GM Shares Earliest C8 Design Photos at National Corvette Museum
Chevy had full-size clay mock-ups as early as 2013!
The mid-engine C8 Corvette is a car 50-plus years in the making. We’d like to say that it started with the almost-production-ready XP880-Astro II that debuted in 1968, but that would ignore the CERV cars that were teased nearly a decade before. Regardless, it’s been a very long gestation period.
Chevy’s flirtation with moving the Corvette’s engine is well-documented through the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, but there is a glaring omission. A mid-engined ‘Vette reportedly got the green light back in 2007, but the financial crisis quickly nipped it in the bud. Since then, many Chevy fans have wondered: If Chevy has been mulling a mid-engine halo car for the better part of 15 years, what did these 21st-century proposals look like?
A look at the future/past
Now, after years of holding their cards to the vest, GM has pulled back the curtain a bit. According to Motor1, over a comprehensive hour-and-a-half C8 overview presentation, the Corvette team shared design photos of the earliest C8 proposals. Perhaps the most shocking part is that they had full-sized mock-ups of the C8 as early as 2013.
There’s a lot to mull over here. The earliest clay models range from cartoonishly aggressive to shockingly close to the final design. As the full-size models appear, they seem to evolve both from and away from the C7; the earliest mock-up shares a very clear design language with the current ‘Vette, while the last one sure looks a lot like the production C8.
Then there are the photos of an early-production C7 sitting with a C8 mock-up. Keeping in mind that these photos are about six years old, it looks like the mid-engined car has just arrived from the future as GM designers mull over it. Of course, this is par for the course when it comes to car design. But the fact that the design was so close to complete so early on is impressive. And considering that the first C8 spy photos and leaks didn’t emerge until early 2015, we’re impressed that GM was able to keep the lid on the project that long.
The prospect of a mid-engined Corvette has been around for a lifetime now. And as such, we dedicated Corvette fans want to know its very long life story. Thanks to the Corvette team, we can now fill in a few very crucial details.
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