General Motors’s UK Designers Imagine the Future of the Corvette

• General Motors has launched a new advanced design studio in the United Kingdom, which has created this streamlined Corvette concept car.

• The Corvette concept pairs a low-slung body with classic design cues like a split rear windshield.

• This concept will be one of several Corvette concepts being revealed this year, along with a GMC concept from the UK studio.

Just like bald eagles, a mid-afternoon baseball game in the middle of summer, and a supersized Coca-Cola from McDonald’s, the Chevrolet Corvette is an American staple. But what if the iconic sports car was designed in the United Kingdom instead? General Motors just opened a new advanced design studio outside Birmingham, England, and to christen the new space, the automaker revealed a futuristic Corvette design study from its U.K.-based team.

The new facility, in Royal Leamington Spa, launches as General Motors gets ready to start selling the Corvette in the U.K. and the rest of Europe. The studio will be led by Julian Thomson, who penned the first-generation Lotus Elise, styled the Land Rover LRX concept, which previewed the Evoque, and oversaw Jaguar’s advanced design department until 2021. The new 24,584-square-foot space will house over 30 designers for the advanced design team, which typically gazes five to 10 years into the future of automotive innovation.

To that end, the British team cooked up a vision of a futuristic Corvette. GM says there is no production intent behind this concept, with the designers instead focusing on reimagining what the Corvette will look like in the coming decades. The concept is clearly derived from the modern era of the Corvette, with its rakish, mid-engined proportions, but makes a clear nod to the Corvette’s legendary history with its split windshields at both the front and rear.

The bodywork is clean, divided into a distinct, smooth white upper section and a black lower portion where cavernous intakes channel air through underbody tunnels to create downforce sans gaudy wings. GM hinted that the concept is electric, claiming that the battery is integrated into the vehicle’s structure.

The body is made via additive manufacturing, another way of saying 3-D printing, and there are dramatic gullwing doors. Overall, the concept stretches 183.8 inches long, about the same size as the current C8 Corvette, but measures nearly 10 inches wider and around eight inches shorter from top to bottom. The cabin is minimalist, with sleek chairs molded into the structure of the car and a rectangular, yoke-style steering wheel.

The Corvette concept seen here is just the start. GM says this concept is part of a global design project that will involve studios around the world and will be joined by more Corvette concepts later in 2025.

The company also teased a GMC concept that will be shown later this year; it was designed in collaboration with the GMC-specific team in Detroit. The GMC concept appears to show a boxy design, with rectilinear forms and a three-line motif in the headlights and taillights.

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