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#corvettes are like the one american car i'd kind of like to drive
caassette · 3 months
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here's my ranking of every corvette model purely on aesthetics, from C1 to C8
C1
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Obviously, it's old. It looks old. There's essentially zero hard lines, as every piece of it is curved and connects smoothly without any angles. You can see the front-engine design that pushes the cabin towards the rear, which would be the defining visual feature imo for the corvette line as time goes on. Kind of timeless tho.
C2
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This thing looks space age as fuck. I don't think I would fit in that cabin at 6'2", but they've leaned even harder on pushing the seats back about as far as they could go and giving what looks like fully half of the body, the front half, over to the engine. They've also kept a lot of the swoopiness and smoothness in the design, but you can start to see some hard lines on the side panel towards the front wheel, and an actual honest-to-god angle on the A pillar. I feel like this aged worse than the C1, but that's mostly my personal preference.
C3
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Now we're fuckin talking !!! To me, this is some top shelf corvette design. The cabin is pushed back and the swoops are still present over top of the wheel wells, but they've gone for a more aggressive and angular front bumper design and some choice chrome.
C4
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Flopp....to me, this is like the catfish camaro; it's kind of neat, but it looks nothing like the rest of the generations. This is like, there's no swoops. Or there is, but it's in the wrong places. They've taken out that gorgeous grille up front and hidden the vents on the side. I don't like it very much.
C5
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LETS GOOOOOOO i love this one. Maybe I'm biased cuz this is the model I grew up seeing, but they brought back the smooth flowing curves and reimagined that side panel line from the C2. I wish it was just a touch more angular on the front bumper, maybe even borrowing elements from the C4 design (but ideally C3), but to me this is a huge return to form after the C4 flop. I know it looks kind of weird honestly and it's probably not for everyone, but I like it.
C6
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This is textbook, truly stunning, a masterclass in modern corvette design. They dialed it back a bit from the frankly offensive curvature (even though...I love it...I know it's too much for most people) of the C5, and re-incorporated a bigass intake to the front. They've kept the C2, C3, and C4 elements I love and combined them with an evolved C5 chassis to create what is, in my opinion, the greatest 'vette look since the iconic C3.
C7
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Ok so bad take maybe but to me the C7 is where we're starting to slip. It looks good, don't get me wrong -- it's angular, it's sharp, it looks mean and fast and all the things you want from an expensive car. But it's starting to look less like a Corvette, to me. There's still the front engine position, but look how much the cabin has crawled forward since the C2. Since even the C5. And where's the swoopies? The curves? This looks kind of like if a Camaro and a Ferrari had a baby -- which is kind of distinctly far from what a Corvette should look like. To me.
C8
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And there is it...the C8.
Let me tell you a story. My grandfather, may he rest in peace, owned a C3. It was in brown, which is kind of the worst color, but a beautiful machine nonetheless. And my father, his son, drove it with startling regularity. Can you blame him? If I'd had access to a Corvette in my teen years I would have driven it just to drive it! He loved it so much that he totaled it, and I never got to see it in my own lifetime.
I say all this to say: my dad knows what a Corvette looks like. He spent a huge chunk of time in his formative years driving one. Through my childhood he would often tell me stories, mostly the one of him totaling it, of him driving it. And the first time he saw this car, he asked me what it was.
BECAUSE IT DOES NOT LOOK LIKE A CORVETTE.
The swoops; the long nose; the engine in front of the driver -- even the side vents have been repurposed as additional air intake and shoved way back! If you squint, it kind of resembles the C7. But that's cuz they're lying: that classic bubble cockpit doesn't cover just the seats, but also the engine. This isn't an FR car. This thing looks practically indistinguishable from anything coming out of Maranello.
They've said the C9 is going to be built on the same base as the C8, which is pretty disheartening. I hope once the line switches over to being electric, they're able to make it look more like it's supposed to.
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