DesmoSD
Well-Known Member
It's more of growing pains of a new platform, especially with the new engine position.Do you think the issue is because the Vette is made from aluminum and fiberglass?
A second delay came from the power unleashed by the top-tier twin-turbo model with 900-1,000 horsepower, thought to be the Zora trim. Hard work on the throttle twisted the aluminum spaceframe enough to crack the backlight. A poster on Mid-Engined Corvette forum wrote that this is an old issue, solved when GM put its Cray supercomputer to work to beef up the chassis. A poster over at Corvette Forum said insiders told him "that it is literally frightening to floor" the throttle in the hi-po model, and that GM "had a team of lawyers in to advise on the legal perils of selling such a potent vehicle for street use."
Another matter Sherman mentioned we can't even label a problem. Supposedly, designers had "some unspecified bone of contention" with the development engineers. But unless the designer also happens to be the engineer, that happens all the time on every vehicle. What might matter most is that at the end of last month, spy photographers caught a convoy of prototypes in San Diego carrying Corvette engineers Tadge Juechter, Harlan Charles and Alex MacDonald. And a week ago in Yuma, Arizona another convoy included none other than Mark Reuss in one of the passenger seats. Corvette watchers take this to mean the program is back on track.
https://www.autoblog.com/2019/03/13/c8-chevy-corvette-update/
Like the recent front-engined Corvettes, the mid-engined one will remain an attainable sports car with supercar performance. Surely some bits of carbon fiber and magnesium will be stirred into the mix, but Chevy will construct the mid-engined car’s spaceframe primarily from aluminum. And as in the past, its body will be made largely of fiberglass panels. To contain costs, Chevy will launch the new car with an updated version of the pushrod LT1 engine that powers today’s C7 Corvettes. We expect the mid-engined Corvette, or C8, to be a bit heavier than the current car’s roughly 3500 pounds, but it will compensate for that with about 500 horsepower from the LT1.
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