Let’s Summon The Spirit Of The Legendary Aerovette Concept To Make A Cleaner Corvette C8

The future, for the most part, always kind of sucks.

All of those jetpacks and two helicopters in each garage which were promised in the pages of 1960s-era Popular Mechanics never happened. Wrist radios and TVs? We got them, and they turned out to be just digital leashes so you can read your wife’s text of WHERE R U without reaching for your phone.

Another thing that glossy images inside of car magazines showed us was a Chevy Corvette with a mid-mounted engine like some Italian sportscar. This marvel that first appeared in 1973 was eventually called the Aerovette; truly a sight to behold and something that would have upstaged and outclassed production Ferraris and Lamborghinis of the time. Wrapped in a clean and understated skin, you could be forgiven for thinking that the car below was from Modena or Turin (and save your breath, since I already know that fountain is actually less than a mile from Woodward Avenue at Cranbrook).

Nearly fifty years later, Chevrolet finally gave us that mid-engined Corvette: the C8. In terms of technology, this Stingray is indeed a close match for some of the world’s greatest sports cars. In terms of styling, well…

Look, I know that the C8 has its admirers, and that’s great. For me, though, the latest Corvette was a bit of a disappointment. Actually, it was a major disappointment. Where’s my fucking Aerovette? Or, at the very least, something that looks a bit like it?

Hell, I’d settle for something that actually resembled a car that should have the Corvette badge and the lineage that goes with it (or at least a classic GM product of some kind). Apparently, I need to use my meager skills to do a crappy job of this myself.

Baby, You’re Much Too Fast

Everything is subjective, but to me the era of the mid-sixties though the early seventies had to be the high point of General Motors design. Even their most run-of-the-mill cars like the fastback 1968 Chevelle or the first Vega were aesthetically so much better than anything that had come before or since. The end of this era-largely under the influence of styling guru Bill Mitchell- saw two absolute masterpieces from these studios.

One was a production vehicle: the 1973 GMC Motorhome, a ground-breaking camper with a design which Adrian just wrote about that has yet to be topped by any company half a century later. The other spectacular creation was supposed to be a production car: the mid-engined Corvette “Aerovette”.

Starting life as what was called the XP-882 in 1969, the project was cancelled but quickly reignited when GM found out about Ford’s plans to import the Detomaso Pantera. At the time, General Motors was developing a two-rotor Wankel rotary engine that was supposed to go into the Vega (yes, The General was considering a motor for the Vega that likely would have been even more unreliable than the one they ended up putting in it). The XP-882 was to have received two of these engines bolted together to create a four-rotor 450 horsepower monster mounted in the middle of the car. The engine naturally bit the dust when that rotary program collapsed in the gas crisis, so a 400 cubic inch V8 was put in its place and the car dubbed the “Aerovette”

Forget guys with New Balance shoes, white socks and tucked-in shirts at the local burger joint parking lot: this was a Corvette that looked more at home on the lawn of an Italian car show with designers in black turtlenecks looking at it and scratching their chins.

Reportedly the work of Jerry Palmer, the styling is so balanced front and rear that it’s hard to tell where the engine actually is. What is not hard to tell is that it’s every inch a Corvette. From virtually any angle, all of the hallmarks that would make up the Stingray aesthetic before and after were present in the design from the “Mako Shark” nose to even the large vent just above the rocker panel (but, in the Aerovette’s case, it’s at the back instead of on the front fender as with all other production ‘Vettes). It’s magnificent.

Production was supposedly approved to start around 1980. However, the main champions of the mid-engined Aerovette such as Bill Mitchell and Ed Cole retired, and the new regime thought that a mid-engined car would lack the market appeal of a front-engined product similar to traditional Corvettes and the Datsun Z Series that was selling like hotcakes at the time. The Aerovette died entirely, the bright spot being that Jerry Palmer captured much of the clean, crisp aesthetic with the awesome traditional-layout C4 ‘Vette that was released instead (and you can read more about here).

We didn’t know it at the time, but we hadn’t seen the last of the mid-engined Corvette. Still, would the real mid-motor Vette live up to what we hoped it would be?

Got It Goin’ Like A Turbo ‘Vette

Over most of its seventy-year life, America’s most enduring two-seat sports car has been able to maintain an unmistakable identity. Looking at the evolution of the front-engined car in this quick video below, it’s especially visible in the three decades smack dead center of the timeline.

From the refreshed 1978 third-generation (C3) to the second-to-last of the front-engined cars (the 2013 C6) the basic shape was remarkably unchanged from the same basic formula:  long, tapering nose with a glass rear hatch over a kamm-like tail featuring four-shot taillights.

Up through the C6, Corvettes in general (barring the hyper-performance versions) were clean, pure shape with limited adornments in a manner similar to most Porsches.

Starting with the last front-engined ‘Vette (the 2014 C7), things started to change. The bubble window in back was gone, and virtually every fender now had some kind of scoop or vent or design detail that added visual complexity but not necessarily sophistication. As a person at my office said quite eloquently: “why don’t they just stop sticking shit on that that thing?” The one below is about as clean as you could equip it:

This person at work would be no happier when the mid-engined C8 appeared for 2020.

At best, you might say that it vaguely resembles a giant Lotus Elise. There’s nothing wrong with the Elise, but the C8 has even fussier detailing and, more importantly, it’s doesn’t say Corvette.

At worst, some have described it as looking like the front of a C7 Corvette being consumed from the back by a shark; the whole rear section appears to be sort of grafted on. Indeed, from a few angles the front and rear don’t seem to be from the same car. Overall, I hate to say it but it’s a car I’d buy in spite of its looks, though I probably wouldn’t buy it at all.

There’s no reason we couldn’t at least try to summon a bit of the Aerovette and give us the mid-engined ‘Vette that we dreamed of fifty years ago.

Hedge Your Bet On A Clean Corvette

Starting with a new C8, the first thing to do is strip off much of the trim that offends me and make the front and back of the car a more unified whole, like on the Aerovette. The tapering tail of the old ‘Vette concept looked cool but from a practical standpoint of cargo (and likely aerodynamics) we’ll need to do more of a wedge. The pointed nose recalls the Aerovette and C3, while the large glass rear window improves rear visibility and interior lights beside continuing a Corvette design touchstone. There’s still an intake vent on the rocker panel but it’s a far less pronounced thing than on the current C8.

The animation below makes it hard to believe that it’s the same front greenhouse, doors, wheelbase and even rims as the standard C8. Honestly, I spent most of my time photoshopping out surface detailing. Yes, the nose might ultimately need to be a bit taller to meet pedestrian standards, but if you put your cursor on the fender lines you’ll see that I haven’t dropped it nearly as much as you’d think:

Overall, it’s a far cleaner-looking thing that would hopefully do a better job of holding its own at among snotty jerks at a country club parking lot. You’ll see that the length of the nose has been extended slightly. A headlamp-free nose is very much a Corvette thing, plus it makes that front end appear to be lower. Actually, combined with the shape of the backlight it also bears a bit of a similarity to a fourth-generation Firebird like our boi S.W. Gossin owns and loves.

This “Aero8” will have pop-up units with a twist. As the panels raise, they reveal bullet-shaped lights with voids between them to let air through, creating retractable lights with far less of the horrific frontal area assault that most of these things do when raised. The animation below shows it:

The rear fascia is a bit of a mix of the last few Corvette generations, but adding more body-colored material was key to keeping a legacy look without going straight-up four round lights. You can see the cut lines for a raise-up spoiler behind that backlight.

It’s a rather dramatic change as you can see below in an animation:

Here’s an animation below of that spoiler electrically rising on a German market car with amber signals and rear fog lights integrated into the lamp clusters:

I’d expect that ZR1 and other higher-performance models might get a larger, permanent wing which might not even look that bad. That giant rear window really makes this thing appear not only Corvette-like but with the new proportions it seems to almost be an updated Acura NSX (the first generation NSX, not the poorly selling revival).

Inside, it’s amazing how the Aerovette concept’s cockpit-style dashboard seems to have inspired the C8 fifty years later; they’re extremely similar. Both feature digital displays in front of the driver and a central “band” covered in switches that rises up at an angle towards the dash top and separates the driver and passenger (and note that both the Aerovette and C8 are two-pedal cars).

Thankfully, at least the interior of the C8 is keeping the Aerovette dream alive.

My Fuel Injected Stingray’s Really Startin’ To Go

Naturally, a person that’s driven black or grey sedans and station wagons for the last twenty-five years like me is going to draw up a conservative-looking car, which many won’t like. “I think it’s too clean and kind of boring” you say? I bet that a number of people will agree with that. Thankfully, we can always add more detailing and I’m sure that plenty of spoilers, flares, vents, rear-snow-plow-like diffusers, taillight louvers and even “split rear window” trim kits will be available from the aftermarket to let you customize it to your heart’s desire. As with Corvettes from the very beginning, if you want to make this Aerovette-inspired Stingray into a paragon of bad taste there will absolutely be people out there glad to help you with that.

“Young people don’t care about Corvettes, and definitely not Corvette history” are the next words out of your mouth. That might be true, but the aesthetic values that worked so well on the ‘Vette for buyers of generation after generation from pre-Boomers all the way up through older Millennials should resonate with buyers today that decades later are still cross-shopping 911s (another car that, despite being enormous now, has stayed very true to its visual roots to great success for over half a century).

Please, Chevy, leave the scoops and swoops and slots to nameplates that haven’t been around for over seventy years and can’t do 200MPH. The Corvette has absolutely nothing to prove. We might not have Jetsons-like robots to do our housework, but we’d at least like to have a mid-engined ‘Vette that looks closer to what our school-age imaginations thought we’d be getting.

The 233-MPH 2025 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 Is Officially A Hypercar – The Autopian

Our Daydreaming Designer Imagines How 1980s American Muscle Could Have Revived The Lost British Brand ‘Gordon Keeble’ – The Autopian

What It Could Have Looked Like If Chevrolet Had Spun Off ‘Corvette’ As Its Own Brand And Sold A C4 Corvette SUV – The Autopian

Our Daydreaming Designer Imagines Corvette Sedan And Wagon In 1978 – The Autopian