Are All Corvettes Red?

By Paul Pollock
Publisher, The Corvette Story

All Corvettes Are Red by James Schefter is an in depth look at how the C5 Corvette was developed.

The very start of the book begins: The one-millionth Corvette would be built in the next year or so and be painted in the old shop. At an earlier meeting, a discussion of paint quality and paint colors for future years of Corvettes had dragged on so long that John Heinricy, then leading Corvette's development group of test drivers, couldn't take it any longer. "Why are we even having this discussion?" He asked. "All Corvettes are red. the rest are mistakes"

The idea that Corvettes not painted red are mistakes is not going to get a lot of sympathy from me and many other Corvette owners. However, it got me thinking. Just how many Corvettes, in terms of percentages, are red?

Problem Number One

Early in the research, a problem came up. We do not have color quantities for all Corvette years, such as 1969, 1970, 1973 and 1974. And we only have partial color quantity statistics for the 1962 and 1963 Corvette model years. For this reason I had no choice but to exclude these model years.

According to GM, all records for Corvettes built at the St. Louis MO plant, which includes the 1954 to the 1981 Corvette years, were lost in a fire. The only reason we have the figures that we do have (contained in the Corvette Black Book and my own Corvette Story web site) is because "back in the day" the editors of the Corvette fan magazines called the St. Louis plant manager and he passed along what he knew based on notes he kept.

Problem Number Two

For Corvettes, there are many different "flavors" of red, beyond the hardcore red. They are mostly darker shades of red - kind of a maroon. Should they be counted as reds? You decide, meanwhile I'll offer statistics for both categories.

Between the 1953 and 2022 model years, 1,789,002 Corvettes were built. If the years for which we don't have color quantities are excluded, 1,628,913 Corvettes were built.

Including only the years for which we have color quantities, 278,080 of the "Pure Red" (such as the recent Torch Red) or 17.07% Corvettes were sold. For all reds, 409,689 or 25.15% of the total Corvette production were built.

Above: Torch Red 2015 Corvette Stingray convertible. The Torch Red color has been part of 24 Corvette model years - 1993 thru 2004 and 2010 to current year 2023 - more than any other Corvette color.

Above: 1954 Sportsman Red and (Below) a 1955 Gypsy Red Corvette. The first year for Corvettes, 1953, was exclusively Polo White so no reds for that year. Both Sportsman and Gypsy Reds were single year Corvette colors.

1956 and 1957 Corvette years offered Venetian Red. Most people, upon seeing it in person, would call it more of an orange, but we've included it as a red here.

One of the more handsome "other reds" was Marlboro Maroon, featured only in 1966 and 1967.

1987 Corvette Coupe in Dark Red Metallic

1986 and 1987 along with 1990 thru 1995 featured a Dark Red Metallic.

2002 Corvette Coupe in Magnetic Red Metallic

A 50th Anniversary Edition Corvette (RPO 1SC; $5,000) was available for 2003. It included an Anniversary Red exterior paint along with a Shale interior and convertible top.

Long Beach Red, which has a sumptuous suggestion to it, found its way to the exteriors of the 2016 thru 2020 Corvettes. The color was a nod to the Grand Prix of Long Beach.

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