When a car company comes out with a long-anticipated debut, it tends to show all the cards it was holding close to the chest during development. It happened when Toyota showed off the Supra and told us how it did the deed with BMW, and now it’s happening again with GM and the mid-engine Corvette.
What we got now comes from the Detroit News, which confirmed something we had only joked about before the Recession: GM had indeed approved a mid-engine Corvette, and it even made some prototypes. From DetNews:
Since the late 1950s, GM engineers have debated the advantages of a mid-engine layout. They produced multiple prototypes, and GM even green-lighted a mid-engine car for production in 2007 before the financial crisis put an end to that.
Now, it’s possible that GM did not make any full prototypes in 2007 and the Detroit News article is referring to things like the mid-engine Vette that got killed in the ‘73 Gas Crisis. But I have a feeling that GM has some good stuff kicking around—prototypes, sketches, whatever— from just before the Recession. Stuff we haven’t seen.
Show us, GM. The world deserves it.