Fear not Barbie fans—the bowtie brand is back in the playhouse garage. Coming to theaters on July 21, 2023, is a new Barbie blockbuster written by Greta Gerwig and her husband, Noah Baumbach. Gerwig directed the movie as well, which follows Barbie’s 2020-era-appropriate existential crisis. Amid the frenzy she gets a sweet set of wheels—a classic first-generation Corvette. Barbie has had plenty of dalliances with America’s sports car, but her most recent was a C5, about two decades ago.
America’s relationship with Barbie started in the ’50s, when Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler noticed her daughter eschewing her baby dolls for paper adult versions. An idea was born, and on March 9, 1959, Barbie debuted at the New York Toy Fair. The long-legged blond with eyeshadow that matched her cornflower blue eyes became the first adult-looking mass-produced doll in the United States. Handler’s daughter’s name was Barbara, but she also had a son named Kenneth. Ken, Barbie’s male sidekick, came along in 1961.
By the early ’60s, the iconic doll’s star was on the rise. She did what most celebrities do with their first big paycheck: She bought a car. Her first was a 1962 Austin Healey 3000 MkII. It came in a variety of colors, including a sedate brown with a blue interior as well as her now-signature pink. But golly, a girl from the fictional Willow, Wisconsin, couldn’t be driving around in a foreign car, so eventually Barbie got herself a Corvette.
The third-generation Corvette (C3) was her first, making mid-’70s Barbie’s American dream come true. Dubbed the Star ‘Vette, this magenta-colored beauty donned the slim mid-section and fat fenders from the pens of Chevrolet designers Zora Arkus-Duntov and Bill Mitchell. Then there’s Barbie who, if she were an actual woman instead of a doll, would have been anatomically impossible.
Barbie’s pink convertible came with star decals for the hood and door panels. A luggage rack came with a snap-on suitcase. (This being a Corvette, we can assume two sets of golf clubs fit in the trunk.) The interior came fully loaded with a tape deck and three cassettes. It also sported sport bucket seats, a CB radio, and a working steering wheel that turned the front wheels, and sweet “G70-14 Super Slicks” tires…
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