Myron Scott was known by his friends and family as “Scottie.” Scott’s ties with Chevrolet would eventually lead him to name the most recognized sports can in the world; the Corvette.
Scott was a photographer at heart and by profession and in 1933 he was snapping shots of six local Oakwood Ohio boys racing make-shift box cars down a hill and he had a brilliant idea. The very next year he started what is now known across the country as the Soap Box Derby and after his derby brought in some 300 competitors and over 40,000 spectators in 1934, Chevrolet took notice and then became the title sponsor of the event. That sponsorship would go on until 1972 and it was that introduction to Chevrolet that gave Scott the in he needed to set in motion the course of history.
In 1937 Scott was hired by GM as the assistant director for the Public Relations department. His duties were vast an included among other things, designing press kits, designing graphics for special events, and snapping great looking photos of the new GM model cars. Then in 1953 something happened that would change the way that everyone would view a certain sports car that was still being developed under the code name “Project Opal.”
Chevrolet wanted their new a sports car to be named something that started with the letter “C” and over 300 names were suggested and submitted by every level of employee at GM. After carefully screening them all, the GM management team didn’t find any that they liked and frustrations were beginning to grow. Later that week Scott was looking through the dictionary under “C” and stopped on the name Corvette which meant a fast moving pursuit ship of the British Navy.
The next day Scott presented his name idea to the big brass at GM and they obviously loved and so the Corvette came to pass. Thanks to Scott’s looking through the dictionary the world has the Corvette to love and not the Coral or the Copestone. Not only did Scott get to name the new sports car, he got to photograph it and the Corvette would quickly become one of his favorite cars in the GM fleet to snap photos of.
Many of the advertisements in the years to come all featured photographs taken by Scott and many of those photographs still live in the pages of Corvette history books. Scott would continue his work at GM and wouldn’t retire from there until 1971. He continued to enjoy photography in his retirement and in 1998 he passed on at the age of 91. If ever there was a man who truly lived a full and rewarding life, it was Scott.
In 2002 Scott was honored with an induction into the Corvette Hall of Fame where his story will forever be told and all those that love the car will know where its name came from. The tribute is indeed a fitting one for the man who literally gave the world the name Corvette.
