Zora Was Right

CHEVY ROLLS OUT A MID-ENGINE MASTERPIECE ON ITS FIRST ATTEMPT

- Jonny Lieberman

Sometimes, a car comes along that leaves the automotive landscape different than before. In Silicon Valley parlance, we’d be tempted to term such a car a “disrupter.” The last car to so shift the world was the Tesla Model S, our 2013 Car of the Year.

This time around, our 2020 Car of the Year, the Chevrolet Corvette, fully scrambles the order of things. Never before has so much four-wheeled exoticism been attainable for so little money. Or so much good exoticism.

Chevrolet Performance did not phone in the first-ever production mid-engine Corvette. It dialed it, massaged it, honed it, crafted the new ’Vette to the point of the nearly impossible. The eighth-generation car will bring people into dealerships who previously would never have come in. The mid-engine Corvette is a game-changer, an inflection point, and a reminder that when Americans truly set our minds to a task, lookout. For soon you’ll be standing on the moon—or driving the sports car equivalent thereof.

The father of the Chevrolet Corvette, Zora Arkus-Duntov, began working on a mid-engine Corvette back in 1959. Called the 1960 CERV-I (for Chevrolet Engineering Research Vehicle), the single-seater located its 283-cubic-inch pushrod V-8 small-block just aft of the driver’s head. Subsequent CERV concepts only stoked the belief among MotorTrend editors that such a vehicle was not only possible but also likely.

Fast-forward to September 2019, and we finally get our greedy, grubby hands on the 10th-ever production mid-engine Corvette, an early-build, production-intent model with a VIN that ends in 000010. From our weeks of testing the Corvette against a field of formidable competitors, we can say Zora was onto something six decades ago.