The Mid-Engine Revolution by Corvette Stingray

Author:Corvette Stingray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Quarto Group
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

The 1986 Corvette Indy with designers Roger Hughet, left, and Randy Wittine, far right.

The 1986 Chevrolet Corvette Indy and the 1990 Chevrolet Corvette CERV III were two cars that lent many design cues to the sixth- and seventh-generation Corvettes.

TOP TO BOTTOM: Early sketches of the CERV III and C5 production car.

The mid-engine idea, and the whole Corvette enterprise, went through a bit of a rough time in the 1990s. “I don’t know that there was a mid-engine Corvette concept after C5,” says Datini. “But from what I’ve read, the idea of a mid-engine Corvette didn’t really come back up again until the mid-2000s. This would have been after C6 launched, so in preparation for C7.”

Lead Corvette Designer Peters and Design VP Simcoe confirmed there was an entire special skunkworks program centered on creating a mid-engine version of the car that became the C7, but it was scrapped due to the corporate bankruptcy in the late 2000s. Yet the idea of a mid-engine Corvette design never really disappeared. It was endemic to the Corvette’s DNA almost from Day One and an intrinsic influence on, and aspiration for, Design. “The designers were totally enamored with that mid-engine idea for Corvette nearly from the start,” Datini says. “Bill Mitchell brought in Ferrari Dinos to take a look at, and I want to say a Porsche 914 and a Lamborghini Miura. We have photographs of them on the viewing patio at the Design Center. They’re looking at these cars and they’re trying to see where they can do better.”

This inevitability finally came to fruition with the new C8. “The way Tom Peters tells it, the reason they get back into the mid-engine idea in the present day was because (Corvette Chief Engineer) Tadge (Juechter), he realizes that they can’t really go any further with performance without changing the architecture,” Datini says.

“And it’s interesting because we have all of Zora’s papers in the GM archive, and Duntov said the same thing back in the ’60s. Even as late as the ’90s he was writing to Jim Perkins, then Vice President and General Manager of Chevrolet, saying the same thing. ‘You can’t go any further with front engine.’ He was writing about the Corvette Indy, and he said, ‘You have this. You need to make that car.’”

Now, they finally have.

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