The year 2025 has indeed been a big one for the Corvette. On top of bringing us the fastest Vette—nay, the fastest American car ever around the Nürburgring—we’ve seen two otherworldly concepts symbolizing the future of the lineage. The first, out of GM’s new Royal Leamington Spa Advanced Design Studio in England, embodied a more technical reimagining of Chevrolet’s flagship. Then, there was the smooth, sun-kissed California Corvette concept, courtesy of GM’s also recently assembled Pasadena design crew. But this one, hailing from home base in Warren, Michigan, is the zenith of the trilogy: Meet the Corvette CX.
The name should hint that this hypercar isn’t a teaser of the C9. As with the other two design studies, the CX’s creators imagined where America’s sports car might go in a world without limits. Phil Zak, Chevrolet‘s Executive Design Director, said that all three teams were siloed off at the start of the project, so they could deliver genuinely unique proposals. But it’s understood that the themes and ideas represented in the CX are most likely to inspire the Corvette’s next act. Surveying what the Warren crew’s built, you’ve got to like where their head is at.
Look, I won’t get into it too deep, but I might be the world’s biggest hater of the C8’s design. I respect and admire the car wholly from an engineering standpoint. Aesthetically, though? I think it borders on self-parody. The CX addresses all of my complaints. It’s aggressive and purposeful without coming across like it’s overcompensating for something. Sure, Vette hallmarks like the pointed nose, elevated rear arches, and quad taillights are still present, but they’re rendered tastefully and confidently. The result is a more mature Corvette that also respects the immense capability of cars like the ZR1X, without feeling stylistically bankrupt.
Now, performance really is limited only by your imagination when it comes to concepts like this, and the CX is appropriately bonkers in the theoretical specs department. Chevy envisions an electric motor behind each wheel in this thing, generating a combined 2,000 horsepower with torque vectoring at every corner, from a 90-kWh battery. The CX is also a ground-effects car, sucking itself to the track surface with fans behind channels in the bodywork. The splitter below the nose as well as the wing at the back are all active. And, to get in, the entire front of the vehicle including its canopy lifts up to invite you.
This being a Corvette, though, it would be remiss of GM Design to concentrate solely on the street without acknowledging the brand’s rich motorsports history. And so we also have a racing flavor, the Corvette CX.R Vision Gran Turismo. Yes—this is a Vision GT joint, meaning it will be drivable in Gran Turismo 7. GM says it’s due to land in the game before the end of this month, likely in time for the next update, with the road version in tow.
Unlike the Corvette CX, the CX.R is a hybrid, uniting electric motors in both front wheels plus one in the eight-speed dual-clutch transmission with a 900-hp, two-liter twin-turbo V8 with a 15,000-rpm redline. Total system output is, again, 2,000 hp, though the use of a synthentic fuel-burning engine should allow it to go the distance at, say, the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
The CX.R’s interior swaps red leather and milled aluminum for suede and raw carbon fiber, while the bolsters and head and neck supports on the seats are much more pronounced. In both variants, the steering column and pedals move toward the driver, once they’re seated and the canopy closes. GM imagines augmented reality-style projections on the windshield, to help drivers find opportunities to cut time around a circuit.
Sure, concept cars don’t quite hold the same mystique anymore, when 0-60 mph times are butting up against the laws of physics and every other month there seems to be a new electric hypercar from a company you’ve never heard of touting a million horsepower. It hits a little differently, though, when you’re talking about a design like the Corvette CX, that carries forward one of the automotive industry’s great dynasties. The C9 or even the C10 can’t look quite as radical as this, but if the minds that produced these last three concepts are charting their course, then the Corvette’s future is in fine hands. Both the CX and CX.R are making their public debut this weekend at The Quail, as part of Monterey Car Week.
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