Welcome to Thursday Trivia where we offer up a historical automotive trivia question and you try and solve it before seeing the answer after the jump. It’s like a history test, with cars! This week’s question: The 250,000th Corvette was built in 1969, in what year was the 500,000th ‘Vette built? If you think you know the answer, make the jump and see if you are right. Unlike many high performance sports cars offered by smaller companies, the Chevrolet Corvette has never been built around ultimate exclusivity. Up until the Nineties Ferrari limited their annual output to under 3,000 cars a year so as to ensure that demand always outstripped supply. I guess they teach Econ 101 in Italy too. In an ever more competitive world, that strategy no longer proves viable, and while Ferrari still is an exclusive brand, they’ve steadily ramped up their annual production, and presently say they’ll make no more than 9,000 a year. That of course equates to about four month’s production of Chevy’s venerable Corvette. Sure, the ‘Vette is just a single model while Ferrari builds several, and the Corvette is far less expensive than anything that Ferrari offers, but that just further impresses the point that the ‘Vette is the “Everyman’s Sports Car” of the high horsepower crowd. It’s interesting to note just how many “everymen” (and everywomen, and astronauts) have bought Corvettes over the course of its existence. While limited production by GM standards, it’s pretty ubiquitous when taken against many of its competitors. The Corvette hit the quarter million mark in 1969, a feat accomplished in fifteen years. How long do you think it took to double that number? From GM Heritage Center:

By 1969, the 250,000th Corvette was built, and the St. Louis, Missouri, plant hit the 500,000 mark in 1977. It took 15 years to get from 500,000 to one million in 1992 and it took an additional 17 years to get from one million to 1.5 million cars.

One point five million Corvettes. That’s a heck of a lot of fiberglass (and later GRP). Image: GM Heritage Center