The optics on “brand America” are currently being assailed. An interesting time, then, for General Motors to renew its interest in the European market, although the reasoning is sound.
Leading the charge is Cadillac’s entry into Formula One (it’s already competitive in world endurance racing, and the Celestiq luxury EV is burnishing the company’s image elsewhere), but also critical is a new push for the Corvette.
For those outside of the US, this is America’s sports car—a traditionally blue-collar hero that has fired imaginations and been hymned in pop culture (Less Than Zero, Boogie Nights, and one of Prince’s biggest hits, to name just three examples), but a car that has mostly taken a “route one” approach to high performance.
Well, that’s changing. The eighth generation messed with the formula by moving that famous V-8 power unit—a staple of internal combustion for decades—from the front to the middle. That’s a very European engineering maneuver, never mind that the father of the original ’Vette, the brilliant Zora Arkus-Duntov, had been pushing for that configuration as far back as the early ’60s. (Check out the CERV I and CERV II concept cars for proof, the latter going further still by also featuring four-wheel drive.)