How Chevy Created the 2020 Mid-Engine Corvette

Engine: 6.2-liter V8, 495 hp and 470 lb-ft of torque (with performance exhaust) / Transmission: Eight-speed dual-clutch / 0-60: less than 3 seconds, with launch control /Wheelbase: 107.2 inches / Dry Weight: 3,366 pounds / Tires (Z51 package): Michelin Pilot Sport 4S, 245/35/ZR19 front, 305/30/ZR20 rear / Cargo volume: 12.6 cubic feet / Brakes (Z51): 13.3-inch front, 13.8-inch rear, Brembo monobloc calipers / Base Price: Less than $60,000. But probably not much less.

About four and a half years ago, I drove the then-new Corvette Z06 at a track in Nevada. With 650 horsepower, the Z06’s rear tires struggled to cope with a firestorm of torque dispatched by the massive V8 sitting out ahead of the cockpit. For all its superlative capabilities, the Z06 needed more traction, more weight on the rear end. I told Tadge Juechter, Corvette executive chief engineer, “I think to do any better than this, you need to go mid-engine.”

He assumed a look of weary annoyance and replied, “Yeah, that’s what everyone keeps telling me.” Which, you’ll note, was not a denial.

Juechter had a good poker face, because back in Michigan, he and a team of engineers had been working on such a car since 2013. Disguised to look like a mutant Australian pickup truck, it was code-named Blackjack. Under its Holden bodywork, Blackjack was teaching GM how to build a whole new kind of Corvette.

With the mid-engine Corvette finally upon us, I kept thinking about that first rough-hewn test car, which was caught by a spy photographer soon after I drove the Z06. What happened since then? And how did we get from that freaky one-off development car to a production Corvette?

I asked GM whether they still had Blackjack and any other vehicles from the development pipeline—physical snapshots of where they were years ago, cars that show what kind of obstacles they overcame on the way to the polished end product. In the case of a normal mass-market car, GM probably wouldn’t have retained a fossil record of its development. But the mid-engine design is the biggest deal since the Corvette got a V8 in 1955, so GM had the foresight to keep some development cars around. They agreed to convene four of those cars and four key engineers in one room so we could retrace the path that led to the 2020 C8 Corvette.

Blackjack is the oddball. Three of the Corvettes in the garage at GM’s Milford Proving Grounds look reasonably Corvette-like, inasmuch as I can judge their appearance through various degrees of camouflage. But Blackjack wears a pugnacious Holden front end grafted to a C7 cabin that leads to the suggestion of a pickup bed. The bizarre aesthetic points to the first challenge for the team, which was keeping the damn thing a secret.

“Before, we could disguise development work by tweaking a current car,” says Juechter. “You can’t do that with mid-engine proportions, so we decided to make it look like a ute.”

Secrecy was paramount. At GM’s Advanced Vehicle Integration facility in Warren, Michigan, the company built a special room for the C8 with restricted swipe-card access. “If you talk to people at GM, their memory of this car is that it’s the car nobody would let them see,” says Alex MacDonald, Corvette vehicle performance manager. The team used spotters to watch for helicopters, speeding back to a secret garage called The Lair when there was a threat of aerial photography.

At this stage, all that mattered was the basic structure and suspension geometry, the foundation of the car.

“If you look at the wing,” says Juechter, “it’s on upside down. That’s because aerodynamics come into play on suspension development at relatively low speeds, and this front end had a ton of lift. So to get the pitch right, we inverted the wing to add lift to the rear.”

Blackjack’s interior is racecar-crude, its transmission an adapted PDK from a Porsche. But the foundation—structure and suspension—was crucial, determining everything that happened next.

“We knew we only had one chance to get this right,” says Juechter. “Computer models get us in the ballpark, but we have to build hardware so we can learn.”

Among the things they learned is that no supplier on the planet had the high-pressure die capacity to handle the big pieces of the C8’s front and rear structure. For Blackjack, they milled those parts from solid aluminum—7,000 pounds of metal to produce 400 pounds of components. You can do that when you’re buildingone car. But you also need to consider how you’re going to build thousands of cars.

So, the team worked out plans to make their structural dreams feasible by producing those parts in-house. In the meantime, they had to keep testing. The car next to Blackjack is a mule from 2016. This one has the correct dry-sump V8, the correct GM-developed 8-speed dual-clutch transmission, and the next-gen electrical architecture of the production car. But it’s still one of a dozen cars largely hand-built and still showing elements of improv.

“You still see some C7 structure here, where we could use it,” says Juechter. “Like the doors. One thing that’s really challenging is sealing. You’re going to be testing in the rain, the car needs to be sealed.”

While these 12 cars were running around Milford, other C8 parts were being tested on current Corvettes—the steering wheel, for instance. Kim Lind, the team’s additive design and manufacturing product application engineer, produced 3D-printed prototype steering wheels—a feat made possible by fusion deposition modeling.

“The wheel was a case where we just had to try it out, live with it and see what we thought,” says Mike Petrucci, Corvette lead development engineer. The final design, the so-called “squircle,” allows a clear view of the new dash display and went through countless iterations before it was finalized.

“It gets down to millimeter by millimeter,” says Juechter. “That’s just the wheel. There are literally a million decisions on the way to making a new car.”

And those decisions get more complex when you move to the integration vehicle phase, represented by the third car in the garage. This is the point where everything has to be production-ready.

Over two weeks, throngs of engineers bring in their parts—or 3D-printed facsimiles thereof—and build the first C8 from the ground up, the world’s most complicated IKEA project. There’s no instruction manual. Along the way, they cataloged 400 issues that needed to be addressed to make the car possible for the production line.

"We're learning things like whether there's hand space for the worker on the line to install a particular part." says Juechter. "It's Engineer A didn't talk to Engineer B, that sort of thing."

The integration vehicles are also where the team addresses small details, from stuff you just expect to work, like the fuel gauge, to subjective topics, like shift quality. “We’re tuning on the racetrack,” says Petrucci. “You’re taking a pile of parts and turning them into a Corvette.”

And that pre-production Corvette sits 10 feet away. They just got this car from the Bowling Green factory two months ago, and the interior is still mostly camouflaged. It seems like the car is done, but not quite.

“When you’re used to driving these development vehicles and get into one of these from the production line, it’s different,” says MacDonald. “And you go, OK, why? It’s all the same parts. But it’s balanced differently on the track, the ride and handling has subtly changed. So you figure out what changed and what you need to do to get it back where you want it.”

They’ve got some time—the C8 isn’t slated for production until the end of the year. But given what I’ve seen, I can’t help but wonder: What are they working on next?

I have a ‘76 914 2.0 I am restoring now, a so. Cal car, almost no rust, in great shape, was running perfectly when driven in a friend’s new barn 13 years ago where it was abandoned. I didn’t want it, certainly was not looking for a 914 - especially a 4 - but it is in such good shape and so cheap, I took it. Just got the engine running, mechanically it seems fine. Was converted to Weber’s by Porsche dealer & I’m still working on getting those right - I have a full shop.

I hear they are incredible to drive, only drove it up my 1/2 mile drive - cannot wait.

Yeah, that 914-6 with the blue-printed engine was a big miss. But you know - never look back. the past is the past, cannot be changed....move on.....regrets only are negative on us - even if over major sins - and we all have some.....I too would have loved to drive one of those.

Best regards friend.........

PS: What’s wrong with loving both Vette’s and Porsche’s? Seems to me the only choice for an unbiased intelligent mind.......I appreciate ALL fine engineering & machinery, regardless of brand........

The only Corvette I would like to have is the one my best friend’s older brother had when we were juniors in high school. It was a 1961 with a hardtop but no ragtop. The previous owner had put a dual quad 425 HP 409 in it. With a close ratio 4 speed and 4:88 rear, it would pull to 7,000 in top gear real quick and top out around 110. My friend and I used to cruise the drive-in joints in the summer of 1964 looking for races. The tight gears and rear enabled him to start in second gear from a red light and quick shift it into fourth so it sounded like a Powerglide automatic. It had big mufflers so it was real quiet too. And extra wide steel wheels on a lowered suspension with heavy duty shocks and springs like a road race setup. It was turquoise with black interior and bad to the bone. His brother sold it in late summer of 1965 for $1,800.

Have you ever driven a Toyota MR2 Spyder?
Or a Toyota MR2 turbo?

These cars are around for 8-$14K now. Some with very few miles. I know the engines are quite a bit smaller. However, they are considerably cheaper than a Acura NSX, even an early 1990’s model.

That's a beautiful & hot car for sure.....surprised it does 4.1 with only 237hp/258 torque, but sure it handles like a dream. To me the Cayman is one of the most beautiful cars ever made, the lines just cannot be beat, but I'm a handling guy and it's handling is what won me. 355+hp/300 torque in a 3,000 lb. car. With Launch Control my 0-60 stock is 4.2 - no idea what it is now with my ECU mapping......but I'd think just under 4......way more than I need.......

Boy does she handle, and with manual steering, no assist, you can feel everything on the road, hell, run over road kill and you can tell what sex it was;-)
Toying with the idea of a Eurocompulsion remap& cold air intake, up to an additional 100hp
It’s definitely a toy car though, not a daily driver, but I love it.

I already asked crosdaddy.

Do you have any experience with the Toyota MR2?

Either the turbo edition form the early 1990’s or the later Spyder edition?

These can be now purchased for relatively small money with low miles.

You would be wrong about that.

The new vette is very well engineered and the bodywork is as much a product of wind tunnel and track testing as it is designer styling

Chevy got this one right and the amount of sophisticated engineering and development that went into the C8 is something that a company like Lamborghini can only dream of. The new vette is a milestone car that is going to reinvigorate the Corvette and sell like hotcakes. Hard to justify spending money on a Cayman when the vette is an alternative. Heck, it’s even hard to justify buying a Mazda Miata with the way the new vette is positioned in the market. Amazingly, with current market placement , the real choice is between a Porsche Cayman or a new C8 vette AND a Mazda Miata. That is amazing

Now that is funny. My Cayman was the last with conventional steering that gives road feedback - ‘12 went to digital.

I’m retired, but sometimes drive my Cayman every day - has 80k mis. on it now. She doesn’t sit.

Go tor the remap - I did and am so glad I did, tho mine didn’t get but maybe half that HP. It will be an all new car......

Porsche owner here (air-cooled 911 track car and a 4 pot Cayman GTS in the garage).

The C8 seems like it will be a formidable beast. As someone upthread suggested, this car is stolen goods though until the bond holders are paid.

I have about 5 years warranty left on my CPO GTS. I want be making a move out of it any time soon.

Thank you but I'll take the Mazda Miata. It's a much better sports car value, has cleaner lines (i.e., better looking) and you can get a sweet manual transmission.

You can buy the Miata and have money left over for a good motorcycle or two, which are as much or more fun than a sports car.

Yes, everything GM is stolen goods until bond holders are paid - which will be never. After 50 years of GM vehicles, that ended when GM became Government Motors - no more.

So your GTS is the new one? Not sure what 4 pot means - unless its a caliper.....

A 2015 GTS is the only one I’d trade mine for, but their high costs make it an unreasonable expense. But they are a good investment, vehicle-wise, as they hold their values so well.

I’m sure you enjoy your air-cooled 911 on the track......

There are several of the MR2 1991-1996 turbo versions around where people have replaced the engines.

There are also quite a few around with over 200K miles that show their longevity.

Occasionally, there is one with less than 50K miles, as most of these were only driven in northern climates on the weekend in the summer. Also, many of these 2 seat type cars were driven in Florida in the winter only for 3 months a year. When the gentleman owner passes away. Their widow sells their sports car.

I owned a 1999 Lexus SC400 for a couple years. It was the only vehicle I have ever owned that I sold for more than I bought it for. There are still a few of those around with less than 50K miles. The 1998-2000 models of the SC400 were the last ones with the V8 engine and 4 valves/ cylinder. They changed the design in 2001.

The Acura NSX’s have really gone up in value in the last two years. Even the early 1990’s models are $35-65K now. Especially the Targo top versions. These cars were $25-$45K ten years ago.

Agree with you 100%.

Actually made that judgement call on Miata vs C7 and price differential was not the deciding issue. The C7 is a better car, but the Miata is a more fun drive. Of course my ideal car is the Lotus Elan or Elise/Exige

Not sure I’d repeat that decision with the C8 - I’d probably spring for the the C8 if faced with an either or decision

For fun, I priced out a Cayman S that is pretty much the equivalent of the base, stripped version of the C8 and the most similar Cayman cost just under $94K.

The Cayman is really the closest competition to the C8 and at that price, the choice truly is between the Cayman S or a C8 AND a Miata

It’s actually very common to find people who own a performance oriented C7 and a Miata and the Miata is driven 10 times as much as the vette- or more.

Yes, the GTS is the 4 cylinder 3.5 liter 718. It is a blast on the street and fun on the track too - I’ve done one DE in it since buying it on Black Friday 2018.

I cut my DE teeth in the 911. Shifting a 915 transmission effectively around a road course is such a raw and sublime experience.

Meanwhile GM is dead to me (I switched from GM trucks to Ford). Otherwise I *may* have held out for the C8 before buying a new (to me) car. Now worries though. I am very happy with the 718.

I have to agree with you in return. I’ve a 9 year old Miata that’s still more fun to drive than anything else I have tried. That it’s had zero problems or issues thus far is icing on this very tasty piece of driving cake. That said, I am starting to like the 2019’s specs and may have to give it a test drive. May we all enjoy what we drive and drive what we enjoy.

Bluetick - I believe you meant to type 2.5 liter...... ;-)

Unbelievable how fast it is for a 4-banger........

Gotta say I’m happy with my almost track-tuned 3.4 six at 355+......all I’ll ever need, and more......I refuse to drag race with all the Mustang GT’s, GTR’s, etc. who want to - must make them mad......

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