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Chevrolet finally recognized its least-well-kept secret last week: a mid-engined Corvette C8 arrives. After a closer inspection, the engineers behind the Chevrolet Corvette 2020 nodded thoughtfully to the Corvette's godfather.
Zora Arkus-Duntov was the chief engineer of the early Corvette and the person most responsible for transforming the sports car into an American performance powerhouse. Arkus-Duntov is featured on prototype cars in the form of small graphics on the mirror and the door. Chevrolet brought prototypes to New York last week, and Corvette Blogger spotted the graphs and reported his discovery Friday. The graphics feature a silhouette of Arkus-Duntov, who not only defended the American sports car, but has long insisted that the Corvette become a mid-engine car.
Zora Arkus-Duntov on the prototype of the Chevrolet C8 Corvette 2020
Arkus-Duntov also created a number of mid-engine prototypes, but none of them was enough to convince Chevrolet to move radically to a mid-engine configuration. Twenty-three years after his death, Chevrolet is ready to fulfill the dream of the engineer. The small tribute that the stickers represent is incredibly thoughtful and shows that the development team did not take lightly the passage of the Corvette to a central engine layout. Still, there may not be just stickers to honor Arkus-Duntov.
General Motors has registered the "Zora" brand twice in the last five years. The first took place in 2014, when we first examined Corvette mules with a mid-engine, and the second in January. According to rumors, one of the variants of the 2020 Corvette C8 will bear the name of the engineer, perhaps the high-performance model that can produce 1,000 horses. GM has also adopted the brand name in several other countries of the world, which clearly shows its intention to use that name.
Chevrolet Corvette 2020
It is interesting to note that GM has not obtained the name in the United States since it did not file a declaration of use document with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. This document describes how the constructor plans to use the name. In January, we had assumed that the new Chevrolet deposit of the name "Zora" was probably an extension of the automaker's plan to unveil the car this year.
Chevrolet will unveil the mid-engine Corvette 2020 on July 18th.
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