DEQ Studio Carguments: The Corvette
DEQ Carguments: The Corvette
Design EyeQ Studio spotlights the Chevy Corvette, the longtime rival of the Porsche 911, and makes the case for why it should be considered one the world’s greatest sports cars.
We’re not done with cars yet, folks. In our last cargument, we argued in favor of the Porsche 911: a timeless and tasteful sports car with a design that simply cannot be improved upon.Today, we make the case for the Chevrolet Corvette: an all-American trendsetter and a favorite among astronauts.
The 911 and the Corvette have been rivals ever since the cars were first manufactured back in the early 50s. Though they have little in common, both cars inspire fierce loyalty among fans. Whereas the 911 represents all things sophisticated, the Corvette is a working class sports car. Corvette people know you don’t have to be fancy to be kickass -- especially when you rep the greatest engine ever made.
America’s first sports car
Harley Earl, the father of modern automotive design, noticed that endurance sports cars like Ferrari and Porsche were becoming increasingly popular. American auto companies were producing a lot of cars, but nothing existed that could compete with European racers. He and his design team worked under the radar to produce a concept car (which wasn’t really a thing at the time) that people went absolutely crazy for. That car was the C1 Corvette, named after the fastest naval ship class. It was built using fiberglass (another first), a cheaper alternative to steel and aluminum, and sported a “blue flame” engine, which could allegedly go faster than a yellow flame engine…except that it didn’t.
Some people, including our studio’s lead designer Ray Mattison, would argue that the C1 is not technically a Corvette. Why? It didn’t use a small block engine. And for Corvette fans like Ray, it’s the small block engine that matters most.
Why is the Corvette’s small block engine such a big deal?
When GM introduced the small block engine in the 1955 C1, the Corvette became a real sports car.
The engine featured none of the technology we have today -- turbos, superchargers, and the like -- but the power that this compact engine produced made the Corvette a force to be reckoned with on the race track. For the first time in history, an American sports car could compete with its European counterparts.
Chevy small block V8 engine, or SBCs, are still a big deal. They are the most popular engine for swaps, because they’re compact and powerful as hell. The most bespoke cars on earth often come with SBCs. That’s a pretty impressive legacy.
Chasing that mid-engine dream
Speaking of legacies: Zora Arkus-Duntov, the engineer commonly referred to as “the father of the Corvette,” never gave up hope that the car would someday have a mid-engine.
Laws of inertia dictate that a vehicle with a front engine will have a high center of gravity, making it more difficult to steer at high speeds. Cars with rear engines (like the 911, for example) are almost too easy to steer -- some would call them squirrelly, others may call them death traps. The ideal engine placement for a high-speed vehicle is in the middle of the car, where the weight is evenly distributed. Zora designed many iterations of a mid-engine Corvette, but they were always set aside in favor of other designs.
In 1963, the Corvette Sting Ray concept car, or C2, was released. This iteration of the Corvette is most notable for the original split window design, which is now the rarest and most sought-after Corvette. People were taking hacksaws to their back windows and replacing the split windows with a single pane of glass -- it was an automotive tragedy, considering how freaking cool that detail was.
The C2 was also the first Corvette driven by American astronauts. The story goes that Chevy wanted to give each NASA astronaut a Corvette, but because they were technically government employees, they couldn’t receive free stuff from companies. So Chevy sold them each a Corvette for the whopping sum of one dollar. Since then, astronauts and Corvettes have been a thing.
The longest running and best-selling Corvette design was the Mako Shark, or C3. Unfortunately for Zora, this was also a front-engine design. In 1983, the C3 was released with a 7-liter engine and boasted 460HP (which was a ton back then).
The “dream of the 80s” Corvette, the C4, was released in 1984. The coolest thing by far about this iteration was the digital dashboard. This was also when Barbie first decided to buy a Corvette. It's the only car she’s driven since then.
The CERV III, a Corvette prototype developed in 1990, was the closest Zora came to fulfilling his dream. Sadly, this mid-engine, 750HP dream car would have simply been too expensive to release at the time. When the C5 was released in 1997, a year after Zora passed away, it had a bangin’ engine that could keep up with European race cars and help land space planes…but it was still a front engine.
Corvette continued to improve on the Corvettes engine with the C6 and C7 iterations. These cars unfortunately lost their pop-up headlights, but gained a whole lot of power. The Corvette became a world-class racecar with in 2014, with an incredible 750HP engine.
And then -- drumroll -- the Corvette C8 was released in 2019. And guess what? Zora could finally rest in peace. The mid-engine dream was fulfilled, and Corvette fans everywhere got an earful with the new Z06 flat-plane crank.
What’s next, Corvette?
The 2023 C8 Z06 is here, and it’s stealing the spotlight.
This car is beating Ferrari and Lamborghini at their own game, and only costs a fraction of the price. Ray thinks that Corvette would serve itself best if it became its own company, like Cadillac, and embraced its identity as America’s supercar. With a legacy all its own, the Vette has a lot of brand power to draw from. We can’t wait to see what happens next.
What do you think of the Corvette?
Let us know on LinkedIn, Facebook, or you can always contact our studio directly. You can also read more of our blog and check out our design process.