{"id":23987,"date":"2019-07-15T17:54:47","date_gmt":"2019-07-15T21:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/henrypayne.com\/?p=23987"},"modified":"2019-07-15T17:54:47","modified_gmt":"2019-07-15T21:54:47","slug":"long-awaited-mid-engine-corvette-c8-debuts-thursday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/2019\/07\/long-awaited-mid-engine-corvette-c8-debuts-thursday","title":{"rendered":"Long-awaited mid-engine Corvette C8 debuts Thursday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><div align=\"left\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2019\/07\/11\/PDTN\/0a0fdc2e-910a-4a27-a55c-952e6e79ae21-tdndc5-74zq1elwvxx1h597dnle_original.jpg?crop=772,434,x114,y80&amp;width=540&amp;height=&amp;fit=bounds&amp;auto=webp\" alt=\"After denying the existence of the mid-engine Corvette C8 for years, the automaker drove a camouflaged one through Times Square in April.\" \/><\/p>\n<\/div><div id=\"module-position-R730hiIzx4w\" class=\"story-asset image-asset\">\n<aside class=\"wide single-photo\">After denying the existence of the mid-engine Corvette C8 for years, the automaker drove a camouflaged one through Times Square in April.\u00a0<span class=\"credit\">(Photo: GM)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<div class=\"clearfix\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"speakable-p-1 p-text\">The mid-engine Corvette\u00a0tease is almost over.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable-p-2 p-text\">Next Thursday, all will be revealed about the new Corvette C8, the first Corvette to place the engine behind the driver.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">The premiere in Orange County, Calif.,\u00a0follows years of speculation as to when Chevrolet\u2019s iconic sports car would finally go mid-engine. Prototypes of the mid-mounted \u2018Vette date all the way back to the early 1960s. General Motors insiders say the program was green-lighted for production as early as 2007, but was shelved by the Great Recession.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">The Detroit News confirmed plans for the mid-engine model as the eighth-generation Corvette (thus the C8 badge)\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.detroitnews.com\/story\/business\/autos\/general-motors\/2016\/08\/04\/sources-mid-engine-corvette-due\/88054852\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-track-label=\"inline|intext|n\/a\">in August 2016<\/a>. GM finally admitted to\u00a0the model\u2019s existence in April when Corvette Chief Engineer Tadge Juechter and GM CEO Mary Barra dropped jaws\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.detroitnews.com\/story\/business\/autos\/2019\/04\/11\/general-motors-reveals-mid-engine-corvette-july-18-release\/3443887002\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-track-label=\"inline|intext|n\/a\">by driving a camouflaged C8 through New York\u2019s Times Square<\/a>\u00a0in the middle of rush hour.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">Next week&#8217;s reveal of the C8 will take place in the historic Tustin Hangar No. 2 about 40 miles south of Los Angeles. At 17 stories tall and 1,000 feet long, the twin blimp hangars built in 1942 are among the largest wood structures ever made. The hangars were completed just over a decade before the first-generation, front-engine Chevy Corvette.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">Not much \u2014\u00a0and a lot \u2014\u00a0has changed since the first Corvette was introduced in 1953.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">The two-seater sold slowly in its early years until the program was handed over to Zora Arkus-Duntov, the \u201cFather of the Corvette,&#8221;\u00a0who turned the car into an American icon starting with the introduction of a V-8 engine in 1955.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">The front-engine car would endure, but Arkus-Duntov was convinced that a mid-engine platform was preferable even in the early years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">\u201cIt came to him after Corvette had dropped out of the Sebring 12-hour race in 1957 &#8230; because driver John Fitch\u2019s feet were being cooked by exhaust pipes\u201d from the engine mounted in front of him, says writer Don Sherman who has reported on the Corvette for decades. \u201cPondering that, Zora told me &#8230;\u00a0that he had concluded that the heat source had to be behind the driver.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">Dozens of prototypes were produced over the years, but none made it to the production line. Until now.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">Heavily camouflaged C8\u2019s were first caught by the lens of spy photographers at GM\u2019s Milford Proving Grounds test facility in mid-2016. Sources told The Detroit News that GM was pouring some $800 million into Corvette\u2019s Bowling Green assembly plant and paint facility to produce the new car.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">\u201cThe program I got approved in \u201907 was $900 million,\u201d former GM product chief Bob Lutz told The Detroit News\u00a0in 2016, \u201cand included a Cadillac XLR with a supercharged Northstar engine. If the current program is $800 million, I\u2019d bet it includes a different-bodied Cadillac again as well.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">Cadillac\u2019s priorities have shifted to SUV production, but the mid-engine Corvette stayed on track.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">As the C8\u2019s development matured, pictures of it in the wild began to proliferate in the last year like grainy shots of Sasquatch. There was video of the car testing at the N\u00fcrburgring and Sebring race tracks, and\u00a0on mountain roads outside San Diego. There was even<a href=\"https:\/\/www.detroitnews.com\/story\/business\/autos\/general-motors\/2019\/03\/21\/elusive-chevy-corvette-c-8-starts-come-into-open\/3210658002\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-track-label=\"inline|intext|n\/a\">\u00a0footage of GM President Mark Reuss\u00a0<\/a>riding shotgun in a C8 on an Arizona highway.<\/p>\n<div id=\"module-position-R730hiId4UY\" class=\"story-asset image-asset\">\n<aside class=\"wide single-photo\"><div align=\"left\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2019\/07\/11\/PDTN\/1111c06f-2119-41e6-96d3-5d3beb3033b6-tdndc5-74ogqtg113kq0t1rd0i_original.jpg?width=540&amp;height=&amp;fit=bounds&amp;auto=webp\" alt=\"A spy photographer captured video of GM President Mark Reuss in a C8 prototype, even as the company insisted it didn\u2019t exist.\" width=\"540\" data-mycapture-src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2019\/07\/11\/PDTN\/1111c06f-2119-41e6-96d3-5d3beb3033b6-tdndc5-74ogqtg113kq0t1rd0i_original.jpg\" data-mycapture-sm-src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2019\/07\/11\/PDTN\/1111c06f-2119-41e6-96d3-5d3beb3033b6-tdndc5-74ogqtg113kq0t1rd0i_original.jpg?width=500&amp;height=236\" \/>A spy photographer captured video of GM President Mark Reuss in a C8 prototype, even as the company insisted it didn\u2019t exist.\u00a0<span class=\"credit\">(Photo: YouTube)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/aside>\n<div class=\"clearfix\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"p-text\">Yet GM continued to deny the supercar\u2019s existence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">Rumors ran rampant that the car would debut at this year&#8217;s Detroit auto show. The show came and went without a sighting. Sources said the car was suffering from issues ranging from chassis twist to, most convincingly, complications with a new electronics system to be introduced across GM\u2019s lineup.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">Then\u00a0suddenly, the thinly camouflaged C8 appeared in Times Square this spring. Emblazoned on its side was the not so-cryptic\u00a007.18.19, telegraphing the car\u2019s official debut July 18.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">Expect Chevy to reveal only the base model next Thursday, though the C8 should get multiple model options in coming years including a high-revving, flat-plane crank V-8 engine. There could even be\u00a0a hybrid model with an electric motor up front that complements a ferocious twin-turbo V-8 in back. And then there\u2019s the racing version set to debut at the Daytona 24-Hour race in January against other mid-engine weapons like the Ferrari 488.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">Radical as its mid-engine layout is, the base C8 should still get the 6.2-liter, small-block pushrod V-8 that has reliably powered front-engine Corvettes for generations. Purists will surely grumble, however, at the lack of a manual transmission option;\u00a0the C8 will be offered only with a dual-clutch\u00a08-speed automatic.<\/p>\n<div id=\"module-position-R730hiIpBDc\" class=\"story-asset image-asset\">\n<aside class=\"wide single-photo\"><div align=\"left\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2019\/07\/11\/PDTN\/c5229156-bba1-4d9b-9848-3c82746f1950-tdndc5-74zq1c3vvap14pr6inle_original.jpg?width=540&amp;height=&amp;fit=bounds&amp;auto=webp\" alt=\"The long-awaited Corvette C8 is the first production 'Vette with the engine behind the driver.\" width=\"540\" data-mycapture-src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2019\/07\/11\/PDTN\/c5229156-bba1-4d9b-9848-3c82746f1950-tdndc5-74zq1c3vvap14pr6inle_original.jpg\" data-mycapture-sm-src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2019\/07\/11\/PDTN\/c5229156-bba1-4d9b-9848-3c82746f1950-tdndc5-74zq1c3vvap14pr6inle_original.jpg?width=500&amp;height=250\" \/>The long-awaited Corvette C8 is the first production &#8216;Vette with the engine behind the driver.\u00a0<span class=\"credit\">(Photo: GM)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/aside>\n<div class=\"clearfix\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"p-text\">In today\u2019s supercar world, lighting-quick automatics are vastly superior to manuals, and Chevy didn\u2019t need the added complication of designing a mid-engine transaxle with a manual option.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">Pricing for the C8 has not been released, but the Corvette made its mark over the years by offering the same capabilities as Lamborghini and Porsche Turbos stickering for two to three times as much. Don\u2019t expect that to change, although without a\u00a0manual option, the base Corvette is expected to cost $4,000-$5,000 more than the current $57,000 front-engine model.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After denying the existence of the mid-engine Corvette C8 for years, the automaker drove a camouflaged one through Times Square in April.\u00a0(Photo: GM) The mid-engine Corvette\u00a0tease is almost over. Next Thursday, all will be revealed about the new Corvette C8, the first Corvette to place the engine behind the driver. The premiere in Orange County, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23987"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23987\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}