The Aussie origins of the Corvette C8

THE CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8 has been busy setting fire to the internet over the past few days, but it’s worth acknowledging the role Australia played in this vehicle’s development. Or, more to the point, a Holden VE ute.

Back in January 2015, Car and Driver snapped a picture of a very unusual looking ute. In fact, the car was an amalgam of bits of a Commodore SS-V with the cabin module, roof and door mirrors of a Corvette C7, finished with the some strangely distended Holden ute rear architecture.

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Upon closer inspection, it was apparent that it featured a fuel-filler located on the driver’s-side B-pillar and had cooling intakes located along the rocker panels. Car and Driver estimated the wheelbase to be 99 inches, or some eight inches longer than the C7 Vette, so it was obviously a vehicle of radically different basic proportioning.

The flared wheelarches housed a broader track, and it was clear that behind the passenger cell was a disguised engine under a flat deck. Car and Driver had rightly identified many aspects of what would become the Chevrolet Corvette C8, but it was way off in terms of planning horizons, their 2015 feature predicted a 2017 on-sale date.

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Fast forward to 2017 and our very own Toby Hagon penned a ‘what we know so far’ piece on the C8 that featured a computer-generated image of the design direction of the future supercar based on information we’d gleaned from GM insiders. Given what’s been unveiled this week, we don’t think we were too far off the mark with that one.

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We’re still waiting to hear exactly when we can get our hands on the Corvette C8. But in the meantime, we’ll happily doff our caps to the people at Holden who contributed to its creation.

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