- After decades of rumors, the mid-engine Corvette
is finally actually happening.
So what took GM and Chevy so long to build it?
And is it gonna be successful?
Let's talk about it.
The Chevrolet Corvette has always sat in its own
weird little niche in the market.
It's pricier than the Ford Mustang,
so GM invented the Camaro to compete with that car.
It's well known that the father of the Corvette,
Zora Arkus-Dontov, was a racer
and a big proponent of the mid-engine layout.
And it's fairly common knowledge
that mid-engine is better for performance
than the typical front engine format.
So if the Vette has always been GM's halo car
and wasn't in any direct competition
with other cars any way,
why didn't they go whole-hog a long time ago?
Well, the history of the mid-engine Corvette
is one of bad timing and conservative decisions.
It all started with the 1960 CERV, which stood for
either Corporate Engineering Research Vehicle
or Chevrolet Engineering Research Vehicle.
It was a single seater race car
that was never intended to be a Corvette.
Arkus-Duntov used it as a testbed
for the mid-engine layout and suspension design.
But GM was against any actual racing involvement.
Its independent rear suspension did end up
in the 1963 Stingray Corvette though.
When the Ford GT40 took the racing world by storm
a few years later, Zora kicked back into gear
and developed the mid-engine CERV II.
His team came up with some very interesting ideas.
They moved the transmission behind the differential
and added a second transmission
that was driven off the front of the crankshaft.
That's right.
This thing was all-wheel drive.
Despite how cool this thing was,
GM decided to quietly support Chaparral race cars at Can-Am
instead of openly going over Ford at Le Mans.
That meant no production mid-engine Corvette either.
Next came the experimental XP-880,
also called the Astro II in 1968.
This was the first time anything actually resembling
a mid-engine Corvette would show up,
and it looked pretty badass.
But the two-speed transaxle
borrowed from the Pontiac Tempest couldn't handle
the huge V8 they put in it.
The 1970 New York Auto Show was the debut
of the first official mid-engine Corvette concept,
the XP-882.
It had a transversely mounted small-block V8
and used an Oldsmobile Toronado transaxle
to make it all-wheel drive.
What's with this all-wheel drive stuff?
Zora Arkus-Duntov rushed it to the shows
so Chevy could have a competitor
to three other mid-engine cars that were rumored
to be going into production,
the AMC AMX3, the Mercedes Benz C111,
and the De Tomaso Pantera.
It's not totally clear what happened
after the XP-882's auto show debut.
One story is that John DeLorean,
who was the boss of Chevy back then,
wanted the Corvette to go a lower cost route.
He killed the program, and Arkus-Duntov threatened to quit.
Another story is that there was such a positive response
to the XP-882 that GM authorized more money
for the further development,
but the team changed tactics and tried to develop
a lighter, rotary version instead.
In the quest for progress,
the mid-engine V8 plans were scrapped.
There's evidence that both of these things happened.
Just two years later, GM built the V8-powered
XP-895 prototype on the same chassis as the 882.
It also ended up being too heavy,
so DeLorean got one of GM's suppliers, Reynolds Metals,
to make an aluminum body that was 500 pounds lighter
than the steel one.
But the cost of mass producing aluminum body Corvettes
would have been too high,
and the fiberglass C3 was selling really well anyway,
so the XP-895 was yet another dead end.
One year later, a couple of mid-engine
rotary prototypes appeared.
The first one was the XP-897 GT,
which debuted in Frankfurt in 1973.
It was built on a Porsche 914 chassis, oddly enough.
The engine was a two rotor Wankel, making only 180 horses.
Zora thought it was underpowered, no kidding,
and didn't like the idea.
So Arkus-Duntov pulled one of the older prototypes
out of storage and reworked it into, get this,
a four rotor concept for the Paris Auto Show.
It had gull wing doors, for some reason.
You know, like all concept cars.
The interior looked pretty complete,
which made people think that the mid-engine Corvette
was finally gonna happen this time.
But it wasn't the four rotor
of your glorious sounding dreams,
like the Mazda 787.
It was two of the two rotor Wankels connected together
with a V-belt to make 360 horsepower.
As you might expect, that didn't work at all,
and I'm kinda glad because that sounds like a nightmare.
On top of that, it was 1973,
which was when a little thing called the Oil Crisis
started freaking everyone out.
It just wasn't a good time to build thirsty engines.
So GM didn't make any rotaries or the mid-engine Vette.
While the rotary idea was good and dead,
Zora pulled the Wankels out, threw another V8 in,
and renamed the concept the Aerovette.
And this was his personal favorite
of all the mid-engine Corvette prototypes.
Zora retired in 1975,
and in '76, the Aerovette was considered
the possible future C4.
The Datsun 280Z was eating into the aging C3 Corvette sales,
and it seemed like it was the right time to finally do it.
But the best that we can tell is that GM simply wussed out
and kept going with the C3 until 1982.
When Zora retired, he told his successor, Dave McLellan,
that he just had to make a mid-engine Corvette someday.
Another 10 years later went by
before they built another mid-engine concept
with help from Lotus, the 1986 Corvette Indy.
It was a super advanced prototype
with all-wheel drive, four-wheel steering,
and hydraulic active suspension.
It was powered by a twin turbo charged 2.65 liter V8,
making over 600 horses.
That's crazy.
Its interior were stocked too
with an early navigation system and a rear view camera.
But the Indy was far too complex and expensive
to be a viable option in the 80s, and it didn't get built.
The Indy was toned down into a more
production viable concept called CERV III
for the 1990 Detroit Auto Show.
This one had a twin turbo charged 5.7 LT5,
making 650 horses, but it was estimated to cost
$400,000 to produce, which was Porsche 959
and Ferrari F40 money.
That wasn't going to fly at Chevy, obviously.
CERV III ended up being
the final mid-engine Corvette concept we would see.
McLellan's replacement, Dave Hill,
was another front engine guy.
But he did hire an assistant who was into it,
a guy named Tadge Jeuchter.
I'm doing my best to pronounce it.
He got GM's design department to make up a bunch of
mid-engine models for wind tunnel testing.
The closest thing to it was the Cadillac Cien concept
at the Detroit Auto Show in 2002.
This thing was in Midnight Club 3, you might remember it.
With a huge 7.5 liter Northstar V12 behind the driver,
it's sick.
After Hill retired, Jeuchter proposed
the mid-engine Corvette with chief engineer Tom Wallace.
He loved it.
Then the bottom fell out of the economy,
hitting the automotive industry really hard.
GM was in especially bad shape,
and you probably know they had to be bailed out
by the government.
Corvette development money was canceled completely.
It was a terrible time to make a radical change.
We're probably lucky the Vette wasn't killed altogether.
The fact that it's been a historically profitable
and popular car probably saved its life.
Thankfully, the markets bounced back a little bit
from the financial crisis, and the C7 was a huge hit.
The latest Corvette has incredible performance,
but it's held back by its front engine layout.
It seems like the time for the mid-engine Corvette
was finally right, and Chevy debuted the long awaited car
on July 18th and it looks absolutely wild, I love it.
Power comes from a 6.2 liter mid-mounted V8 called the LT2
and makes 495 horsepower and 470 torques
with a performance exhaust option.
There's no word yet on power without that exhaust,
but I'm sure it's gonna be super quick.
All trims, including the base,
come with a dry sump oil system so the engine won't run dry,
even under continued loads over one G.
And they say that the base model
can pull over a G on its standard all-season tires.
That's sick.
It's got 19-inch wheels on the front, 20s on the back,
with four piston Brembo brakes on both ends.
So far, it's only gonna come with an eight-speed
dual clutch transmission.
And while I'm frankly a little disappointed
there's no manual, a dual clutch is still really sick.
Maybe they'll give us a clutch pedal later,
but some people don't think it's possible.
Test mules were spotted running with Porsche 911 turbos,
so it looks like Chevy aimed this Corvette super high
with their performance benchmarking.
The mid-engine C8 should be super impressive.
I for one am super stoked for the C8.
It's gonna come out next year.
The current age of a Corvette owner is 64,
so GM has to be staking their hopes on this brand new layout
attracting new, younger buyers.
And I think price is gonna be a big factor
in the C8 Corvette's success.
The new base Stingray model is gonna start under $60,000.
That's only a couple grand more than the base C7 right now
and about the same as a Porsche Cayman
and a lot less than the Audi R8.
Faster trim levels are definitely coming,
and I can't wait to see how they stack up
against McLarens and Ferraris and Lambos.
I can't believe that I'm excited for a new Corvette.
But it kinda has the stigma of being like
your grandpa's car.
But with this new mid-engine car,
I'm so excited for it.
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Now, how do I get off this thing?
This is brake, right, or is this the clutch?
Thanks for watching Wheelhouse.
Chevy, please give us one to review.
Everyone at Donut is super stoked.
Check out this episode of Wheelhouse on
Corvette versus the Thunderbird,
one of our earlier episodes, still really good.
Check out this episode of Up to Speed on the Corvette
to get another history of the car so far.
Hit me up on Instagram @NolanJSykes.
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Be nice, see you next time.