THE CORVETTES

Before Apollo there was Project Mercury, NASA’s first man-in-space programme. All it needed was a home. So as the Fifties ticked into the early Sixties, a huge, secret launch facility was opened just north of Florida’s Cocoa Beach, on the site of an existing missile base. It was here, at Cape Canaveral, where America’s astronauts would ride their rockets into the sky.

Before that, they had plenty of time to play around on the ground. Being hot-shot test pilots, and this being the era of the muscle car, what else would they drive but Corvettes? Trouble is, Corvettes weren’t cheap, spacemen were paid only a regular officer’s salary, and NASA rules banned them from accepting gifts. But there was a workaround…

Down the road from the Cape in the town of Melbourne was a General Motors dealership run by a man named Jim Rathmann, who as well as selling cars also did a little racing. In 1960, he won the Indy 500. Rathmann was also friends with Chevy boss Ed Cole, and between them they had the bright idea of leasing cars to the astronauts for the bargain price of $1 per year.

And so the ‘astrovettes’ were born, a tradition which continued throughout the Apollo missions. But what were these heroes of the skies like behind the wheel? The answer can be found in the following passage from The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe’s legendary account of those early astronauts: “They were determined to show the champ, Rathmann, and each other that they could handle these things. The boys were fearless in an automobile, they were determined to hang their hides out right over the edge – and they had no idea what mediocre drivers they actually were.”