True Lies! Car & Driver Goes Nuts with Mid Engine Corvette Rumors
Ok, so I still may be right about never ever seeing a mid-engine Corvette, but our pals at Car and Driver are really putting together a good case for it possibly, maybe, likely, potentially, probably happening.
According to C&D, it’s happening. They say that the company is already hard at work on the next generation Corvette. This isn’t news though since most manufacturers has its future lineup being developed long before the current generation ever goes out of production. What C&D’s sources do say, is that it will be “Revolutionary.” Again, this could be just source speak for, “it’s going to be amazing and blow your mind, just like we say every time we release a new model.
Back to the rumors. Through their magic 8 ball, C&D claim that the “Zora ZR1” will debut around the 2017 model year. This means that Chevy need to pretty much have a working prototype by now, to which none of the press, or the general snooping public has spotted at all.
Seriously, if they are aiming at a 2017 model year, then that means we will see a “concept” this year, and then next year a more production guised car. That also means they’ve solved something they haven’t been able to achieve in over 7 generations of car! Put the engine in the middle.
According to their source, the platform of the current generation C7 wouldn’t be all that hard to manipulate in order to put the engine squarely behind the driver. In addition, even the manufacturing process would only need minor tweaks to build the new car. For perspective, Tesla shutdown for an entire two months to retool for the Model X which essentially uses the exact same chassis as the Model S. These would be two completely different animals, and would likely take a bit longer than that.
Engine choice will stay the same; the LT1 just came into existence so Chevy needs a heck of a lot of traction with it to spread out the development costs. Figure though that the new car, again if made, will likely see a bump in power over the Z06’s 650 hp rating.
Car and Driver has a whole host of other potentials over at their website that are somewhat interesting, but really just speculation based on assumption on other mid engine cars. If GM is going to do this, and I’m not sure that they will, it probably needs to be now.
With so much sports car manufacturer turmoil currently, GM is in the right position to strike blows to all of them. For the longest time the Corvette has been America’s only real sports car to go up against the world. Nevertheless, the world has moved on, and it’s about time that the Corvette does too.
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Photos via MotorTrend and Car & Driver