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

I’m obviously getting old. Recently I heard that a spouse of a client is a police detective. I immediately pictured a guy with a mustache, the mismatched shirt under loosed tie, and a worn leather pistol holder strapped over his shoulder, leaning against a beat-to-shit grey/brown “unmarked” 1986 Dodge Diplomat on steelies with dog dish hubcaps. I’m told that this is not what he looks like. At all.

It gets worse. When my thirteen-year-old mentions “settling differences” at school, naturally I imagine these kids in FILA sweats putting a ripped-open cardboard box on the sidewalk, popping a cassette of Herbie Hancock’s Rockit into the boom box and having a no-holds-barred breaking throw down. Actually, this never happened to me, but I like to think it did.

It’s tough being stuck in the past. Kids will read of a new Ferrari SUV or a Maserati crossover and not blink an eye; it’s just normal to them. On the other hand, despite the first Porsche Cayenne debuting two decades ago part of me still cringes when I hear about yet another exotic car maker premiering a new all-wheel drive sport utility.

We’re now told that Chevrolet is looking to turn the Corvette into a brand, a different nameplate complete with bodystyles like a sedan and, yes, even a dreaded sport utility. Can they really do that to a red, white, and blue treasure like this? This seems totally unnatural; like putting John Wayne in a needlepoint class. Still, if this sort of move had happened three decades ago when I was a young, impressionable youth, would I be more open to the idea?

I’ve already jokingly looked at what a Corvette sedan, wagon, and even pickup might have been like had GM chosen to create a new brand back in 1978:

We’ve gone this far, so why not go ahead and explore what a ‘Vette overlander could have looked like a decade or so later in 1990?

With Cocaine There Had To Be Hyper SUVs

Actually, it would be wrong to say that, as a GenXer, I had never heard of a high-performance sport utility back in the eighties. There were a couple of great examples that were not exactly travesties during that decade, the most notable being the bonkers Lamborghini LM002. To my thirteen-year-old today, a “Lamborghini SUV” is something that shares a platform with a VW Touareg or a Cayenne. The LM002 was anything but that.

Initially developed as a concept military vehicle, Lamborghini seemed to refocus the market to those in the oil exploration industry. The first example had a mid-mounted Chrysler engine and later an AMC V8 in what was dubbed the “LM001.” Poor handling characteristics for an off-road vehicle pushed Lamborghini to move the motor to the front. With the powerplant now a Countach V12 and five speed manual, it was rather obvious to Lamborghini that this expensive machine would be best suited not as an industrial machine but instead as personal transportation for well-heeled buyers in the Middle East or even America. What was now dubbed the LM002 debuted in 1986.

Lamborghini kept the tough, boxy, military-machine non-styling, but the four-door cabin featured air conditioning, stereo, and four leather-covered bucket seats. Four more passengers (or armed security personnel) could sit in the short pickup bed.

Lamborghini claimed it had orders for over 800 of them, but the complex assembly process and poor profit margin caused the brand to cease production in 1991 after only 301 examples were built.

If you think the LM002 was a bit off the rails, you ain’t seen nothing yet compared to a creation by a large Canadian car parts manufacturer from 1989 called the Magna-Vehmo Torrero. Rather than go all Rambo-style with their hyper-off-roader, the Torrero blended futuristic supercar with overlanding capabilities in a never-before seen package.

Powered by a 532 horsepower 8.1 liter V8, the Torrero could go from 0 to 60 in around seven seconds, despite the 4800 pound weight. Inside, the luxury interior featured high-tech goodies for the time like an early navigation system, a color TV and a fax machine.

The general stance and proportions are really rather pleasing, but the detailing? Well, if you want dramatic you sure as hell got it, yet for many it’s what we might call A Bit Much. What looks like a blown-up nose from a Dodge Viper complete with snake-like fangs caps off the front. The deeply tinted greenhouse appears to melt down onto the bodywork below with black painted sections that accentuate the giant fenders (maybe too much so).

A deep cut in the beltline behind the “B” pillar continues around the back of the car; it looks good in side view but from the rear it kind of makes the upper section of car appear to be an ill-fitting pickup truck cargo cap. Overall, though, it’s a very impressive piece that look like a Big 3 creation and not something from an Ontaria-based outside supplier (though Magna is, in fact, the largest manufacturer of auto components in all of North American).

As unfathomable as it seemed at the time, the Magna unwittingly created the template for the 500 horsepower, two-and-a-half-ton road-focused sport utility. Nobody other than Isuzu seems to have taken them up on the styling (the infamous VehiCross) but basic specs are echoed in virtually every super-powered exotic SUV today.

So hyper-SUVs are something that really did exist before 1990. Still, Lamborghini made nothing but outrageous machines, so the LM002 wasn’t that big a surprise; there’s no preconceived notions of what a supplier like Magna could have made (though I suppose Magna Steyr has built G-Wagons and other off-roaders — still, Magna isn’t pigeonholed, as it builds all sorts of cars). Wouldn’t it be heresy to apply a nameplate like Corvette- an American tradition as stalwart as baseball, hotdogs and apple pie- to something so different? Yes, it would, especially in the pre-Ferrari Purosangue world of thirty-five years ago.

It’s a terrible idea, and of course we’re doing it anyway.

Put A Little K5 In A C4?

If it’s 1990, the concurrent Corvette was the C4:

The later C4 was much improved over the earlier models with their “Cease Fire” injection, the dopey “4+3” manual transmission, and zer0-travel Z51 suspension. By 1990 the suspension was far better tuned, and the one-piece hood covered a multi-port injected V8 packing 250 horsepower hooked up to a six-speed stick (or 375HP in the vaunted ZR-1 model). The backbone-style chassis of this generation of ‘Vette might actually work as a basis for the design of an off-roader, albeit with driven front wheels as an option as well:

Really? Sure. In fact, a company called Exomotiv makes what looks like a fun off road sports car kit that uses the very similar looking chassis components from a Mazda Miata [Ed Note: This type of car that basically involves you taking suspesion and powertrain parts of your car and bolting them to a new tube-frame chassis is known as an “Exocet.” -DT]. 

This type of approach could work for mechanicals, but what about the exterior design?

After thirty five years, that Magna Torrero doesn’t seem as mind bending as it did back then. In many ways, it was truly pioneering a class of sports off roader. It might be a great inspiration for our 1990 Corvette crossover, which we’ll give the codename VetteTrek. Naturally, I’d want to tone the insane Torrero’s looks down a bit, and the then-current C4 ‘Vette could have offered the brand language to do it.

It might have been seven years old at the time, but the C4 was still a very clean and contemporary design. Oddly enough, this design is dubbed today as the “ugliest Corvette” by some armchair critics that don’t seem to know what they’re talking about on forums and blogs such as the excerpt below:

If you’re silly enough to agree with this dreck, I urge you to read Adrian’s recent piece on why this opinion has zero basis in fact (and I don’t remember Car and Driver ever saying those things at the time). I can’t understate the impact that this groundbreaking car had on a pre-driving-age person like me when I saw it doing laser slalom during a Hardcastle & McCormick commercial break. Watch this cheesefest and tell me you don’t want one right now:

Seemingly no bumpers? No hood or trunk shut lines? Salad shooter wheels? Applying such clean detailing to the Torrero could have given us a forward-thinking but still approachable product:

Notice that the overall shape is a bit more organic than the C4, more in tune with the sensibilities of the early nineties but still with enough tension to avoid the “sogginess” that some of us have rightfully complained about in the later C5 ‘Vette. All the C4 Corvette cues are there: the nose, the rub strip surrounding the car to hide the seams, and even a tinted glass targa top. In back, the four-shot taillights are sunken into the tailgate (with some tricky shit to get the shut lines to work).

Below, the rear bumper seems to mirror the front of the car, with the license plate flanked by backup lights and red bulbs that act as supplemental taillights if the tailgate is open.

The Future Was Now

The C4[‘s initial dashboard was ultra-blocky and resembled the set of Alien or other sci-fi flick, complete with digital mayhem (and the typical-for-the-time box for a passenger airbag that never came):

The dash was totally redone on the C4 for the 1990 model year, with a more rounded shape replacing the angular original:

This new design language is echoed in the VetteTrek dashboard, but the arc-shaped gauge pod is now a tilt-adjustable separate pod as on a Porsche 928. The arc-top is echoed in the pod atop the center control stack. In front of this smaller digital display is what looks to be a VetteTrek “voodoo doll”; a small 1:50 or so scale shape of the car.

Lift up on the shape and the VetteTrek’s air shocks lift the super-ute, while pressing on roof of the little car makes the real car drop. In front of the scale car, a fluorescent display can at act as an inclinometer during off-road use or as a cornering G-meter on the road. Want to see the inclinometer for front/back angle or acceleration/deceleration Gs? Turn the VetteTrek voodoo doll ninety degrees.

I insist on the VetteTrek being a two door, and somehow I feel that it has to be a two-seater as well, but the market will tell me otherwise. My compromise relies on an idea I used from my Scout redesign a few years back where storage bins behind the front seats can either be lockable bins for cargo or optionally create “+2” seats when raised. The seat backs telescope up, and there’s even headrests in the side pockets that you can add, which then creates armrests for the back seat passengers.

There’s a lot of space back there between the front seats and the tailgate so as a practical proposition the VetteTrek will have the same values that for better or worse are making these sports-car-branded hyper-utes so popular now.

The Temple Of Zora?

If you’re going to make a new upscale brand, you simply have to create the right environment to present it in. Toyota knew that they could never sell a $40,000 LS400 in the same showroom as a new $8,000 Tercel; the marble-floored Lexus showrooms made the brand a legitimate rival to the high-end German cars. In the same way, we could never expect a whole range of Corvette models (with Cadillac-level prices) to coexist with Geo Metros.

Still, Chevrolet dealers likely won’t want to buy acres of additional real estate to sell ‘Vettes they’ve already been selling no matter what GM tells them what to do, so the best solution might be to develop a small footprint Corvette-only showroom that could be built in reclaimed parking lot space at the Chevy dealer. I’m sure you’ve had enough of this post (as have I), but if I don’t design the 1990 Corvette Brand Showroom someone else will and screw it up more than I.

As an inspiration, I looked at the Corvette Nation Museum that opened in 1993, particular the “Skydome” display area (which famously suffered from a sinkhole collapse in 2014 that swallowed cars like the bashed-up 1962 in the pic below). It even has a big red spire in the center that we’re told resembles a speedometer from above (but more likely a sundial).

A structure for the Corvette brand showroom with exposed steel beams forms a structure similar to the way the Skydome is built, but with more glass that allows easy viewing of the cars from outside. The C4’s aluminum frame sets a minimalist design goal for the overall form. 

The showroom could hold four cars; I’m thinking two “normal” ‘Vettes in the center (say, a convertible and ZR1) flanked by a VetteTrek and maybe a sedan (if that’s what is offered). Sales desks, a manager’s office and bathrooms also have space in the Corvette dealership; I didn’t put in a service department since I figured the cars could simply be driven over to be serviced at bays in the existing Chevy dealership (which will be obviously be located just a few hundred feet away at most).

You could certainly add service bays if you wanted to, and also could install a Land Rover-style test ramp at the back for the VetteTrek. The spire on the Corvette Museum is also used, even illuminated and night and visible from far off like a church spire. Overall, it really does look a bit like a mid-century Lutheran church, but if there’s any American car with a religious following befitting a house of worship it has to be the Corvette, right?

There’s Even Lotus Crossovers Now, So…

To me, the 1990 VetteTrek is just more proof that some nameplates on SUVs still feel wrong. The appeal of this type of machine is undeniable though, proven by the fact that one of these sports-car-branded utes sadly sits in my garage right now (a Costco greenhouse came home in it a few weeks back, though I would argue that it could have strapped onto the roof of a 911 with lots of bungees).

Regardless of my old school stuck-in-the-mud beliefs, and how weird the finished result looks, I don’t doubt that a 1990 VetteTrek would have sold, and in some ways it’s almost impossible to believe that today General Motors is the virtually the last of the sports cars that still hasn’t gone the crossover route yet. I applaud them for holding out and understand that time and trends move on. We all need to embrace change.

At least my kid agrees that breaking is not supposed to be an Olympic sport organized by those who’ve probably never, even ridden the Six to the Bronx. There’s hope for him.

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

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

This Is What A Lotus 4-Door Sedan From 1987 Could Have Looked Like – The Autopian

The C4 Was A Seminal Moment In Corvette History – The Autopian

A Trained Designer Imagines What The International Scout Could Have Become – The Autopian