General Motors saw a great market opportunity when the thousands of soldiers returning home from Europe bringing with them German and Italian sports cars. Harley Earl, who GM tapped to design a competitor to the Alfa Romeos and the MGs of Europe, shared their passion, and worked to design an American version: a two-seater that could run with European sportsters yet was affordable enough for the upper-middle class. What he designed would eventually become a legendary worldwide brand.

On this day, forty years after its founding, the one-millionth Corvette was driven off the Bowling Green assembly line. The Corvette brand slogged through an inauspicious start, and more headwinds along the way, but was helped along by timely inventions and visionary leaders.

The first Corvettes were built lighter than most cars, owing to their fiberglass body (steel was still under wartime restriction.) Still, their performances paled in comparison to the European models, and only the invention of a more powerful V8 motor saved the model from complete abandonment. In 1953 a Russian-born engineer, Zora Arkus-Duntov joined GM to work on the Corvette brand, introducing the small-block engine and a host of other improvements that turned it into a world-class automobile.