The 1969 Chevy Corvette arrived on the coattails of critics who had been anything but kind to the inaugural C3 Corvette just the year before. Although the overall tone of the critics was marginally more positive by the end of the 1968 model year, GM recognized that there was still a way to go to fully win over the same people who were so quick to tear the Corvette apart.
Still, there were items that needed to be addressed. So it was that the changes that were to be made to the 1969 Corvette would preclude any real new improvements for design sake, but would instead resolve the “unanswered criticisms” of the 1968 Corvette. As is common in automotive manufacturing, the sophomore model of any production vehicle is often a carryover from its inaugural year, with the changes occurring to correct for errors in the initial design – errors that are often identified as the result of feedback from both the automotive media and consumers alike. This was definitely the case for the 1969 Corvette.
