Since the mid-engined Chevrolet Corvette launched, two things about it bugged me (aright, three things, but one’s fixable with a good alignment): While the exterior styling’s still a bit bulky in my eyes, the biggest usability issue was the giant button-topped wall separating the driver and passenger. Laying out everything in a vertical line wasn’t the most logical arrangement, and the height of the fixture put some serious space between the occupants. For 2026, Chevrolet is fixing that by replacing the wall of buttons with, well, buttons.
See, this isn’t an exercise of cramming everything into a screen, but rather one in choosing button selection and locations that make more sense. With that in mind, the climate control hard keys now sit beneath the infotainment touchscreen, letting Chevrolet drop the partition between driver and passenger and replace it with a grab handle. That new grab handle also comes with a USB-C charging port for the front passenger’s cell phones and other devices, a handy touch. Unfortunately, this does mean that heated and cooled seat controls move into the touchscreen, but at least they’re always top-level tiles, and pretty big ones at that.
Speaking of moving things around, hybrid E-Ray models now get a steering wheel-mounted button to force charging, while the mode selector on all models switches from a bulky rotary knob with its own palm rest to a toggle switch near the gear selection buttons. This has freed up space for Chevrolet to move the wireless smartphone charger from the rear firewall to the center console, meaning you’ll no longer have to be a Cirque du Solieil performer to wirelessly charge your phone. At the same time, screen real estate has increased with a 12.7-inch infotainment touchscreen with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, a 14-inch digital cluster, and a new 6.6-inch screen to the left of the steering wheel for auxiliary gauges and performance pages, like g-force and lap times. Oh, and the volume knob is now backlit to make it easier to find in the dark. For context, here’s the wall of buttons in the old interior.
And here’s the new interior. While I love buttons, finding the correct ones with the old layout was challenging, and this new simplification and relocation seems like a perfectly reasonable move to make the Corvette nicer to use.
Speaking of quality-of-life improvements, the Corvette seems like a great four-season daily driver. It has a composite body and an aluminum spaceframe, and short of ground clearance limitations, it seems built to weather the up-and-down weather and occasional brightness of salt belt winters. The sort of weather where a transparent roof is nice at times, but every so often, you’d be wishing for a shade. In an effort to add a bit of flexibility, Chevrolet is offering an electrochromic hardtop for the Corvette coupe, with a variable-tint glass element for natural light, but not too much natural light.
At the same time, it wouldn’t be a new Corvette model year without a few new color and trim options, notably the gorgeous Roswell Green Metallic paint, the demure Blade Silver Metallic, body-color sills coming standard on the E-Ray, and interior choices including a grey with orange accents, a bright blue, a chocolate brown, an asymmetric red-and-black, and sueded everything.
Oh, and there’s one more new party trick worth mentioning called PTM Pro. A new mode in GM’s Performance Traction Management system, it effectively disables traction and stability control but keeps ABS and some front axle management stuff on E-Ray models for the oversteering heroes of the Vette community.
All these little changes seem to add up to a more usable, compelling Corvette that dials up the pragmatism in the pursuit of making America’s sports car more comfortable to live with. Plus, that green paint option looks pretty stellar. So, what do you think about Chevy’s interior makeover?
Top graphic credit: Chevrolet
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But what about the rear passengers, where do they charge their phone?
Yeah, that “wall” thing was so fucking stupid…when I 1st saw a pic of the interior in newer Corvettes, I couldn’t believe how awful they looked. Besides all the excessive screens in your face and the dumbass steering wheel…that “wall” is one of the most asinine things ever made
The only Corvette I ever owned was a ’69 Stingray convertible with a 427 in it, and that was back when I was barely 20 years old. I’m glad the new, mid-engine ‘Vettes exist, and they’re impressive from a performance and value POV, but every time I walk past one (almost daily, on dog walks through my neighborhood… a car guy neighbor has one as a part of his impressive collection) I can’t help but think that they look too large, heavy and over-detailed.
Age-wise I’m surely in GM’s target customer demo for a ‘Vette (almost every one I see is being driven by a middle-aged guy with a gut) but I’ll probably never own another one, given my current desires/needs.
I kind of liked the long line of buttons, felt very 80’s GM in a way.
I’m sure you’d get used to it the same way you get used to where the virtual ‘buttons’ are in a favorite piece of software’s GUI, even if they’re not logically laid out. At least they’re actual buttons, and not piano-black capacitive touch surfaces or some nonsense like that.
Looks like they’d do better by getting rid of the passenger seat altogether.
I agree. Passenger seats are entirely overrated.