"The story of the Corvette-from concept to its continuity, from its balance of design and engineering to its role mirroring the culture into which each generation has appeared-is one of automotive history's most significant because it embodies the ideas and actions of very smart, passionate people."-author Randy Leffingwell on his upcoming book Corvette Sixty Years
1 Scheduled to be published...
1 Scheduled to be published in May 2012, Corvette Sixty Years will celebrate the Vette's 60th birthday a year early. Photo courtesy Motorbooks
On May 15, 2012, Motorbooks will release Randy Leffingwell's Corvette Sixty Years, a large-format illustrated book that chronicles the history of the Corvette from its earliest prototyping through its modern-day performance and beyond.
Leffingwell is no stranger to telling Corvette's story in words and photography. In 1997, he penned Corvette: America's Sports Car, followed by Corvette 50 Years (C50) in 2003, and Legendary Corvettes in 2009. "With each of these, I tried to find new information and a different way to tell what I really believe is one of the most interesting stories in automobile history," he says.
VETTE recently sat down with the author and asked him to recall the brainstorming sessions behind Corvette Sixty Years, and to provide us the behind-the-scenes story of how it was created. We then invited him to pick some of his favorite vintage photographs from the book to share with our readers, along with his comments.
2 I have two favorite views...
2 I have two favorite views of any car I shoot: First is the high angle, and especially with a wide-angle lens. I like to let the viewer imagine they have just driven through this space where the car is. The second shot is the full side-profile view, which I like to shoot at about axle height. This, obviously, is the higher angle. Photo courtesy David Bohrer
3 Author Randy Leffingwell...
3 Author Randy Leffingwell enjoys some seat time in '53 Corvette No. 3. It's the oldest known surviving Corvette in the marque's history. Photo courtesy dave wendt
4 "General Motors photographed...
4 "General Motors photographed virtually every step of Corvette creation, and its photographers had a great sense of light," says Leffingwell. "This image of the die maker polishing the male mold interested me as much for showing what he was doing as [for] what was in the background-including the female mold in the suspended framework."
"My publisher, Zack Miller, and editor, Darwin Holmstrom, and I started discussing doing a book on 60 years of Corvette history even before I started Legendary Corvettes in 2008," Leffingwell relates. "We knew a milestone anniversary was coming for the marque, and all we needed was an approach that differed from what we did with C50. Motorbooks' Publishing Board approved the idea in the fall of 2010, and I started work within a couple of months. I commenced interviews and photography just after New Year's 2011, and for the next 10 months it was my magnificent obsession.
"I wanted to present Corvette's well-known 60 years of accomplishment in a fresh and compelling manner," he continues. "That meant finding people with defining roles in its history and learning new nuances of their story, gathering new information that hasn't been read before, making no new mistakes in telling the history, and correcting some of the mistakes that are out there. It also meant going to extraordinary lengths so the readers exclaim, ‘Wow! I've never seen that car before.'"
Leffingwell began by reviewing what he considered the core books of the hobby—including Dave McLellan's Corvette from the Inside, Jerry Burton's Zora Arkus-Duntov: The Legend Behind Corvette, and Karl Ludvigsen's Corvette: America's Star-Spangled Sports Car, among others. He also reviewed Legendary Corvettes, to refresh his thoughts with what he had written, too.
5 "This image shows Zora...
5 "This image shows Zora Duntov in his CERV I hill climber, heading up Pike's Peak in late September 1960. Photographers routinely think of dramatic light as the low raking sunlight we use in car beauty shots, or the golden light just after sunset that bathes shining sheetmetal in a soft glow. Here, plain, old overcast skies offered just enough contrast to make the open-wheeler stand out against the dirt track and the surroundings. This is a photograph I wish I had made."
6 "Even before the Corvette...
6 "Even before the Corvette SS ran at Sebring, Ed Cole was excited about it. Knowing the Florida race ran into the dark, and that the 24 Hours of Le Mans went around the clock, Cole assigned his engineers—including a young Larry Shinoda at left—to testdrive lights for the nighttime events. Photographer Neil Madler explained that by the mid-1950s, photos were signed, dated, and numbered, so if [one] leaked to a magazine or newspaper, GM knew where to start the inquiry."
7 "One of GM's photographers...
7 "One of GM's photographers made this picture in March 1953, giving proof to the theories that production was a given after the public response at the Waldorf and other Motorama venues. While these guys hadn't built a sports car before this, the image suggests they had ideas about what capabilities it should have. The details in vehicle trim fascinated me.
"I wanted to map out Corvette's history from a variety of authors' points of view," Leffingwell explains. "Often one author fills a hole in another one's narrative. All this reading helps me build my list of interview subjects and the questions I put to them."
Leffingwell admits that he was prepared to "travel the country shooting 50 Corvettes," to populate Corvette Sixty Years with fresh and rare photography.
Meanwhile, in separate negotiations, his publisher worked diligently with General Motors to make the book an official GM publication. In February 2011, the deal was inked; the automaker, as part of the agreement, granted the author unrestricted access to the GM Media Archive's Corvette collection, which houses 30,000-plus images of America's Favorite Sports Car, the earliest of which date back to 1952.
8 "The photographer in this...
8 "The photographer in this shot, Pete Biro, has been a great close friend of mine for many years. When he returned from this shoot, he told me stories of the first pass he and Mears made along the leaf-strewn back straight at Road America. I had seen his finished images before, but it was wonderful to find this behind-the-scenes photo. It was a very cold fall day, and Pete said his hands froze."
9 "To many enthusiasts, GM’s...
9 "To many enthusiasts, GM’s efforts to promote the Corvette in Europe and on other continents seem to be a recent development. This overall view of one of the many exhibition halls at Frankfurt suggests worldwide acceptance of--and desire for--he Corvette has been a part of GM strategy for a very long time."
10 "The clay modeler’s practice...
10 "The clay modeler’s practice of forming two half-cars is a common one that allows management to see alternate concepts on one wheelbase. The forms on this one fascinated me because they adhered to some of the ideas Peter Brock and Chuck Pohlmann had advanced for what became the Sting Ray. The clever half-dome let decision makers visualize the forms of a closed car as well as how the driver fit into it."
"It totally changed the landscape of the book," Leffingwell says. "It went from mostly my photography to mostly GM archive photography, and in doing so, positioned the book 180 degrees from Corvette 50. All of us on the editorial team couldn't have been more pleased."
Packing up his shutterbug gear, Leffingwell returned to his office to examine everything on the Corvette that he could find in print, including the Corvette books in his personal library-"130 (at last count) in English, French, German, and a couple in Japanese," he says. His goal was to memorize the archive photography that has already appeared in Corvette books throughout the decades, so he didn't choose the same ones for Corvette Sixty Years.