(EXPANDED FROM 2/26/2021)
A few years ago John E. Mohr assessed how advertising for the Chevrolet Corvair reflected the “gendered nature of automobility in 1960s America” (2020, p. 24).
In an essay published in the Automotive History Review, Mohr concluded that “marketers wanted to preserve ‘sportiness’ and ‘performance’ as masculine activities, but at the same time realized that women appreciated a good-handling car as much as their male counterparts.” Marketing thus discouraged women from viewing the Corvair as a sports car. In the most extreme cases, women were relegated “to the role of passive actors, mere ornaments for a masculine vehicle.” The goal was to keep the Corvair from becoming “too feminized for male consumers” (2020, p. 35).
So what about the Corvette? I was particularly interested in whether gender roles evolved from the car’s introduction in 1953 through 1973.
What follows is an informal sampling of marketing materials from the Automotive History Preservation Society and the Old Car Advertisements and Brochures websites. The focus is mostly on gender roles but I parenthetically touch on other aspects of the volatile 1960s.
Note that you can see most of the ads in full by clicking on the image.
Even early on women were targeted
The original Corvette’s marketing had a gearhead quality. Most of the focus was on the car’s sporting attributes. One ad warned that the Corvette was “for experts only!”
Although marketing largely targeted men, from the beginning Chevrolet made modest attempts to appeal to women. The image below is one of only two I have come across from any model year that included two women and no men.
Women played a bigger role in Corvette marketing when the car became less spartan, such as by getting roll-down windows in 1956 (Wikipedia, 2021). The ad below suggests that car’s new removable roof was light enough for a woman to help lift.
Corvette marketing appealed to women in a number of ways during the late-1950s and early-60s. The ad below implies that driving a Corvette could make one popular with young male athletes.
Meanwhile, this ad highlights the enjoyment that a woman is having driving a Corvette in the city with the top down on a sunny day.
Men were mostly in the driver’s seat
Most of the Corvette ads I came across had men driving them. However, up through 1966 there would often be a woman sitting in the passenger seat.
Men were mostly the focus of attention even when they weren’t driving. In the ad below, the woman is apparently trying to seduce a guy who is apparently a rather bookish type.
I came across only one set of images that had two men in a Corvette. This is from a 1961 brochure that centered around rally participants.
1963 models bring more focus on women and couples
One goal of the Corvette’s 1963 redesign was apparently to make the car more appealing to a wider range of people. For example, an ad showcased conveniences such as power brakes, power steering and air conditioning. The photo below has a flower on the front seat, which implied that it was driven by a woman.
Other Corvette marketing played with gender stereotypes around sports cars. The ad below is headlined, “It’s a man’s car (when I let him take it!).” The statue is an unusually explicit injection of race and class into an auto ad.
The next ad announces: “Walter Mittys of the world, rejoice!” See, the Corvette “beckons to that secret urge in every man to kick over the traces and express himself. Just get in, set it in motion, and glide right out of your shell. You’re expressed!” Apparently the woman pictured will help you do just that.
The ads for 1965 emphasized that the Corvette offered four-wheel disc brakes, but they also focused on companionship. Consider this ad, which describes the Corvette as “a snug, intimate machine with plenty of room for two and their luggage.”
A 1966 ad suggested that getting to a destination was less important than what happens once you’re there. Take a guess as to what’s going on with this couple and then click on the image to read the ad copy.
Then we have an upstanding man who was restless because “his everyday world bound him in.” He met a woman who drove a Corvette. She apparently poured something into his mouth with her high-heeled shoe.
She tricked him, stole the car and ate a peach
The above ad is kinky, but the most provocative one I came across was headlined, “The day she flew the coupe.” The ad’s text shares the story of a “normal everyday girl” who hid her husband’s keys to the new Corvette so she could go “off for the hills.” See, hubby had not let her drive the car yet because it was “(t)oo much for a woman to handle.” So she proved him wrong!
Would you have guessed that narrative just by looking at this photo?
Paul Niedermeyer (2016) posted a story that significantly focused on this ad. That set the stage for a wide-ranging discussion about living through the tumultuous 1960s and early-70s. For example, Syke remembered:
“Entered college Sep 1968 – more importantly, entered college 200+ miles from the family. OK, let’s rock. Lots of acid. Discovered I still didn’t have a clue about being a hippie. Tear gassed in demonstrations in DC and Columbus, OH. Was supposed to go to Kent State That Weekend, the ride fell through. Thank god. Politics were burned out by ’72, my last act was to work for McGovern” (Syke, 2016).
This was life in America for a goodly number of young people. You’d never guess that by looking at any of the Corvette marketing shown here — at least aside from ginger references to changing gender roles.
The Peach Revolution fails after 1966
For 1967 and beyond, I did not find any Corvette marketing that showed women in even somewhat empowering roles. For example, in the next ad the women look like preppies who apparently were not into stealing the car keys.
Late-60s marketing focused more on the Corvette’s features. However, a 1968 brochure included a parenthetical reminder that the car’s new looks were an excellent backdrop for a hot date.
Ads also increasingly emphasized serious-looking men who drove their Corvette alone. A case in point is the ad below. I have taken the liberty here to offer an alternative ad that says what the marketeers were really thinking.
Throughout the 1960s, Corvette ads were relatively free of cheesecake. Alas, the mad men apparently ran out of other ideas in 1970.
Early-70s advertising focuses largely on the car
Other 1970 Corvette advertising ditched people altogether. It’s about the gear, man. This was an interesting decision because the Corvette didn’t sport a whole lot that was new for this model year.
For 1971 advertising emphasized the Corvette winning a dubious Car and Driver magazine poll. Perhaps Chevrolet didn’t think there was anything else to talk about in light of the car’s carry-over design.
In 1972 Corvette advertising tagged onto Chevrolet’s “Building a better way to see the U.S.A.” theme. They even put a guy back into the picture who sported binoculars. Should we assume that his companion was taking the photo of him? Or that this was his first post-divorce trip?
For 1973 the Corvette was 20 years old, so it made sense that at least one ad took a nostalgic turn. The ad below asked, “Remember the first time you saw a Corvette? How it looked? How you felt?”
My first reaction was that the ad targeted males, who in my experience tended to be more fixated on sports cars while growing up than females. What gives this particular ad some ambiguity is that a woman is clearly sitting in the passenger seat but the driver has an androgenous look. Was Chevrolet trying to appeal to what would come to be known as metrosexuals (Wikipedia, 2022)?
So what do we make of all this?
It’s dangerous to draw too many conclusions from an informal overview of only readily available marketing materials. However, Mohr’s theory for the Corvair seems to apply to the Corvette as well. Up through 1966, some of the car’s marketing attempted to appeal to women while underlining that the Corvette was suitably masculine.
The ads published in 1964-66 came the closest to presenting women in somewhat empowering roles. But even the image at the top of this post doesn’t show the woman driver doing anything hardcore like racing. That realm was reserved for men.
By the same token, our Lady of the Peach comes off as a mischievous wife rather than a serious challenge to male power. Even the shoe lady is presented in ad copy as using a sports car to find men. The message seemed to be: Hot women drive Corvettes.
Also see ‘When did U.S. automobile ads start to display more racial diversity?’
Marketing after 1966 appeared to largely target men. Women were turned into ornamentation to an even greater degree than before — if they were shown at all. That makes me wonder: What would have happened to the Corvette from a design standpoint if Chevrolet continued its mid-60s strategy of targeting both men and women?
Indeed, when the Corvette was redesigned in 1968, did product planners decide that the original Sting Ray wasn’t macho enough? And did marketeers pull back a bit from the macho vibe as the 1970s wore on?
NOTES:
This is an expanded version of a story first posted Feb. 26, 2021. After the first story was posted I read a Dean’s Garage comment from Karl Ludvigsen (2021). He pointed out that the production version of the original Sting Ray was spelled as two words. Duly noted.
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Ludvigsen, Karl; 2021. Commentator in “Stingray Driving Impressions.” Dean’s Garage. Posted 4:07 a.m., Feb. 20.
- Mohr, John E.; 2020. “The Soft Sell: Gender, Advertising, and the Chevrolet Corvair.” (Membership required.) Automotive History Review. Spring 2020, No. 61; pp. 24-37.
- Niedermeyer, Paul; 2016. “Vintage Ads: ‘The Day She Flew The Coupe’ — What A Difference A Year Or Two Made Back Then.” Curbside Classic. Posted April 16.
- Syke; 2016. Commentator in “Vintage Ads: ‘The Day She Flew The Coupe’ — What A Difference A Year Or Two Made Back Then.” Curbside Classic. Posted April 16.
- Wikipedia; 2021. “Chevrolet Corvette (C1).” Page last modified Jan. 15.
- ——; 2022. “Metrosexual.” Page last modified June 7.
ADVERTISING:
- wildaboutcarsonline.com: (Automotive History Preservation Society): Chevrolet Corvette (1953-71)
- oldcaradvertising.com: Chevrolet Corvette (1963, 1967, 1971-73)
Looking at advertising from the late 1950’s and 1960’s also highlights the relative buying power of the different genders. Men were in traditionally higher paying occupations. There was also the fact that many women weren’t paid equally for the same occupation. Generally it was men that had the extra income available to make an extravagant purchase like a Corvette. While the ownership of a Vette was satisfying enough, if the buyer thought that it made him more attractive to women, well that doesn’t hurt anything!
There have always been highly paid professional women who could buy whatever they desired, but on the whole they were more constrained by their finances.
Moving forward from the 1950’s, women’s incomes have risen as they became involved in a wider range of occupations, often into traditional male dominated areas. I entered the adult world in the early 1970’s and at every job that I’ve had women have always been paid equally. A lot of the women that I worked with bought nice cars like new Camaros and Mustangs and yes even Corvettes.
A couple of years ago I was discussing the purchase of my plain,low spec,V6 F150 with a group of my young co-workers. I described it to them as a “girl’s truck.” A young woman laughed and said, ” No, that’s just a cheap truck, I’ve got a real girl’s truck!” She had just bought a new Quad cab, 4×4. Chevy pick up. Stereotypes are disappearing.
You raise interesting questions so I spent some time digging around the data. From the 1950s through the early-80s, women in the workforce earned roughly 60 percent of what men did. But while the pay gap was fairly stable through that period of time, the proportion of women who were in the workforce climbed from 30 percent in 1950 to 43 percent in 1980. In 1960 only 25 percent of households had dual incomes; by the mid-80s that had shot up to more than 60 percent. Meanwhile, the divorce rate peaked in 1979. Clearly, a fair amount of societal change happened in the postwar years.
Now let’s go back to the Corvette ads. My guess is that the 1959 ad shows a female college student from a family wealthy enough to allow her to drive a Corvette. The 1963 ad suggests that the woman “use a little psychology” to get her husband to buy a Corvette so she could drive it. The 1966 ads with the picnic couple and the peach lady depict stay-at-home wives. Only one ad in the post — the one with the shoe lady — strongly implied that she owned her Corvette.
It would be interesting to look at Corvette ads from the 1970s through 2010s. Do they pay any attention to women? Or did the Corvette get typecast as a “man’s car” even while an increasing number of women had the buying power to own one? That would be a good subject for another post.
Stereotypes do indeed seem to be disappearing — at least in real life. Yet the auto industry still seems to see its products in gendered terms, e.g., putting a flower vase in VW’s “new” Beetle while making the mid-engined Corvette look like a jet fighter.
The Corvette was always a “Man’s Car”, but thank God, Cheverolet’s ad agency, Campbell-Ewald, did not do what Mercury did in 1967: “Mercury – The Man’s Car”. I love the Steve McGarrett Mercurys of 1967-1968, but what a wrong-headed marketing plan for a mid-market step-up from a Ford LTD ! I think the 1967 Mercury advertising campaign hurt Mercury more than any advertising campaign in the 1960s.
Yes, I’m the “Syke” from the Cubside Classic article. It was a real tickle to see it reposted here.
Interestingly enough, by the time I left for college dad had been out of the Chevrolet dealership for three years. While still the motorhead (at the time driving and showing a 1937 Buick Special), my fondness for Chevrolet was starting to die. Not helped by the realization that the Corvair (my all-time favorite Chevy) was on its last breath.
And in eight years I’d finally get my first motorcycle. Which changed EVERYTHING.
That photo of a 1961 Corvette with the 2 guys reminds me of the opening credits of the classic tv show Route 66.
Stirling Silliphant (Oscar and Emmy award-winning creator and writer) and Herbert B. Leonard (producer) crafted a masterful spin-off of Leonard’s “The Naked City”, a pioneering TV program that was the first to shoot its episodes’ exteriors on location, which carried over to “Route 66”. It was a program that fit the two-lane highway America that existed in 1960 through 1964, perfect for the “Jet-Smooth” Chevrolet, its Corvette and other models, a.k.a., “Great Highway Performers”. There was even one episode in which one of the show’s female guest stars drove the Mako Shark (without the heat-searing bubble top).
And while the program featured the changing society and culture in America, from the Jim Crow South, the program did feature guest stars whom where African-Americans facing poverty and discrimination. Also Tod and Buz seemed to get into fights in almost every episode, and of course, they smoked like camp fires. Women co-stars were treated respectfully, but men (not Buz or Tod) still hit women with regularity in many episodes. Not necessarily enlighted behaviors.
Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, Corvettes were dream cars for this kid in Indianapolis. Like the Jaguar XK-Es, Corvettes were, as the late, great Henry N Manney, III, wrote, “Crumpet catchers”. Unfortunately, the 1968-1982 C3s were more mobile phallic-symbols than sports cars. In the early 2000s, one of the greatest Indiana State Police chases and speeding arrests involved the female then-General Manager of an Indianapolis TV station averaging well over 120-miles-per-hour in her new Corvette on Interstate 465 ! It was alleged that martini-lunches were involved. Anyway, I think the lady found her peach !
Speaking of the New Beetle, women bought between 65 and 76 per cent of the car.
Yeah, the New Beetle was an odd phenomenon. I’ve described it as a “cheap ‘brand management’ trick” (go here).