Core77

[Cyberdemon]

From the CFD images in that gallery, it looked more like they were routing the rear fender vent through to the taillight vent, presumably to cut a little drag (dumping some high pressure air into the low pressure wake). If they are actually going to the brakes and the transaxle, then they are more "functional" than functional. Rear brakes don't need cooling on a road car. In the unlikely event the transaxle needed cooling, you'd use an oil cooler, since blowing air over the case isn't going to do much. Regardless of whether these vents actually direct air anywhere, they are for looks more than anything else.

It might be for aeroas well, but from what I've read their is a dedicated heat exchanger for the oil cooler for the transaxle in the back and one of those vents is dumping air through that radiator.

Point being, they're doing *something* even if that something may be not that important. Ex. The Corvette has had rear brake cooling since the C5 Z06, so it may not be needed on a road car, but there are plenty of Corvettes that do see the track, even if it's not the majority. They're not stick on gills like people throw on the rear quarter window of their Mustang to "cool the glass" if you know what I mean.

[Scott Bennett]

Even on a race car, rear brake cooling is pretty unnecessary. But yeah, agreed, at least they do something. There are few things that annoy me more than fake vents.

[J6Studios]

ANYTHING is better than the old vette. That super ugly blocky rear end is so lame!
The designer of that should be flogged!!

I'm liking the direction of the new Stingray.

[Cyberdemon]

http://www.autoblog.com/2013/01/19/firs ... s-1-1-mil/

Thought this was interesting...not the fact that the car auctioned for more than a Veyron, but that all of the money will be donated to CCS. Does that mean all the CCS students now get to buy Corvettes? Nice little gesture for the design community.

[mo-i]

In the light of the "fake vents" discussion" I got to ask you how this could have gone down unnoticed:



It is very obviously pretty horrible at pretending to be an air intake, isn't it?

mo-i

Alfa did a scudetto like this on the 145 and it was so awful that owners did all kinds of things to it, to "improve":


*

[Scott Bennett]

I noticed it, whoever did the render got lazy and filled it in. That whole front grill isn't fake in real life.

[Generatewhatsnext]

None of the aero features on the new Vette are fake - they're all air in or air/pressure out - it's a nicely engineered car (albeit heavy handed like most have commented). As long as it attracts my Dad, they did their job, but everyone I've talked with about this car mentions the same gripe - Camaro taillights...wtf? Even my GM friends in the RenCen and out in Warren don't know what happened there. I'm not crazy about the forced differentiation between this C7 and the C6 - take the C pillar for instance; why force some Nissan GT-R into it, the glass hatch was useful space and the fastback look had brand cache.

Someone mentioned the obligatory comparison test between the new Vette and the Viper - there won't be a new bodied ZR1 for a few years so they already tested the outgoing ZR1 against the new Viper and the ZR1 spanked the Chrysler Group's best offering - but the Viper IS worlds better than the old Viper so it'll sell just fine...it's hard to beat a ZR1.

[Generatewhatsnext]

I take back my side 3/4 window C pillar thoughts, the latest AutoWeek came and there's a great side view poster in it - the window form is more Aston Martin than Nissan GT-R...and the whole car is growing on me the more I look at it!

Maybe they didn't just get my Dad's approval...maybe they have mine!! Does that mean I'm old? Uh oh.

[rkuchinsky]

Only thing I notice in the real life pics compared to the renders is the real life panel gaps are huge.

R

[Mr-914]

Richard: I remember reading about previous GM products: "The panel gaps are big enough for a horse to make love to." Like a rock, somethings prove difficult to change...

[dziner82]

loved the stingray in person!
still dont like all the black vents on a colored car, but thats an easy fix. from the photos i was very suspect of the rear end design, but in person i think its cool. as someone else stated its very "in the moment" design, i dont think its TIMELESS necessarily, but niether was the IROC camaro or diablo, or countach, and thats what i love about those cars.

also looks much cmaller than the C5 and C6 vette when you walk up to it.

the main thing that worried me though was the amount of fender gap in the rear especially
base model BMW 3 series or any german sedan really, all had less fender gap... i dont get it. I suppose you could make the case if it were live axle musclecar that you need the travel for launching, but the vette has grown past that right? so why so much gap??

[Mr-914]

dziner: Remember, this is a fiberglass bodied production car. No one else does that today.

[Brett_nyc]

http://www.coolhunting.com/design/inter ... tte-c7.php

decent interview over at Coolhunting with the designer Tom Peters. Apparently this design concept came before the current Camaro and influenced a lot of it.

[Scott Bennett]

dziner: Remember, this is a fiberglass bodied production car. No one else does that today.

Lotus! And their panel gaps aren't much better than this, but they are working out of a shed in Norfolk, so you can't expect much.

[powaz]

Kind of a mess, in that overstyled way GM is so good at (like the Volt)....

It's still too much of a clear descendant from this:

Bingo. It's like they tried to Bengalize it to cover up the fact that the design hasn't really changed since 1983. Which is fine, but take a page out of the 911 book guys! It's not that hard! Well, OK it is, but still. What happened to the GM of the late 80's? I've really been looking at those things the past couple years. While I'd never drive one, they actually had really nice, clean, understated lines... sortof like the one pictured above.

It seemed like since '53 or whenever it was, the Corvette redesign was able to somehow redefine the American Muscle Car and capture the American automotive zeitgeist. I think that the Viper really did that in, when did the show car hit '89? The 'Vette team should have taken a big dump in their pants when they saw that and had something truly competitive (design wise anyway) in '93. Hell, even Mustang had something ready by '93. And actually, they may have, I do recall a few cutting edge Corvette concepts back in the day, maybe '96 or so? Even the early show cars seemed promising, but possibly watered down by GM's world famous craptastic management. Who knows. It just seemed like it was time for a truly new Corvette. This one is certainly not it.