Story Behind the C8

It's existed for decades-as a rumor, a whisper, an inkling, a concept, a prototype. Nothing more. Nobody thought the mid-engine Corvette would ever be real. Yet it's right in front of me, an orange Chevy with the engine behind the driver. And the people who created it-chief engineer Tadge Juechter, design manager Kirk Bennion, and product marketing manager Harlan Charles-are beaming. They've had the opportunity to make myth reality. We sat down to discuss the biggest fundamental change to the Corvette in its nearly 70-year history.

R&T: The big question: why?

Tadge Juechter: A few reasons. Biggest was the limit of performance. We knew we were in trouble when we were bringing out the 638-hp C6 ZR1 and we had a hell of a time beating the 505-hp Z06's 0-to-60. It was only because of the Michelin tires that we were able to.

The engine gets heavier to be more powerful, and you're putting more weight on the front axle and, relatively speaking, less weight on the back. We couldn't hook up. So that was kind of the start of it. Fifty/fifty weight distribution is great when you're not power-limited. That's why race cars evolved with the engine in the back. You really want more like 40/60, so you can get the power down.

The equation we had to figure out is, how do you do all the rest of what's great about Corvette?

R&T: How do you make it daily drivable?

TJ: It's gotta be daily drivable. You don't want any of the exotic, hard-to-live-with kinda stuff. Everything from service cost to thermal management is a huge deal in this car.

Kirk Bennion: Also entry and egress. Aspirational cars tend to neck down in the front heel-to-toe area. And we were able to keep the same entry and egress that the current car has. So we have front-engine entry/egress in a mid-engine car.

R&T: Sounds difficult.

KB: It's taking the whole [passenger compartment] and moving it 16.5 inches forward. And in doing so, we really watched that distance to the front wheel, so that we weren't encroaching on the entry/egress. It was all part of the early architecture, one of our goals.

TJ: When you put the engine in the back, the front wheels need to move rearward, and the back wheels go way the hell rearward. So you're nearly sitting on the front axle. The front wheels turn, and so they practically overlap with the pedal box. That's one of the design challenges. We really had to focus on doing a tunnel-dominant structure. We already have a structural backbone, but we had to put even more emphasis on getting loads down that center tunnel, so we didn't have to do giant rockers, like some people do, that you have to climb over. We did everything as a structural backbone.

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Source: Travis Okulski - Road & Track

Posted 10/4/19