1972 Chevrolet Corvette Factory Specification Book — September 1971
The object and its source This record presents Chevrolet's factory specification book for the 1972 Corvette, issued in September 1971, together with the Corvette pages of the Chevrolet Motor Vehicle Price Schedule in its revision of 1 December 1971. The specification book runs to thirty-eight pages in five sections — General, Dimensions and Weights, Body, Chassis and Power Trains — and every page carries the footer "1972 Corvette / September 1971" [IMG-07]. The Record Institute holds a digital copy only. The scan is preserved by Over-Drive Magazine and shared with the Institute under permission from its editor, Bob Gerometta [S2]. In the same file the book is bound with other period factory and dealer documents, identified below; three further pages come from a commercial reference book of 1992 and are excluded from this record. What the pages show and say The cover is a title sheet, not an advertisement: the Chevrolet bowtie and speedline logotype, "1972 Corvette Specifications", a black rear three-quarter drawing of the coupe, and the words "Genuine Chevrolet" [IMG-01]. Inside, the book specifies two models — the 19437 coupe and the 19467 convertible — on a 98-inch wheelbase and 182.5 inches in overall length [IMG-06]. Its Engine Data and Ratings page gives the advertised ratings in net terms: 200 net horsepower for the standard 350-cubic-inch V-8, 255 for the RPO LT1 and 270 for the RPO LS5 454 [IMG-07]. The Power Teams chart matches engines to transmissions and Positraction axle ratios, and states in parentheses that the ratings "are reflected at 'net' horsepower" [IMG-04]. The price schedule adds the commercial layer: in the December 1971 revision, the LT1 option carries a dealer price of 470 USD and the ZR1 "Special Purpose" package a dealer price of 983 USD — the last described as a 255-hp engine "(Not recommended for normal traffic situations)" that could not be ordered with a radio, power steering, air conditioning, power windows, a rear window defroster or wheel covers [IMG-03]. A revised serial-numbers page decodes the VIN: make, line, body style, engine, model year, the St. Louis assembly plant and the sequential number [IMG-05]. The book closes with the Power Trains section's data tables, ending on the Turbo Hydra-Matic specification [IMG-08]. Historical setting The 1972 model year was the fifth for the third-generation Corvette and, in several respects, the last of an era. Production reached 27,004 cars — 20,496 coupes and 6,508 convertibles [S1] [S3] — all assembled at St. Louis, as the book's identification page records [IMG-05]. It was the final year in which the Corvette carried chrome bumpers at both front and rear; from 1973, federal impact standards brought a body-colour urethane nose [S2] [S6]. The coupe's removable rear window, a feature of the 1968–1972 cars, also ended with 1972 [S2]. So did the two performance options at the top of the book: the LT1 engine, fitted to 1,741 cars, and the ZR1 package, built into just 20 [S1] [S2] [S3]. The year also marks the point at which advertised American horsepower changed its meaning: the ratings in this book are SAE net figures, measured with the engine as installed, which is why the LT1's 255 net horsepower reads so much lower than the gross figures attached to the same engine two years earlier [S1] [S6]. Visual language and intended audience Nothing in these documents was written for the public. The specification book is set in dense tabular type under black band headings, organised for a reader who already knows what a multiplication factor is and needs the number, not an explanation [IMG-07] [IMG-08]. The price schedule is plainer still: parallel price columns, with a small arrow — "Indicates Change" — against every line revised since the previous issue [IMG-03]. Four pages of the specification book were themselves reissued in December 1971, two months after the book appeared, and are marked "Revised December 1971" [IMG-05] [IMG-06]. These were working tools for Chevrolet's dealer network: the same bound file preserves the Corvette section of the Chassis Service Manual, with its cutaway of the body's steel reinforcing members [IMG-09], and the Corvette chapter of the dealer sales album, where the coupe gets a single full-page illustration and no figures at all [IMG-10]. Read together, the documents show the three registers in which the factory spoke to its own organisation — engineering, service and sales — none of them addressed to the customer. Documentary significance The significance of the set is its completeness and its candour. A full factory specification book for a single model year fixes the car as the manufacturer itself defined it in the autumn of 1971 — dimensions, gearing, ratings — before later summaries began to round the numbers. The price schedule preserves the view from inside the business: what each option cost, which combinations were forbidden, and the plain warning attached to the ZR1. That warning documents, in the factory's own words, a twenty-car programme that modern references can only describe from outside [S3]. In the curator's reading, the compilation's mixed binding is also part of the evidence: internal documents of this kind were printed for use and discard, and this set survives because an enthusiast archive — Over-Drive Magazine — scanned and kept it, gathering the book with the manual, the schedule, the sales album chapter and a General Motors VIN chart of the same year. Curator's conclusion and limits Two cautions govern this record. The Institute's copy is digital: the paper, binding and condition of any physical original cannot be examined or graded from a file, and no census of surviving copies of the specification book exists — how many were printed for the dealer network was not recorded in the documents themselves. Where later references disagree with the book's figures, this record follows the book's own printed tables, which are the primary source. The three pages in the same scan file taken from a commercial reference book of 1992 are not a factory document and form no part of this record. References / Sources General Motors, GM Heritage, "1972 Chevy Corvette", gm.com/heritage/collection/chevrolet/1972-chevrolet-corvette — production total and LT1 production; the gross-to-net rating change. Over-Drive Magazine, "1972 Corvette Fact Sheet", over-drive-magazine.com/2026/10/13/1972-corvette-fact-sheet/ — last-year features; ZR1 and LT1 quantities. VetteFacts, "1972 Corvette Production Numbers & Options", vettefacts.com/C3/1972 — production split; ZR1 quantity; St. Louis assembly. Vette Vues Magazine, "1972 Corvette Stingray: The Last Chrome Bumper C3", vette-vues.com/1972-corvette-stingray-overview-key-features-historical-significance/ — federal bumper standards from 1973; the ratings transition. Chevrolet Motor Division, General Motors Corporation, "1972 AMA Specifications Form — Passenger Car" (Form AMA-40A-72), September 1971 — the same specification data in the industry-standard AMA format; preserved in the Over-Drive documentation set. Over-Drive Magazine documentation set, "1972 Corvette Production Figures" — model totals and factory prices. Credit: Digital copy preserved by Over-Drive Magazine (over-drive-magazine.com) and used with the permission of its editor, Bob Gerometta. Document Library: https://over-drive-magazine.com/document-library/ — 1972 Corvette Fact Sheet: https://over-drive-magazine.com/2026/10/13/1972-corvette-fact-sheet/
Category: Cars
Year: 1971
Rarity Class: S
Paper & Print Condition
This record is based on examination of a digital scan; no physical copy was inspected. The specification book appears in the scan as thirty-eight black-and-white letter-size leaves, each with a black band running head naming its section and the footer "1972 Corvette / September 1971". The tables are densely set in tabular type and remain legible throughout the file, including the four pages reissued in December 1971. In the scan, several leaves show a dark band along the top edge and faint show-through — artefacts of the bound compilation from which the file was made. The price schedule leaves bound with the book are of the same character. Paper stock, toning, folds, tears and the binding of any physical original are not assessable from the file and are recorded as unexamined.
Provenance & Rarity
The specification book and price schedule were produced by the Chevrolet Motor Division of General Motors in the autumn of 1971 for distribution inside the factory and dealer organisation; neither document was sold or offered to the public. The Record Institute does not hold a physical copy. It presents the documents in a digital compilation preserved by Over-Drive Magazine and used with the permission of its editor, Bob Gerometta, with credit to Over-Drive Magazine; in that file the book is bound with other period documents, including the Corvette section of the 1972 Chassis Service Manual and the Corvette chapter of the dealer sales album. Three pages in the file, taken from a commercial reference book of 1992, are excluded from this record. Rarity class S (CUR-01, set by the Institute's curator, 2026-11-01): a complete internal factory specification set for the final chrome-bumper model year. The research assessment proposed class A; the adopted class rests on contextual significance, not on any census — no survival count exists.
Rarity & Condition Summary
