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The Infinite Cat Project
Presented by Mike Stanfill, Private Hand
Illustration, Flash Animation, Web Design
www.privatehand.com
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The Chevrolet Corvette is a sports car first manufactured by Chevrolet
in 1953. It is built today exclusively at a General Motors assembly
plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky, U.S.A.. It was the first all-American
sports car built by an American car manufacturer. The National Corvette
Museum is also located in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The Corvette is widely regarded as "America's Sports Car". For more than 50 years, Corvettes have combined very powerful engines and affordability, especially when compared with more prestiguous marques of similar abilities. Older generations of the Corvette have been criticized for being crude and lacking in refinement by European sports car standards, and their on-limit handling is a divisive issue, garnering both praise and reproach. Recent generations of the Corvette are widely seen as being much improved in these areas. Corvettes tend to emphasize simplicity over technical complexity. Where nearly all competing marques rely on smaller displacement, more complex engines, the Corvette uses a simpler overhead valve (OHV) design coupled with a larger displacement. The result is often both lighter and physically smaller than the more complex arrangements, as well as cheaper to manufacture. Another example of this philosophy is the continued use of transverse leaf springs in the suspension. This lack of sophistication is sometimes viewed as a negative by automotive purists, and has fueled the aforementioned "lack of refinement" argument. |