Jalopnik Reveals Secret Mystery Cadillac Key Fob That May Be the C8’s in Disguise

Early rumors of the C8 mid-engine Corvette often came with a disclaimer that what we might be seeing could actually be a mid-engine sports car that would debut as a Cadillac instead of a Corvette. But we knew too many people working on the C8 to be fooled that it was an either/or proposition. It’s always been our theory that a Cadillac mid-engine sports car was also coming, possibly a year or two after the introduction of the Corvette ME.

But now Jalopnik has turned up something really interesting today that leads us to believe that work on the Cadillac could be coming along faster than what’s been revealed so far. Jalopnik is calling it the “Mystery Cadillac Key” and it appears to have applications to a mid-engine car.

The palm-shaped key fob has the Cadillac logo on one side and when flipped over the buttons reveal the ability to open the hatches on both the front and back of the vehicle. On a mid-engine car, this would be the “frunk” which offers storage up front, while a rear “trunk” release would allow access to the engine compartment and what could also be a secondary storage area. A button on the bottom of the fob appears to reference a convertible top operation as well.

We think the inclusion of both a frunk and trunk release buttons on the fob is good news for C8 Corvette watchers who are concerned with the amount of storage space that will be available in a mid-engine sports car. It seems unlikely that a button would be offered on the key fob to open the engine compartment if all that was back there was the engine (even more so on the Coupe version which may have viewable engine compartment). However, if you’re walking out of a grocery store, using the key fob to open the rear hatch to access another storage compartment makes a lot more sense.

As Cadillac doesn’t currently offer a convertible, Jalopnik found the inclusion of the convertible top button interesting, to say the least. The story is that the person who leaked the key fob to Jalopnik doesn’t work for GM and was told by a friend that it’s for the follow-up to the XLR. The XLR was the Cadillac sports car built in Bowling Green alongside the Corvette from 2004-2009 so technically that would be true as any mid-engined Cadillac would also be built in Bowling Green.

We’ve seen the C8 Corvette prototypes spotted with both the frunk and rear hatch open previously although the frunk photo was taken with the heavy camouflage over the car while the second image shows the C8’s rear hatch up.

Source:
Jalopnik

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