By Cliff Gromer
Photos by Bill Erdman
2/8/05

Hold on to your gold chains, gang, because there's a new Corvette coming to town. And it totally blows away anything else into the weeds. That's right, forget about the Corvette ZO6, and forget about everything (fuhgettaboutit). The hot setup is gonna be the C8. C8? The 2005 'Vette is only the C6 series. That's right! What you're seeing here is a world exclusive prototype Corvette for 2010! This car is so hot that it will pull the front wheels off the ground at will. A car so hot that Chrysler is gonna take their Hemi and hide under a rock.

One look at the C8 and you know that this is no ordinary Corvette. Forget the sleeper look; the C8 lets it all hang out. There is no mistaking this baby, and it broadcasts the message loud and clear to the bottle-toting street rat crowd: better safety-wire your doors if you don't want 'em blown off into the next state.

The concept behind the C8 is so fantastic, the mind-boiling question is why no one thought of it earlier. Take one 2005 Corvette, eliminate all the fat and unnecessary electronics, throw out all the bells and whistles and expensive options. Then, install an entirely new, totally cost-effective powerplant and driveline with the reliability of a hammer, and have the whole shebang screwed together by the cheapest labor force in Asia. What you end up with is a Corvette that's distilled down to its most refined, purest performance level. You've got a car that's smaller in size and lighter in weight than anything else on the market. You've got a car with practically no maintenance requirements, a car that's virtually theftproof, and, most of all, a Corvette that's AFFORDABLE. Now, that's something novel--an affordable Corvette.

How affordable, you ask? We'll tell you. It's not $60,000 or even $30,000. Try $159. That's right; the C8 Corvette will come with the skinniest payment book in the industry. And, that's not even counting buyer incentive programs, sellathons and all the other price reduction hype and doubletalk that makes our auto industry the great American institution that it is.

Okay, so the C8 is superfast and supercheap and supercool. All that means nothing to the tree-kissers out there. All they want to know is how much gas is it gonna guzzle and how much pollution will it generate. In other words, is the C8 going to contribute significantly to global warming and the melting of Greenland and Antarctica and the rising of the oceans and the overflooding of continents and the price of peanuts?

Gobs of brutal torque easily incinerated the special compound plastic tires.

Not to worry, GM has got you covered. This Corvette uses no gas, and emits ZERO pollutants. It rates as the "greenest" vehicle on the planet (even though it will not be offered in green).

When we picked up our C8 prototype for the 300-mile drive to our home track in Englishtown, NJ, we were cautioned that because of the performance potential of the C8, we'd need someone with big cojones, big BRASS cojones, to unwind this rocket roadster in the fast lane of the interstate. We assured our host that we had taken on Motown's best, Europe's finest and the Far East's fastest and nothing we'd driven to date had fazed us in the least. Somewhat reassured, the C8 PR guy nervously handed the machine over to us.