mid engine corvette qtr panels leaked photo

You are totally correct. Wrong choice of words.
GM has never 'promised' a ME Corvette. They came close on several occasions, but they've never made any public announcements.
The magazines have indeed done all the hype & promising.

 

I'm just so glad so many people dislike the C8 without even seeing it yet. It just means I'll be able to get my new track car that much sooner....

 

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I owned a Dino. Actually (as I've said many times) as a car its not a very good one. Lots of flaws that people today overlook but didn't when it was against the 911.

 

well they didn't call it the Moosetang.

 

Stolen from CF (they have a lot of additional camo car shots). That's a whole lot of flat are back there. Wow. I hope they did not make the rear extra long to accommodate a rear "trunk."

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No way that is the final shape.

 

It seems to be the final shape in very light camo. It’s always looked like too much rear on it.

 

I'd be surprised if this isn't the final shape. It may look fine when the camo comes off, but that pic does not look great.

 

That is the Chevrolet version of the 'coda lunga' spec that goes back to the 512S at LeMans...

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At least there's some curves in there.

 

I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the rear is larger than otherwise necessary to accommodate golf clubs. I’ll refrain from judgement for now. I like to arrive and drive at events, so I’m not willing to chastise GM for providing ample storage until we see the final package.

 

^^^
A hallmark of the last 3 generations of Corvettes has been their utility. Certainly, GM had no desire to make an Alfa 4C or Ford GT....

 

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Yes. Stylistically they finally got it right with the C6 and C7. The proportions were off for the C5 in that it had this unnecessary boxy mass above and behind the rear wheels that should have been reduced and softened. Hopefully the haven’t compromised the naturally good proportions of mid engine configuration and made the same mistake again.

 

Too much Camaro...

 

IMO, the C6 was a better design than the C7. The C7 has too many hard creases and oddball tacked on details. The C6 will be viewed in the long run as a prettier car where the C7 is more "in your face".

To me, from what I can see, they are just echoing the C7 and the Camaro. Its a pity as I think we all expected with the birth of the brand new platform they would break the mold. Seems more like the copied the mold.

 

I actually think the C6 was the better design and will age better as well. The C7 was a very derivative design and the C6 was much more original to corvette.

 

The C5's unfortunate rear end was not the way it was originally designed. Runflat tires were always going to be part of the C5, late in the game someone at Chevrolet decided that they needed to include a spare tire well (why no one knows) which forced the designers to turn the mufflers 90 degrees (parallel to the rear fascia) and we ended up with that sad rear end.
Really too bad, the original C5 rear end was not nearly so bulbous.
The upside (I suppose) is that C5 had AMAZING storage capacity because of the empty covered well (it had small covered wells on either side and the spare tire well in the middle).

 

I think the base C7 (Stingray) is a great design. I always thought the base C6 was rather bland. That said, the wide body C6's (GS/Z06/ZR1) were much better looking than the same models in the C7 (too much cheesy added on plastic on the C7's. Especially the "spats" on the leading edge of the front fenders)
IMO

 

I don't blame the designers for a lack of being bold. I blame the pinhead marketing types.

 

Great shots here. Probably some good info too if I could understand it....

 

I remebr when the fiero came out. GM had invested a lot of money in how the frame was built, there wa ssome huge new machine to do it, PM had a whole article on it. The car as we now understand it later, to get passed the bean counters had to use crappy suspesion and motor and was sold to the corpation as an comuter car, thats the only way to get it past the beancounter corporate squids. I seriously doubt thats how any engineer at pomntiac intended it.

Later on when the car was pretty much dead GM finally relented put decent suspension in it and added some power with the v6 which was still a so so motor. As I remebr it the last two V6 cars were good handlers and well regarded. What this showed was the potential baked intot he frame and layout, and how porrly GM understood the product or clients.

Later still GM brought out the Allante which could have been a decent car for the era, except they had the Ht4100 motor, only in the last year did it get the northstar, which made it a pretty good car but by then it was dead.

Mayors point is GM goes halfway or 3/4 of the way and then cheaps out. And its not about building down to a price because we know from C6 times that 2k more in the interior would have made a far better car. If you cost cut enough the thing never realizes its potential. Will Gm do the rigth thing with the C8 or whill they have forced too many compromises. My bet is the first versions wont be that great. But hey maybe with time the underlaying mid engined platform can be developed furtehr and styling honed onto something killer. Look how the C5 evolved into the C6 and C7. Of course if the underlaying platform is too heavy or too big it will always be too compromised. If the undelayign premise is weigth does nto matter because w ecan add an 800HP TTv* and then hybridise to 1000Hp, Ill say it may put out some numbers but it will never be great.

Still the vette folks know what makes a good car and a greta car, so the only question is did GM make them unredeemably compromise it.

 

So you agree that GM has a tendancy to force poor compromises on otherwise promising cars, which then may take further iterations to become good..

 

Where is the incentive to 'trade up' if they don't add horsepower later on? Not to mention some paint and body goodies to>

 

Absolutely...but all these examples are what I would call "Old" GM. I think the current GM is on the right track, keeping in mind that some of "Old" GM creeps in every now and then. That said, I think GM is building the best cars in their history right now. Can they do better? Absolutely, but that can be said for EVERY car company out there.