under-construction pictures of Greenwood's wildly innovative race cars. The other, a 305-inch (.030-over '69 Z/28's 302) powered '67 convertible drag car was colorful enough to merit two of the scarce color pages thanks to its owner-applied multi-hued candy blue and candy magenta panels over a bright white base.
Two of the three TECHNICAL articles were about turbochargers and turbocharging '70s-vintage Vettes. One, "The Corvette That 'Jingles' Built," was, in reality a two-page black and white photo essay of Corvette Group Project Engineer Jim Ingles' turbo'd '75 small-block coupe. There was no technical data presented and, in retrospect, the most interesting aspect of the article was the car's paint job, which appears to be a sneak preview of the two-tone layout that would show up on the '78 Indy Pace Car models. The second turbo article was a comprehensive, how-they-do-it article about building a Motion Performance "Turbo-Turbo" carbureted and single turbocharged 350-incher for street use. The last article was a well-done look at fuel cells for Corvette road racers.
Under the NOSTALGIA heading were four articles. Four pages (two of them color) were devoted to "Last Of The Sting Rays," a look at the '67 Corvettes, and focussing upon a not particularly distinguished (by today's standards--things like grease and smudges on the valve covers and corners of the "3 x 2" decal on the air cleaner peeling) 427/400 convertible. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight we can't help but wonder about doing a "nostalgia" piece on a 9-year-old model--seems kinda like Team VETTE doing a nostalgia article about '93 C4s today. There was also an excellent memoir by Contributing Editor Joe Oldham about a street and strip '62 he'd once owned and, regrettably, parted with. A pair of factory specials were the subjects of the other two articles. The '56-57 SR-2 racers were allotted two pages (one of them color), and the ZL-1-powered Manta Ray (built from the Mako Shark II show car) was also given two pages. Unfortunately, there was no way to appreciate the incredible white-into-dark blue, from bottom-to-top, paintwork on the 'Ray which, incidentally, still exists, still looks great and is still propelled by the old all-alloy big-block.
Volume 1 Number 1 was definitely light on advertising. Several pages hyping other titles (mostly outdoors and sports-oriented) from Popular Publications, a couple of other ads for automotive-related books, two-plus pages for Motion Performance (stuff like V-8 Vega kits, IMSA-style body kits for Monzas, a wild body kit to make a '68 through '76 Corvette into a Mako Shark II clone, and cool stuff like "Can Am" exposed headlight kits for Stingrays, to make them look like the Daytona/Sebring/Le Mans racers), a full-color ad for Turtle Wax on the inside back cover, and a pair of full-color cigarette ads gracing the inside front and outside back covers.
A quarter of a century later, we can sit here, smug and self-assured, and kid about the clothes, the hair styles, and the occasionally freaky paint jobs in that inaugural issue of VETTE Quarterly. But, in the context of the times and especially for what really amounted to one man's efforts to jump-start an idea into reality, it was quite an accomplishment. More importantly, Marty Schorr's brainchild, ...every Corvette enthusiast's magazine, appealed to enough Corvette enthusiasts to justify second and third issues in '76, and enough sustained growth to expand to a bi-monthly and, finally, a monthly publication that, a quarter of a century later, is still going strong.