Look at this new Z06 version of the current Chevrolet Corvette and you may wonder how much even of the spirit of the original muscle car remains. No, it’s not as if I’m expecting any parts commonality between the first, a staggering 70 years old this year, and this latest one, but we’d become used to certain hallmarks over more recent years, hallmarks that seemed to provide the very essence of what the Corvette was all about.
An engine at the opposite end of the car to the driven wheels, obviously. A rumbling crossplane crank V8 engine, of course. A manual gearbox option, naturally. And that idiosyncratic transverse leaf springing too.
You will find precisely none of those features in this car. To ‘Vette traditionalists, the 2020 launch of this eighth-generation model must have been reminiscent of the days when mid-engined cars first started turning up at the Brickyard in the early 1960s to be greeted by a chorus of disdain and contempt from the die-hards who’d only ever seen front-engined machines race there.
