If you have a 2027 Grand Sport on order, you might want to look away for a second. MotorTrend’s new piece on the C9 has it entering production in 2029 as a 2030 model, which leaves the car you’re waiting on roughly three model years before it becomes the old one.
Chevrolet has confirmed none of this, so file it accordingly. Christian Seabaugh’s report is specific enough to walk through, though, and the most convincing part of it is already bolted together down in Bowling Green.
The CX Concept Is the Template
MotorTrend’s people say the big changes are visual and that the C9 body will lean hard on the Corvette CX concept GM’s design studio put in front of us at The Quail last August. Softer than the show car, more cohesive, with the kind of Coke bottle hip the front engine Corvettes wore for decades. Underneath, they expect an updated and hopefully lighter take on the C8’s architecture rather than a clean sheet.
Worth keeping the concepts straight, because coverage is already mixing them up. GM showed three Corvette studies in 2025. The California Corvette came out of the Pasadena studio back in April. The CX and the CX.R Vision Gran Turismo turned up together during Monterey Car Week. It’s the CX that MotorTrend points at, and since that thing is a 2,000 hp quad motor EV, we’re strictly talking about the bodywork here.
The Engine Question Is Mostly Settled
Good news for anyone who spent the last few years dreading a battery-powered Vette. MotorTrend expects the C9 to launch on a naturally aspirated pushrod V8, and we’d argue that engine is already sitting in Bowling Green.
The 409 cubic inch LS6 showed up with the 2027 Stingray and Grand Sport making 535 hp and 520 lb-ft, which is 45 hp and 55 lb-ft clear of the 6.2 liter LT2 it replaced. Chevy kept the LT2’s bore and stretched the stroke to get there. GM also spent close to a billion dollars readying four US plants for Small Block production, with LS6 assembly heading back to Flint, where Corvette V8s got their start in 1955. Nobody writes that check for an engine with three years left in it.
One small thing on MotorTrend’s story. They call the 6.7 an LT6. It’s the LS6. LT6 is the flat plane 5.5 in the Z06.
Above the base car, expect the ladder we already know. Z51, Grand Sport, Z06 and ZR1, with the hybrids possibly moving to a pair of front motors instead of the single unit in the Grand Sport X and ZR1X. A full EV Corvette is still floating around out there for the early 2030s. Just not at launch.
Time to Start the Savings Account
The C8 opened at $59,995 back in 2020 and that number is long gone. A base Stingray runs about $73,495 today, and MotorTrend puts the C9 range between $78,000 and $220,000, which covers everything from the base Stingray to whatever ends up sitting at the top. The summer of 2029 is a long way off. Getting on your dealer’s list is not.
