Little red corvette

Since General Motors launched the Chevrolet Corvette ‘dream car’ in 1953, more than 11.5 million have hit the road. Originally hand-built at Flint, Michigan, the Corvette now rolls off the line at the Bowling Green assembly plant in Kentucky, USA. More than 50,000 people visit the plant annually; some are Corvette buyers watching their own car being built, but most are tyre-kickers like us.

Our guide Kurt (a car painter doing tour duty) reels off the facts: the one-million square foot plant (92,900 square metres) employs 540 workers turning out cars at a rate of 80 per day. Parts are painted and engines are made elsewhere. Each car takes 35 hours to assemble.

Sticking to the marked path we wind around the scrupulously clean factory floor amid the hum and thrum and zizz and clank of drills and riveters.

Quarter panels, rear ends and bumpers trundle past, hanging from hooks like candy-coloured suits of armour. A bridge of bright door panels passes overhead. Robotic arms weld the hydroformed chassis together and fill the fuel tanks, but it’s the plant workers who install seats and bolt on wheels, whistling all the while and giving us the thumbs up.

When the theme song from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly suddenly blares, Kurt explains that each workstation has its own musical tone that sounds when a worker pulls a cord to stop the assembly line if, well, the wheels fall off.

The chance of things going awry seems huge. A bonnet for a Velocity Yellow Grand Sport Coupe sails past, sandwiched between a Torch Red base model convertible bonnet and one for a Carlisle Blue ZR1. The all-important build sheet that prevents Corvette Frankensteins is attached to each car’s body parts and specifies such essentials as type of shocks, mirrors, engine, and colour. Yellow and white are the slowest sellers while my first choice, red, comes a surprising second to black. This year’s special colour, Carbon Flash Metallic, is reserved for the 2012 Centennial Edition package commemorating Chevrolet’s 100th anniversary.

At the end of the line the chassis meets the completed body in seamless synchronisation: a car is born. These babies promise good times just sitting there. As I’m daydreaming over these vehicular fantasies, I’m shoulder-tapped by another grinning worker to give a freshly-put-together Torch Red base model convertible its ‘First Start’. I’m so gobsmacked I nearly head for the passenger side instead of the driver’s seat. A fingertip touch inside the door activates the electronic door opener and I’m in the driver’s seat.

“See that green button to the right of the wheel? It says ‘Start’ Push it, when you’re ready.”

Will I ever be ready? I could sit here for hours imagining snakey coastal roads and wind in my hair. I press the green button. The newly hatched car takes its first breath, a muscular brruuumm. Everyone applauds. My request to take this sexy beauty for a short test-drive is sensibly declined.

Next stop for the convertible, without me in it, is the drive and brake computer testing station, involving more than 200 tests and some thrilling revving and wheel spinning. Each car also undergoes a 12-gallon per minute drenching to check for leaks. Like 99% of cars produced at Bowling Green, my red convertible passes with top marks. As we’re leaving, the first worker we met calls out, “Place your orders now for Christmas”.

Across the street, the National Corvette Museum tells the full story of America’s dream car. I wander past Nostalgia Alley’s vintage dioramas admiring the curvy early model cars that so captivated American car fanciers’ hearts – including my all-time favourite, the 1958 Corvette. There’s a memorabilia section for licence plate and badge fanciers, a performance area for the racing petrolheads and a design and development section featuring futuristic one-off concept cars that the Jetsons would envy. I have a go with the driving simulator (just as well I wasn’t allowed a test drive).

A walk through the Hall of Fame, which recognises such worthies as designer Zora Arkus-Duntov, the ‘father of the Corvette’, leads into the museum’s showcase arena, the Skydome. With its soaring 100ft (33m) walls, glass ceiling and Corvettes of many colours, this is Toyland writ large. I leave the museum clutching a raffle ticket for a brand new Corvette, hoping Christmas comes early this year.