The Introduction of the C4 Corvette

Quote from theCorvette Black Book:

"The 1984 Corvette was introduced in March of 1983. Because of its late release and since it met all the 1984 federal requirements, Chevrolet General Manager Robert Stemple decided to skip the 1983 model year. The result was a very long 1984 production run …

My most humble apologies for missing one word. My "seek and ye shall find" method of typing caused the error. To my thinking, a very debatable topic to be sure, model year and production year are one in the same. In past multiple decades the lines between model years, production years and introduction years have blurred considerably across all makes and models, domestic and imports.

To that end, all things considered "normal", the 1983 Corvette model year would have started production in the late summer of 1982, as noted by the presence of 1983 model year cars for the preview in December of 1982. Due to a variety of reasons, that I will not care to debate, the 1983 Corvette model year model year was skipped while the rest of the Chevrolet model lines, to my knowledge, were not. From what I have read no 1983 model year Corvettes were sold to the public.

You are correct in saying Corvettes were produced in calendar year 1983, as the 1984 model year. The 1984 model year production ran from early in the calendar year 1983 well into the calendar year of 1984 to get back in step with the "normal" model year introductions cycle.

As a side note to this model year/production year craziness, all 1970 model year Corvettes were produced in calendar year 1970.