National Corvette Museum, Bowling Green, KY, USA
Until October 2025
“An American Love Affair: Pop Culture and Corvette” is a road trip through Corvette’s impact on entertainment and popular culture. The exhibition features over a dozen Corvettes and the stories that made them famous. You’ll find Corvettes that have appeared in films and TV series, belonged to American show biz and sports stars, and even famous astronauts.
These include:
- Cinema and television, with Elvis Presley’s 1959 Sting Ray in Clambake, the “Crosshairs” and “Sideswipe” Corvette-based concepts from the Transformers films, and a 1973 Corvette from the Hawaii Five-0 series
- Music, with cars that belonged to Jerry Lee Lewis, rock singer Roy Orbison and country singer Brad Paisley
- Sports, with a car that belonged to baseball star Reggie Jackson; and video games, with a C7-based concept for Gran Turismo 6.
Visitors will also discover Jim Lovell’s 1968 Silverstone Silver Corvette, astronaut on the Gemini and Apollo missions, and commander of Apollo XIII. General Motors had an agreement with astronauts to lease them the Chevrolet of their choice for $1/year. As a result, many astronauts chose the Corvette for their sense of speed, and it is said that they often raced it on the beaches around Cape Canaveral.
Motorsport is also part of popular culture, with the official Corvette Pace Car at the 1978 Indianapolis 500. The cars are associated with numerous contextual objects, such as Lovell’s astronaut gloves and an autographed lunar navigation map, or Z06-themed Paul Reed Smith guitars or Les Paul signed by Zora Arkus-Duntov, in the style of the 1960 Corvette.
The exhibition immerses visitors in the Corvette’s cultural heritage through a multimedia presentation of iconic Corvette moments in film, television and music, bringing to life how this legendary car has shaped and been influenced by American pop culture.
The photos on this page belong to the National Corvette Museum, no right of reproduction without the express permission of the museum.