Chevrolet Corvette CERV III
I suppose it's inevitable that every car-crazed youngster will at some point fall in love with a Corvette show car. One generation fell in love with the Mako Shark, others became besotted with the XP882. I had the 1990 CERV III.
There's nothing obvious about the CERVIII that explains why it inspired me so. It is fundamentally just another futuristic show car replete with every conceivable electronic trick and gizmo--and like most completely unrealistic show cars, it had very little impact on its production counterparts. For me, though, it meant much more.
While I grew up with an innate love of Corvettes, that love was matched by a basic frustration. As powerful, sleek, and capable as Corvettes were, to me they symbolized a crippling lack of creativity. After the rapid innovation that characterized the Corvette's evolution from its debut as a cruiser in 1953 to a world-class sports car in the 1960s, America's sports car got stuck in a rut. Not in terms of capability, mind you--since the C4 Corvette debuted in 1984, Corvettes have consistently been fantastic all-around performers for the price. No, what bothers me is that Corvettes have been so formulaic.
Since 1968, it's as if all Corvettes have been built to a slowly evolving set of the same blueprints, specifying a pushrod V-8, a long, low, and wide fiberglass body, shark nose, tiny interior, and, until recently, hidden headlights. There have been some excellent cars made under that formula, but slavish adherence to those blueprints have kept Corvettes from really breaking new ground. Tradition overruled innovation.
If I was in charge, I wouldn't limit my design and engineering teams to continually remaking a car according to a 40-year-old formula. Instead, I'd reconsider the definition of what a Corvette really is. I'd define it very broadly--as a uniquely American sports car that provides near-exotic performance, without pricing the car out of the reach of the upper-middle-class.
How you get there isn't nearly as important as the final result, and I find it hard to believe that the best approach to building a sports car hasn't changed over the last 40 years. Perhaps a big sports car with a V-8 and a fiberglass body really is the best way to hit that target, but at the risk of blaspheming, might not a much smaller twin-turbo V-6-powered AWD Corvette be an interesting possibility? And why must we continue to riff on the styling of the 1968 Corvette rather than look back to the more groundbreaking earlier Corvettes?
The CERV III excited me because it was a truly fresh take on the Corvette; it broke down the mental barriers that had limited and defined Corvettes for years. Instead of a fiberglass body, the CERV III used carbon fiber and Kevlar; instead of a front-engined setup, the CERV III was mid-engined. Power still came from a V-8, but it was a twin-turbocharged version of the Lotus-tweaked, four-valve-per-cylinder DOHC LT5 from the Corvette ZR-1. All-wheel-drive and four-wheel-steer systems replaced the Corvette's typical rear-wheel-drive setup.
The styling was even better. The CERV III was still too big, but at least it wore its size elegantly. Aerodynamic but not devoid of character, reminiscent of former Corvettes while still breaking genuinely new ground, the CERV III still looks beautiful to me nearly two decades later. Of course, it also looks an awful lot like the sublime Jaguar XJ220.
Between the structure, the engineering, and the styling, the CERV III was pretty obviously an exotic concept car. But it's the fresh approach I was interested in; and nearly two decades later I still could be interested in even a dramatically toned-down street version of this car. It wasn't to be, of course--Corvettes today are fantastic performers but are still built along the same formula.
I'm also a little biased because the CERV III was my very first video game car lust. The CERV III, along with the Lamborghini Diablo and Pininfarina Mythos, headlined Test Drive III. TD3 was a truly revolutionary 1990 driving game that allowed unlimited freedom to drive through a real-world environment that included multiple routes, short cuts trains, traffic, police, stop lights, a choice of radio stations, short cuts, and even the ability to drive off-road to explore the world off the highway, all rendered in stunning (for 1990) polygonal detail. Oh, and the CERV III crushed the opposition. Forget the Lamborghini--anybody who didn't take the CERV III was a sucker.
I wasted untold hours on TD3 as a teenager, and in so doing have racked up more virtual miles on the CERV III than any real car I've driven. The video below is a 10-minute clip of gameplay, and as I watch it I'm shocked to find that even now I still know where all the corners are and can remember every note of the hideously annoying MIDI soundtrack. Kids, appreciate your XBox 360s and PS3; this is what gaming was like in the early 1990s.
--Chris H.
Big Chris on July 08, 2008 at 09:49 AM
If a Ford Probe humped a Pontiac Firebird you might get a bastardized body like this one. C5 and C6 yummy, CERV III not so much.
Chris Hafner on July 08, 2008 at 10:00 AM
Yeah, I feel like I might be alone on this one. But, what the heck, I like it.
Cookie the Dog's Owner on July 08, 2008 at 10:48 AM
GM can still build Corvettes according to the tried-and-tested front-engine rear-drive "plastic date bait" formula if it wants to, and I won't begrudge them that--but why not put that AWD drivetrain and 4-wheel steering to work in another vehicle pitched to a different market? Call it . . . oh, I dunno, "Corvair" maybe?
Ian on July 08, 2008 at 10:59 AM
I see a lot of XJ220 in this one, too. Actually, it doesn't look like a Probe humped a Firebird (although I do see the Firebird connection) to me so much as it looks like an XJ220 rear-ended a C5 Vette and somehow ended up with a set of C4 rims in the process. Actually, the rims are the only things I dislike about it. I think they look really out of place on this car.
David Colborne on July 08, 2008 at 01:28 PM
Ah, TD 3... yeah, I had a similar game called "Stunt Driver". It was glorious - you could even drive a Lancia Integrale, though it was the second slowest car in the game (only faster than the Lamborghini LM002 - that's right, a Lambo SUV).
Chris Hafner on July 08, 2008 at 01:31 PM
Interesting foreshadowing on the LM002 - you'll be seeing a post on the Rambo Lambo in the next week or so. And it's hard to imagine it was the *slowest* car in the game.
I remember hearing about Stunt Driver but never played it. Was that the one where you were able to design your own courses?
Mochi Mochi on July 08, 2008 at 01:37 PM
I'm corvette agnostic. To my thinking the CERV III seems like an interesting and innovative car. The question that Chris raises is really even more interesting than the car itself. How closely do you have to stick to the corvette formula in order to call a new version by the same name.
It's a bit of a challenge really. I had a teacher in engineering school give the class an assignment to redesign the human species. It was a really problematic assignment. The thing that made it hard for me was that as soon as you start changing the human body in important ways - like employing an exoskeleton - it stops being human and becomes alien. Now while humanity might some day evolve a different look and structure - for now humans don't have exoskeletons.
This kind of thing is what a lot of post modern philosophy tries to examine and cope with. Go off and start reading Foucault, Derida, and Gilles Delueze... and you'll get how amazingly obtuse but engrossing these issues are. Delueze and his ideas of things not "being" but rather "becoming" are probably the best place to look if you want to understand this question and simultaneously dissolve your grasp on reality:)
So does shifting a car design from a front engine layout to a mid-engine layout mean that the car can no longer be called the same car? Personally I think its fine. I actually think that Delueze would agree with me, because he sees the smooth transition between objects in our universe. Delueze would probably make an argument about the semantics and semiotics of naming a car anything at all. And in eastern philosophy (rather than our stratified post-age-of-enlightenment western civilization) isn't everything "one" and "nothing" or "empty" at the same time?
The not so philosophic but perhaps pragmatic approach is that of the designer who asks "Why do I have to follow the rigid grounding of the past, if I can create something better from a clean or erased slate - tabula rasa?" A designer's guide in creating a design is based in part on challenging constraints of design.
But there are markets to consider. Are Corvette owners as single minded in their definition as many Porsche owners have been. That Porsche arian purity thing put a scarlet letter all over the 914 and the 924. Many Porsche purists still reject all the Porsche cars that do not have rear-engine-rear-wheel-drive layouts. I know it's insane, but that's the way it has been. If Porsche did not have to deal with the constraints that the Porsche buying population places on the cars, think what a great world it could be. Among other things if the "cost" of a Porsche wasn't part of the definition of the car we could have a great front-wheel-drive Porsche econobox. A people's porsche would be welcome in my books.
Chris I think you're on the right track. Mostly I don't care for concept cars, but in this case I make an absolute exception. The Corvette has been mired in its design history. Blow it up and start all over. I would bet you that almost no matter what you did with the car, if it the result was called a corvette, and that car could flatten most super-cars, corvette owners would adopt it as their own.
Chris Hafner on July 08, 2008 at 01:47 PM
Mochi Mochi: "The question that Chris raises is really even more interesting than the car itself."
Thanks, Mochi - that's kinda what I was going for. That and the opportunity to run a video of Test Drive III. :-)
Normally I don't care much for cars like this, show cars with all hype and promise, no relevance. But the Corvette question has bothered me for some time, and that's why the CERV III has a purchase on my imagination.
In the real world, I think Corvette loyalists would revolt against a dramatically different Corvette just as Porsche purists revolted against the 914, 924 and of course the 928. I still remember the fight over the Ford Mustang and Probe in the 1980s - the Probe was originally to be the new Mustang, as the "righter" sports coupe for the late 1980s, but the Mustang traditionalists went completely crazy at the idea of a four-cylinder, front-wheel-drive Mustang. So, the Probe was created and the two cars lived side-by-side.
Mochi Mochi on July 08, 2008 at 02:43 PM
One alternative reality for the Corvette would be if it ended up being the Ford GT40 but with a Chevy power-plant:) Do you think anyone would mind that? I know I would be ok with that.
rob the SVX guy on July 08, 2008 at 04:18 PM
... wow. You know, I've always liked this Corvette a lot, but now it will be forever associated with absolutely HORRIBLE midi music! Thanks Chris! hahaha. So could you turn the music OFF in that game? Please say yes.
Chris Hafner on July 08, 2008 at 04:26 PM
You could turn the music off, but you have to understand that at the time SoundBlasters were relatively new technology - at least for me. I'd initially played TD3 using the PC speaker, so when we finally upgraded to a SoundBlaster and real speakers, the ability to listen to that MIDI music was so wonderful that I didn't want to turn it off. Now, of course, I wonder what I was thinking. Even in the realm of awful MIDI music, these songs were among the most soul-destroying.
Ian on July 08, 2008 at 04:34 PM
Chris: "but the Mustang traditionalists went completely crazy at the idea of a four-cylinder, front-wheel-drive Mustang."
I think this is why I love the SVOs, and 2.3 Turbo swaps into various other Mustangs, so much. A 4-cylinder Mustang that can keep up with the V8s? It's so blasphemous that you can't help but like it.
David Colborne on July 08, 2008 at 08:22 PM
Chris:
Interesting foreshadowing on the LM002 - you'll be seeing a post on the Rambo Lambo in the next week or so. And it's hard to imagine it was the *slowest* car in the game.
I remember hearing about Stunt Driver but never played it. Was that the one where you were able to design your own courses?
---------------
Yes on both counts - you could make your own track, and yes, the LM002 was the slowest vehicle in the game. The alternatives, if I remember correctly, other than the LM002 and the Lancia was an Audi, a Countach, a Corvette, a Jaguar IMSA-style car, or a Porsche F1-style car. I want to say there were a few others mixed in there, but that was the spectrum they handed you.
Kasey Kagawa on July 08, 2008 at 08:35 PM
I may not be in with the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" Corvette die-hards who had to be lobbied to in order to get them to accept a change from pop-up headlights to a more aerodynamic design, but I do think that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the front-engined, rear-drive, V8 and fiberglass formula of the Corvette (except maybe the transverse leaf springs at the back). That said, I love the ideas that the CERV III has in it, and am eagerly awaiting the day that any car, Corvette included, has the audacity to put some of those ideas on the road. I do think that GM made a great decision in turning over much of the design work for the C6 to Pratt Miller. They basically asked them what they'd like to see in the new C6 and then implemented almost all of their suggestions, including the banishment of the pop-up headlights and making the whole car smaller and lighter than it was before, and it's made the car miles better.
Also, Test Drive III? The graphics on that are downright next-gen compared to Test Drive II. I spent many an afternoon after school driving PCH from Oregon to California in the California Challenge add-on pack with my Porsche 959. It also didn't have the hideous MIDI soundtrack that TD3 had.
Brian on July 08, 2008 at 09:06 PM
So, finally a mid engine corvette and the only place you can actually drive it is in an abandonware video game on youtube? Rediculous.
Obviously there's a strong design argument for putting the engine in the mid or rear. I just can't say I expected them to ever produce some of these at GM.
But yes, I've played this video game, and the CERV was the star by far.
Chris Hafner on July 09, 2008 at 08:23 AM
Okay, so I was seduced by that YouTube clip and fired up TD3 on my computer last night. And let me say ... it was fantastic! It's been at least a decade since I last played it, but I was still within four seconds of my all-time record on the first level. Of course, then I wrecked six times and ended the game on the second level. Oh, what a difference it makes when you know the course.
I realize nobody really cares, but I'm excited and have to tell somebody.
Frank Black on July 09, 2008 at 09:36 AM
I would assume that there's probably far more to radically changing the design than just deciding to do so. After all, one's suppliers and assembly lines and all the other junk a modern factory operation entails would no doubt complicate that. Not like mid-engine sports cars have been exactly barnburners in the sales department.
I'm not sure what the role of the 'enthusiast' crowd should be. On the one hand, they are probably a devoted, secure market for the car and also make for good advertising. OTOH, a car maker can't (?) make money just selling to enthusiasts; it has to broaden its appeal. I recall a lot of the enthusiast crowd was disappointed when the last generation of the Fox body Mustangs didn't go all muscular and super-aggressive in the design (Ford had even designated the alternative designs 'Stallone' and 'Schwarzenegger', while eventually adopting the 'Jenner' design).
So, eh, I dunno. You have to change with the times, but part of what keeps people buying Mustangs (and Corvettes and 911s and what-not) is that they still retain that "Mustang-ness", that sort of intangible look-and-feel that people associate with particular models. I'd wager an awful lot of people are buying the new VW Beetles, not because they are masterpieces of engineering, but because they like the way it reminds them of the old Beetle.
Mochi Mochi on July 09, 2008 at 10:59 AM
FrankBlack: "they still retain that "Mustang-ness", that sort of intangible look-and-feel that people associate with particular models"
Completely on target Frank. That's the challenge. Go too far and you don't have enough references for the audience that "loves the original". It "becomes" something completely different and the original audience misses "the old car"... like so many of us do here on CarLust. I started to write that if my Civic Hatch had a mid engine layout but retained the original look - I'd be very happy - but I realize that I might not. My car has a front engine FWD. If it changed too much I'd miss the original little car. So I'd need to have two - one original - and the other a crazy mid engine version. A mid-engine Civic Hatch would be a... Renault R5 Turbo - that would be cool but it could lose its "civic-ness"
Speaking of the R5 there's a guy selling (on Craigslist) a mint R5 in Glendale CA. $27500. But where does one find parts !
http://losangeles.craigslist.org/sfv/car/747161338.html
Ten on July 09, 2008 at 01:25 PM
Look at the overhang on that monster...
Ten on July 09, 2008 at 01:27 PM
Look at the overhang on that monster...
OldCarGuy on July 09, 2008 at 01:28 PM
Mochi Mochi: “Many Porsche purists still reject all the Porsche cars that do not have rear-engine-rear-wheel-drive layouts. I know it's insane, but that's the way it has been. If Porsche did not have to deal with the constraints that the Porsche buying population places on the cars, think what a great world it could be. Among other things if the "cost" of a Porsche wasn't part of the definition of the car we could have a great front-wheel-drive Porsche econobox. A people's Porsche would be welcome in my books.”
We were nearly on our way there, but Porsche’s attempt to acquire 50% ownership of VW has been blocked:
http://www.leftlanenews.com/updated-volkswagen-law-upheld-porsche-denied-from-buying-vw.html
Personally, I’ve not had much interest in Corvettes since the plastic bumper was introduced. But for what it’s worth I think Chevy would have to build a mid-engined sports car under a different model name. Just as the 911 has always been a rear-engine automobile, the Corvette will always be a front-engine car. It is what it is. Similarly, people like me will never warm up to the front-engined “New Beetle.”
Frank Black on July 09, 2008 at 02:29 PM
Come to think of it, there was a recent example of not paying enough attention to the history of a car: The recent reincarnation of the Pontiac GTO. IIRC, it was a rebadged Holden. By all accounts, it was a superb car for the price. But it was so totally anonymous in its looks that it didn't do very well, even after GM added the (fake) hood scoop -- which was such a minor styling cue anyway, it's not like it would help.
OTOH, Ford's Thunderbird redesign kinda suffered from the opposite problem. It looked really great in its retro way, but was supposedly overpriced for what you got.
seguin on July 09, 2008 at 05:13 PM
The LS series V-8 is the best engineered powerplant on the planet. It doesn't respond to technical gimmickry, it just provides outstanding horsepower per pound. Not to mention you can get great gas mileage out of that LS/6-speed combo.
Really, the LS is MUCH better than a turbo V-6.
Chris Hafner on July 10, 2008 at 08:47 AM
You guys are probably all right, that the tradition of the car means something, especially to the people who want to buy one. If somebody wants a Corvette, they have an imagine in their mind of what it should be. And that's fair - though I don't think the Nissan 350Z really resembles the original 240Z all that much, and it seems to be doing okay.
I still think it's a bit sad, though. Taking the Corvette as an example, the Corvette changed dramatically through its first 15 years of life. At what point is it not okay to innovate? And isn't it sad that better ways to help a car do its fundamental mission can't be considered just because it's traditional to do it the old way?
Anyway, Chevrolet undercut my basic argument, since the current Corvette is smaller, lighter, and extremely capable.
vic on July 10, 2008 at 08:55 AM
The shot of the car from the front/above looks an awful lot like the Acura NSX, doesn't it?
Personally, while that vette was pretty cool, there was an Oldsmobile concept in the mid-80's called something like "Aerotech" that I always thought was a somewhat more elegant design. I think the only thing they ever used from these cars is (sort of) the hidden c-pillars (on the Olds) for the "not your father's" Cutlass coupes that were everywhere you looked in the late 80's. Handsome cars, but awfully dated-looking anymore (when you can find one).