Brits Brew Up an Electric' Vette That's Lower Than the Goodwood Hillclimb Finish Line
Image Credit: GM.
I kid you not - the Yanks have been fiddling about in a shed in jolly old England, and what they've coughed up has got more angles than a Rubik's Cube designed by Picasso. Seems General Motors has decided that if you want to truly reimagine an icon like the Chevrolet Corvette, you've got to stick a bunch of blokes who normally sketch out Jags in a room and tell them to go wild. And by Jove, have they!
This isn't your usual Vette, not by a long shot. This "C9 'Vette" concept was dreamt up in GM's shiny new Leamington Spa design studio – which, incidentally, is headed up by Julian Thomson, the very chap who penned the original Lotus Elise and the Range Rover Evoque, so the pedigree is certainly there – is about as subtle as a foghorn in a library. It's a proper looker, mind you, albeit one that seems to have spent a bit too much time hanging out with fighter jets and those sleek Italian supercars.
Image Credit: GM.
This British brainstorm stretches to a respectable 15 feet and 4 inches in length, but it stands a mere 3 feet and 5 inches tall. That's practically kissing the tarmac, putting it in the same low-rider league as the legendary Ford GT40. You'd need to limbo under a garden gnome to get a decent look at it.
The design boffins over in the UK have clearly been hitting the espresso hard because this thing is crammed with more clever ideas than the IKEA bookshelf. They've taken the classic Corvette DNA – you can just about spot a hint of that split rear window, a nod to the '63 Stingray – and then strapped a rocket booster of futuristic flair to it. The whole thing is draped in lightweight composite panels, sculpted into shapes that they reckon are inspired by those noisy things that break the sound barrier.
Image Credit: GM.
One of the standout features is what they're calling "Apex Vision." Sounds terribly dramatic, doesn't it? It's essentially a strong center line that not only holds up those fancy "wing doors" (think DeLorean on steroids) but also splits the front and rear windscreens. The idea is to give you a panoramic view, free from those pesky pillars that usually get in the way - instead of two of those on each side, you get one chinky one in the middle. Thomson reckons it's a hat tip to the Corvette's traditional focus on the center line, and it does look rather racy, like something you'd see tearing up the track at Le Mans.
The designers have gone all out on the aerodynamics, splitting the car into an upper half that screams futuristic Corvette and a lower half that's all about clever tech. This lower section is where they've integrated the electric gubbins, including the battery, right into the structure. And they've even come up with something called "Aero Duality." For the road-going version, it uses fans to direct air over and through the car, apparently "filling its wake" to boost efficiency and range - your own personal tailwind!
Image Credit: GM.
For the track-day heroes among us, they've cooked up something even more bonkers. A hypothetical track version would sprout a deployable dorsal fin for stability, those upper aero surfaces would morph depending on the speed, and the underbody would be sculpted with fan assistance to create proper ground effects. It's essentially a Batmobile designed by someone who's watched way too much Formula 1.
Of course, this is just a concept, a bit of blue-sky thinking from the bright sparks in Britain. GM is keen to stress that there are no immediate plans to build this particular beast. Instead, it's one of three design studies from their global studios, all feeding into a single, final show car that we might just clap our eyes on at the Goodwood Festival of Speed later this year. This ultimate design will then, apparently, inform the development of the next-generation Corvette, the C9, expected around 2028. Whether that one will be fully electric remains a closely guarded secret, but this UK concept certainly throws a rather large hint in that direction.
Image Credit: GM.
What's fascinating is that GM specifically tasked this new UK team with a blank-slate approach, encouraging them to "completely rethink the Corvette nameplate." And they've certainly done that. While you can still squint and see a few familiar Corvette cues, this concept has a definite whiff of Ferrari or Porsche about it, especially with those gullwing doors flung open, making it look a bit like that Porsche Mission X hypercar concept.
Even the interior sounds properly space-age, with talk of an augmented-reality head-up display projected onto the windshield. And at just over 15 feet long, nearly 7 feet wide, and that ridiculously low height, it's in the same ballpark as the Ferrari SF90 Stradale. So, it's not exactly something you'll be nipping down to the shops in.
A British-born, electrically-inclined vision of the future of the Chevrolet Corvette - bold and brash. Whether the actual C9 ends up looking anything like this will depend on many factors, but if this concept is anything to go by, the future of the Vette is going to be anything but boring.
