The C8 Corvette Thread

[Steve85]

I went to Corvettes at Carlisle and they had 5 C8's there - a cutaway version, zeus brown, white (with ron fellows stickers), a red in the display booth and then a red Z51 "driver" that was not on official display.

Some random thoughts on the cutaway:

Great looking headers that just happen to come up into some open space with almost identical routing to the twin turbo 488.




Open space conveniently directly inline with the front hubs. As if planning some sort of future direct drive unit for the front wheels. (the shock/spring do seem like they would be in the way, but the knuckle had a pretty suspicious looking opening with a block off plate.




Lots of aluminum (as seen above), probably the biggest difference between this and the same car in CF being 2x the $$ easily.




In order to give a low door sill entry, the center tunnel is massive and probably impacts that interior design. Not sure why the interior people were happy about no manual, that center spine is far more intrusive to the design. For example, in a Ferrari without that spine, you definitely get a more open and simplified space. Years of being told the interiors were too basic have lead to a shift to the other end of the scale and I'm not a huge fan.




At the entrance to the display booth they had white one:







Not sure I'm sold on the Zeus Brown, it does have a ton of flake in it though.



I didn't go in the display booth because they weren't letting people sit in the car so while it was open (doors, hood, engine cover) I didn't care enough to wait in line. While I was checking out the cutaway version a red Z51 drove by, stopped to talk to one of the display reps and then drove off. Funny timing with the rev, that was actually a C7 in the tent to the left of the C8.



I knew they weren't going to pack the thing up so I hunted it down hoping to be able to check it out for more than 4 seconds without running into someone. Found it behind a shed right at the fairgrounds entrance. Some of these already posted to the FB but here they are. I took a bunch of pics in poor lighting (not that it matters, I only had my phone because I didn't think I'd get a chance to use a real camera) then hunted down some parts in the swap meet. I came back like 90 minutes later expecting it to be swamped with people now and still only a couple people. It was a great opportunity to really check it out!









It's a shame about the rear bumper design because the way the cockpit flows back to it looks really good. Has an early C3 vibe.



A quick walk around.



It appears to be a big hit with the older folks too based on the conversations I overheard.

I'm a big fan, things I like, things I don't, and things I love about it. Seeing it among so many C7s, there was clearly direction to continue some of the C7 styling cues. It's not as flowy as a Ferrari and doesn't do the hard angle thing as cleanly as the Lambo, but it's a hell of a start.