“If you build it, he will come,” is the enduring epigram from Field of Dreams, the beloved 1989 baseball movie.
That sentiment could apply to another American sporting icon, the Corvette. When Chevrolet unveiled the CX and CX.R Vision Gran Turismo concepts during Monterey Car Week last August, affirming them as guiding stars for future Corvette design, a rapturous reception made clear that fans would come in droves for a production version. For all the success of the groundbreaking C8, it’s clear the Corvette team, ever restless, wants the car to take another big step in design and performance.
Corvette Magazine traveled to GM’s Technical Center in suburban Detroit for an exclusive deep dive into these concepts, and their behind-the-scenes gestation.
Corvettes in the Inner Sanctum
With motorized lift-off canopies that recall earthbound fighter jets, a fan-driven system to suck them to the pavement, and 2,000-horsepower electric powertrains, the concepts are “the ultimate expression of what we’d do farther out,” says Phil Zak, global Chevrolet executive design director.
I’m escorted into GM’s Design West, opened in 2024, with 360,000 square feet of space for several hundred designers. We’ve come from the Saarinen Building next door, part of the Tech Center designed by mid-century architect Eero Saarinen, who was recruited to the job by Harley Earl, father of the Corvette. Put them together, and GM claims the world’s largest automotive design center. This airy atelier features 44 mills to sculpt full-size clay models, the latest in digital design tools, a Mad Men-worthy conference room for the GM board, art installations from employees, and nods to GM history, such as 25-foot-long wooden propellers from the company’s first wind tunnel.
The CX concepts evolved from styling sketches to ever-larger physical models and finally to full-size clays that could be rolled outside for review under natural light.
In a presentation room, designers Tristan Murphy and Vlad Kapitonov show me how the team’s “true lookout” into the Corvette’s future began in 2022. The room darkens, and eight generations of Corvette race past on a 55-foot-long screen with 76 million pixels. The teams’ design brief was clear, and some typical pressures were removed: As the cars’ Roman-numeral X suggests, this was a fast trip to a 10th-generation Corvette, a Wonka-style elevator ride of pure imagination. Designers were free to skip the ninth floor—that is, the C9 they’re already bringing to life to replace the C8, likely around this decade’s end. That eliminated the typical compromises imposed by probing executives or pesky engineers, such as whether a set of golf clubs could fit aboard, that notorious requirement of current Vettes.
“It was all about a feeling, and not worrying about having to do a production car,” says Murphy, Corvette lead interior designer.
In what Murphy calls “a blitz” of ideas from four studios, two here in Michigan, designers began cranking out two-dimensional sketches and digital drawings. Zak and other executives kept competing studios siloed at first, to separately assess ideas and decide what worked, and what didn’t.
Zak recalls his take on some early sketches from the competing studios: “That’s a fantastic hypercar, but it’s not a Corvette. You can have the ultimate performance, but if the car’s not attractive, it won’t sell.”
Two Stunners Take Shape
Intriguing ideas became physical models in increasingly larger dimensions, including one-third-scale clay models halved front-to-rear, then mirrored to avoid having to sculpt an entire car. I see dozens of those sketches and models flash onscreen, including a jaw-dropper that GM has yet to reveal publicly: an “Open Wheel Track Special” recalls stripped-down track specialists like the Ariel Atom, the Corvette’s body largely sliced away to expose its suspension and skeletal carbon-fiber structure.
The very best ideas evolved into full-size clays, wrapped in Di-Noc tape that designers use to mimic painted metal, wood grain, or other materials. At Design West, as opposed to the downstairs studios in the Saarinen Building, models can be conveniently rolled into a courtyard for designers to critique or adjust in natural light—the very same courtyard where models like the ’63 Corvette Sting Ray were auditioned for designers and supervisors. Each of the four GM studios produced at least one full-size clay, as executives narrowed down the field.
The CX concept, created here at the Performance Design Studio, rose to the top. Bringing the car to physical life was the next challenge, with its tricky motorized roof and carbon-fiber monocoque. That build was already underway when designers successfully lobbied executives to create a CX.R as well.
“Nobody asked for a racing version, but it was too cool not to do,” Murphy says. “That’s the power of great design.”
With that, the designers walk me to an adjoining room, where the CX and CX.R gleam and glower under lights. This concept duo looks simultaneously real and unreal, familiar and radically new. On cue, the CX’s motorized canopy rises, revealing its interstellar-style, Inferno Red cabin, and a peek-a-boo glimpse of the underlying chassis, including suspension control arms sculpted to reduce drag. The car was intentionally designed so you can barely tell where the structure ends and the cabin begins.
As out-there as the concepts appear at first glance, Zak and his design team succeeded. These cars still look like Corvettes. A Chevy-savvy child could see it: the pointy nose, the sinuous fenders, the pleated “chine line” that visually cleaves the car into upper and lower sections.
“It was all about where to take the brand,” Murphy says as I admire their creation. “How do you advance those classic cues?”
As concept ideas competed and coalesced, designers had to make their case for which deserved to be brought to life. A bit like theater kids preparing for a make-or-break show, designers created a knockout presentation of concepts for executives such as CEO Mary Barra and GM President Mark Reuss. During two shows in 2023, GM decision-makers saw what culminated in models from the Detroit-area Performance Design Studio: The CX and CX.R Vision Gran Turismo.
“There was so much energy and emotion around those shows,” Murphy says. “Not just for the concepts, but for where the Corvette brand was going.”
Virtually Unbeatable
Creators of the latest Gran Turismo 7 video game were equally excited. They pushed back deadlines to get the CX and CX.R under the wire as stars of their latest edition.
Those virtual Corvette drivers may be tough to beat. The CX envisions four 500-hp electric motors, one at each wheel, for an improbable 2,000-horsepower total, nearly double that of a new ZR1. That’s powered by a 90-kilowatt-hour structural battery pack. Akin to the U.K.’s McMurtry Spéirling, and the 1970 Chaparral 2J racer before it, the CX is a futuristic “fan car.” Two rear-mounted fans generate downforce on demand to glue the Corvette to the pavement, with a flap to adjust downforce front-to-rear.
“We can add downforce without increasing drag,” Kapitonov says.
The racing CX-R version flaunts even more exposed carbon fiber, and a more driver-focused cabin. Old-school Corvette fans may be pleased that it’s not an EV, though it’s no big-block either: A twin-turbo, 2.0-liter V-8 is the pocket Hercules. It generates up to 900 horsepower and revs to an insane 15,000 rpm. And it matches the CX’s 2,000 horses when its trio of electric motors jumps in with all-wheel-drive support.
Inside the CX, a small driver’s screen perches atop a yoke-style steering wheel. But the big-screen effect is a windshield display that’s nothing like today’s head-up projections. Instead, Chevy envisions pixels embedded directly in the glass, wrapping a driver and passenger with performance data or infotainment. The technology isn’t yet feasible on curved glass, but could well be by the time a 10th-generation Corvette comes around. The steering wheel and pedal box move toward the driver, allowing fixed racing seats with motorized shoulder bolsters. That steering wheel bristles with old-school analog switches that drivers can operate with racing gloves on.
Wheels and tires “are of a size that does not exist in nature,” Kapitonov says with a smile, with cool metal aero elements on the wheels to reduce drag.
Turning these models into physical, running cars “was a crazy engineering project, with genius craftspeople,” he adds.
Both concepts are drivable, including for a company photo shoot at Circuit of the Americas in Texas. But they’re not powered by those fanciful advertised powertrains, “and they’re kind of held together with popsicle sticks,” Murphy admits.
For the public, a initial split-window concept from GM’s new Advanced Design Studio in the U.K. broke cover in April, followed by a California Corvette from a new studio in Pasadena. In August, the CX and racing CX.R became the toast of The Quail, where the world’s hypercar purveyors show their wares during Monterey Car Week. Together, these are the first Corvette concepts since 2009, and 1992 before that.
One question is how much of this is feasible for future showrooms, even aside from the showboating motorized canopies that Murphy calls “the ultimate peacock move.” The CX’s roof rises just 41 inches off the ground, or 7.6 inches lower than a C8’s. Even Batman might have a tough time getting his pointy ears under that roof.
Still, with no A-pillars up front, “there’s great visibility, even as low as it is,” Kapitonov says.
Corvette fans will pore over these concepts for visible clues of the car’s future. Yet internal-combustion traditionalists needn’t worry, at least for now.
“A V-8 is a big part of the Corvette, and it’s not going away,” Murphy says.
As ever, that rich history informs these creators, even as they strive to integrate new ideas and improve the breed. When designers put on their internal GM shows, supporting players on stage included the classic ’59 Stingray Racer. Influenced by streamlined Italian sports cars, and designed by Pete Brock, Larry Shinoda, and Bill Mitchell, that Stingray directly inspired the ’63 Sting Ray. It was converted into a skunk-works racer that defied GM’s internal racing ban and won an SCCA national championship in 1960.
These designers wouldn’t mind a little of that history repeating itself, as the C8 begets a C9, and so on. During the design process, Kapitonov says, the Stingray Racer actually sat right near his desk. A dose of daily inspiration, a bit like having Zora or Bill Mitchell hanging around the water cooler. With those kind of workmates, my hunch is that future Corvettes will turn out just fine.
