GM's Futuristic Corvette Opens Like a Fighter Jet

And you can even test drive it, kind of.

Transcript

On Friday, GM unveiled a pair of futuristic Corvette concepts, the CX and the CX.R Vision Gran Turismo, and they have a canopy that opens like a fighter jet. 

The concepts made their debut at The Quail, a "motorsports gathering" held in Carmel, California. The novel designs aren't production vehicles, but rather serve as inspiration to inform Corvette's design language. 

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The Corvette CX is designed to provide high-performance driving on the road as well as the track. While it has many of the Corvette hallmarks, like a forward-lunging nose, it also has a fighter-jet-inspired cockpit canopy designed in collaboration with the GM Motorsports Aero Group. 

The CX concept is an all-wheel-drive electric supercar with a propulsion system that includes four motors, one powering each wheel, generating more than 2,000 horsepower. The 90-kWh lithium-ion battery is mounted in the chassis for a low center of gravity.

The project is the latest and last of several Corvette concepts to be revealed this year, as part of GM’s design exercise across multiple GM studios that empowers the company’s designers to step away from the constraints of production vehicles and unleash their creativity. If you recall, GM unveiled a 3D-printed Corvette earlier this year created by GM's UK team. The CX concepts came out of the Chevrolet Performance Studio in Warren, MI.

The CX.R VGT is a hybrid. A twin-turbo V8 that generates up to 900 horsepower and 15,000 rpm drives the rear wheels. Three electric motors, one on each front wheel, and a third integrated into the 8-speed gearbox, provide instant torque and contribute to a total system output of 2,000 hp.

While the most disappointing part of the project is the caveat in each caption, "Not available for sale," you will still be able to test drive the CX or CX.R, at least virtually, in Gran Turismo 7—and it should be a pretty accurate representation. Chevy’s performance engineers and the Corvette design team sent detailed blueprints to Polyphony Digital, the Japanese video game development arm of Sony Interactive Entertainment that created the popular series. 

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