For the 2012 Grand-Am season, Chevrolet was the first to unveil it's new DPG3 bodywork. This Corvette body kit will be built by Pratt & Miller and will be sold to customer teams. These body kits will fit on any existing Coyote, Riley, or Dallara chassis. This Corvette DP will be powered by a 5.0L V8 making 530BHP @ 7,000rpms and 450ft-lbs at 5,500rpms.
The XP-895 was one in a series of experimental Corvettes built to explore alternative engine placements and chassis layouts. This vehicle features an 400 cid small block V8 mounted transversely in a mid-engine position. It utilizes a Turbo Hydramatic transmission via a bevel gear box. The body panels are all aluminum.
Only Bill Mitchell could get away with this. Bill always managed to have a hot daily ride. Engineering prototypes that weren't street-legal stayed behind the fence, but many of the show car Corvettes managed to go home with Bill. His usual statement on his "design study" cars was, "This thing runs like a bear!" For the Mulsanne Bill added, "This is the best Stingray ever."
Duntov laid out three design concepts that took decades to implement. The first was his proposal for the 1957 Q-Corvette. This design called for the following: an all-aluminum, fuel-injected small-block engine, four-wheel independent suspension, four-wheel disc brakes, and a transaxle. This design concept arrived in 1997 as the C5.
The Corvette team decided to one-up the Viper with four extra cylinders, they decided on one of Ryan Falconer’s stunning, all aluminum, 600-cubic-inch, 683hp, 680 lb-ft V-12 racing engines. The biggest challenge was the fact that the all-aluminum V-12 engine was 8.8-inches longer than the production Corvette engine. So the front end of the ZR-1 would have to be stretched 8 inches. This test car was named Conan, after his raw, beastlike charisma.
Based on Harley Earl’s Project Opel plaster model, the EX52 / 122 was the original concept car that inspired the nation and left countless consumers wanting a Corvette to call their own. This Corvette concept was introduced at GM’s Motorama in January 1953.
The 1986 Corvette Indy Prototype was developed beyond clay modeling to the point of a fully-functioning, drivable car, though it was clearly understood that this car would never evolve beyond the prototype stage. Like the clay mock-up before it, development of the mid-engine Indy prototype began in 1985, pulling design cues from its predecessor.
The 2011 Chevrolet Corvette Z06X Track Car Concept was designed to suggest new components and a new idea for transforming a production Corvette into a serious and closed-course track car. This track car concept was developed and produced by Chevrolet in partnership with Pratt and Miller, the partners in Corvette Racing in the American LeMans Series. The competition-oriented modifications of the concept include a polycarbonate rear window, roll cage, safety harness, racing seat.
This is no ordinary C4 coupe, but a GM Engineering test mule with VIN plate EX4607 proudly displayed in the windscreen, built in 1986 to test all the new-for-1988 features. This actual car must have spent weeks pounding round the General Motors Proving Ground at Milford, Michigan with longer runs on the road, testing all the changes for a year which saw the C4 suspension, steering and brakes vastly improved.
The Corvette SS began life as an experimental race car, and was unveiled to the public at the 12 Hours of Sebring endurance race on March 23, 1957. The SS was in training for Chevrolet's debut at LeMans that year. The Sebring race was, in many ways, Chevrolet's inauguration into modern racing. But the SS never finished the race, much to the dismay of the racing community.
Chevrolet Corvette Mulsanne Showcar, 1974. Created by Bill Mitchell, the Mulsanne was a development of several previous Corvette “specials”, the 1969 Aero and the 1970 Scirocco. By 1974 it had been bored out to 454 ci and fitted with an experimental Rochester fuel injection system, it also had a periscope rearview mirror system.
Chevrolet had actually planned on making a family minded sports car at a rate of 40 per year, and to call it "Corvette America." It was designed by California Custom Coach in Pasadena. The one prototype and five production cars that were assembled were built by cutting two cars in half which, when mated together, extended the wheelbase of the vehicle by 30 inches.
This vehicle pioneered the advantages of “Active Suspension” and had GTP Corvette race car technology. Built at the Bowling Green Plant, this vehicle was developed as a prototype for a limited edition run in the 1990 model year. Chevrolet ordered it to be built with a complex, high-tech active suspension that includes an Eaton hydraulic pump and Moog actuators. This car and the technology inside of it led to the Active Handling system GM released in 1996.
In 1959, the bones of the SS were revived when Bill Mitchell secretly funded the Stingray race car. Mitchell purchased the chassis of the 1957 SS race car mule for $500 and had a design team create a new body. Mitchell felt the first generation Corvettes were too rounded and soft, so the Corvette Sting Ray Racer featured a sharper body edge that made it work.
The “CERV-1” (Chevrolet Engineering Research Vehicle) was developed as a research tool for that company’s continuous investigations into automotive ride and handling phenomena under the most realistic conditions. The car was built at the Chevrolet Engineering Center at Warren, Michigan in a special project headed by Mr. Zora Arkus-Duntov, Chevrolet Staff Engineer.
If you were a senior GM employee, one of the perks was being able to have your own custom built for you. Bill Mitchell was known for it, but this SR-2 Lookalike was built for GM president Harlow Curtis, who was president of GM during the period that the SR-2 were developed. The lookalike was built by GM’s styling staff and presented to him.
On July of 1955, the Chevrolet design studio staff created a dream car for the 1956 GM Motorama shows, called Corvette Impala. The Corvette grille and grille surround are incorporated, as well as other Corvette components. This hardtop five-passenger sports sedan shows the name "Corvette Impala" on the front emblem and rear license plate.
There were several successful attempts to build a convertible ZR-1, most of them by private people. The DR-1 was a GM prototype to test the structural integrity of the ZR-1 chassis when it would be topless. The car was built by American Sunroof Corporation (ASC) for Don Runkle, who was the vice-president of Advanced Engineering Staff, which explains the “DR-1” designation. It was a standard convertible transformed to ZR-1 specs.
The Astro II was one of the most significant case studies of Duntov’s outright refusal to let his mid-engine dreams die, and as such, ultimately entered the history books as a precursor to the eventual mid-engine, C8 Corvettes of today. The Astro II was designed in a way that was more representative of the Corvette’s typical styling cues, than that of The Astro I.
To commemorate the launch of the definitive book on "Corvette Concept Cars," we proudly present our picks of the ten greatest Corvette concepts of all time!
The GS II (Grand Sport II) was a test vehicle completed in late 1963 by Chevrolet Engineering Center (C.E.C.). The chassis was constructed of spot-welded sheet steel and was fitted with narrow tires. With only minor testing done at GM’s test facility in Michigan, the vehicle was shipped to Texas to the Chaparral Cars test facility.
Somewhere in the second part of 1959, project XP-720 begins at GM Styling, to design a production Corvette based on Bill Mitchell's Sting Ray racer. It would become known as the C2 or second generation Corvette. In October of that same year, a clay mock-up of project XP-720 is completed and put on display for General Motors' management viewing.
The Carlisle Blue Grand Sport Concept is painted in a very cool Carlisle Blue exterior with exquisite Pearl White full-length racing stripes. This color combination is highlighted with Silver-painted Torque 2 wheels. The Corvette also benefited from carbon fiber front splitter and rockers, a full-width rear spoiler, and a Grand Sport style hood blanket. For the interior, Chevrolet has opted for Ebony/Titanium leather with blue stitching, a new Bose Premium Audio with nine speakers.
In the late 80s, Chevy was developing what some dubbed a ‘Super Vette.’ But the 1989 debut of the Dodge Viper sent GM engineers on a new path to develop a ‘Viper-Killer.’ It started with a factory test mule and the experiment was to see how a ZR-1 would perform if given more power and less weight. It was so fast it was called "Snake Skinnner", for it's ability to beat the Viper and Cobra.
The Stingray that never was. The stretched version of this new Corvette model for 1963 has rear seating and was built as ordered by Chevrolet chief Ed Cole. Larry Shinoda designed this coupe, that never went into production because the demand for the two seated Stingray already was overwelming. A running prototype of a 2+2-seat C2 Corvette intended to compete with the Ford Thunderbird was built, but the project was canceled.
The CERV II was entirely Zora’s car. The CERV II was conceived early in 1962 and developed over the next year, after the GS program was squashed. The car was built under Zora's direction between 1963-'64. Zora had it in mind to develop a separate line of racing Corvettes but the idea got terminated by management.
Mid-Engine Prototypes: The 1985 Corvette Indy Concept, The 1986 Corvette Indy and the 1990 CERV III Since the introduction of...
In 1983, Bertone began to explore the possibility of approaching the US market with the Ramarro, an exercise in applied technology around mass-produced mechanics. The Ramarro, which means "green lizard" in Italian, was created on the chassis of the well-known Chevrolet Corvette, and the underlying concept aimed to modify the layout of the mechanical components.
Designed and built under the personal supervision of Bill Mitchell, the wild-looking XP-700 used many regular Corvette components (frame, chassis parts and engine). Bill Mitchell had a lot of “customs” built for himself. This XP-700 previewed the new tail of the upcoming 1961 Corvette.
The XP-755 was designed and the prototype was built in the beginning of 1961. Bill Mitchell was very excited about the double-bubble roof, the side exhausts and rear. It is equipped with a single four-barrel carburetor that produces upwards of 425 horsepower. The Corvette XP-755 Concept had a streamlined design, pointed snout and outlandishly future looking elements everywhere. The 1961 Mako Shark I (XP-755) was an early concept.