The bottom line is that Mr. Earl didn't brag about every one of his accomplishments. One being, how he cooked up the entire Corvette package, in and out and named this, car too. Put another way, he did this baby just like the rest of his most important vehicles directly tied to him during a near fifty-year long career...from the tire treads up to the all-inclusive body engineering and complex development side of designing. 

Before Chevrolet created the "chief engineer of the Corvette" position in 1968, 15 years after the car was created in 1953 that's when Zora Arkus-Duntov filled this position at when he was 54 years old! Consequently, if Harley Earl's engineering might hadn't been so large to begin with in Detroit, this sports car would have never been created and/or been so enormously successful in the first place. Regardless of the spin he put on things, Duntov always knew he was just another one of the guys following in Harley Earl's Corvette footsteps. That no matter how hard Zora tried, in the long run history would always recognize the real winner behind this bedrock American icon: Harley Earl.

Wondering why the Detroit News didn't put, "created the Corvette for Chevrolet" inside...perhaps they ran out of room? After all, it's not easy writing everything this man did in a limited amount of copy space; but other obits in major newspapers and magazines got it right. 

The Shinning Star of Corvette Is Followed by a Volatile Wake