Deliveries haven’t even started for the new Corvette ZR1X, but Chevrolet is already teasing the ninth-generation of Corvette in concept form. This latest pair, the Corvette CX and Corvette CX.R Vision Gran Turismo revealed on Friday at The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering event during Monterey Car Week, are a follow-up to two earlier designs from GM’s United Kingdom and California design studios.
The question you might ask, which decades ago would be sensationally splashed across the cover of Road & Track, is: “Is this the next Corvette?” Today, such queries and answers are deliberated on the internet, freeing the print magazine from slavishly pandering to newsstand sales (remember newsstands?). It also allows for a little less hyperbole. And so the understated answer here is: mostly no. It’s more a trial balloon to tease the design language of the next car, as well as test reactions from owners, dealers, and the general public.
The CX name, easily ready as C10, even implies that this is thinking further out than the C9. Or, as Magalie Debellis, who led the exterior design team, states, "The concept hints at the future elevated esthetic direction for the whole brand."
Let’s start with the exterior. Debellis notes "you can see a distinctive horizontal crease line in the body that guides your eye from front to tail, from the nose to tail. We call it the shine line, which creates really a lot of visual drama." There are elements here that will likely appear on a future Corvette, like the new interpretation of the quad taillights. And the more sculpted, rounded fender curves suggest a (welcome) more organic vibe than the F-117 stealth fighter harshness of the C8.
But notice there is no frunk, instead revealing parts of the carbon fiber chassis. There’s an active rear spoiler at the back, which seems more like a possibility. And then there’s the lack of doors. Instead, the entire windshield and roof canopy open for ingress and egress. It looks incredibly cool—and is about as likely to make production as Saab getting resurrected and putting another canopy-entry concept, the Aero X, into production.
Inside, it’s a design sketch come to life, with an aggressive driver-centered dual cockpit. The pedal box and steering wheel can move to adjust for an exact custom fit. In place of a conventional steering wheel is a yoke with a pair of dials and a touchscreen. There is no instrument cluster a you’d expect; instead, a giant head-up display where "we’re actually embedding the pixels into the entire wind screen itself, creating a full digital experience," says Tristan Murphy from the CX’s interior design team.
And then there’s the full-electric powertrain, something Corvette folks have gone on record saying isn’t the cards. Still the CX gives you an idea of if there was an EV Corvette, this is the sort of approach they’d take. Most notably, four motors totaling 2000 horsepower, a number that seems crazy but it actually quite realistic today. Underneath the car lies a reasonably large 90-kWh battery pack.
And then there’s the CX.R sibling race car. Sporting the same basic shape as the CX, this is stripped down to the bare minimum just like the current C8.R, plus a giant wing. Exactly the sort of thing that you want on a track. And, it turns out, the CX.R will run on virtual tracks in Gran Turismo 7 as part of the Vision Gran Turismo series of concept cars. Interestingly, the CX.R eschews the full EV setup for a hybrid powertrain, not unlike the ones used on the Lamborghini Revuelto and Temerario and the Ferrari F80. There are two electic motors in front, one in the rear, and the internal-combustion part of the CX.R is a tiny, screaming V-8 just 2.0 liters in displacement but revving to 15,000 rpm and making 900 horsepower.
That engine is part fantasy but grounded in reality—just close enough to get us excited that something similar could end up on a Corvette, but far enough out there that it could all be wishful thinking. Of course, we just have to wait to see what trickles down to the production car. And in the meantime, the upcoming ZR1X means there’s still some excitement left in the C8.
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