The Worst Thing About a Possible Corvette SUV? It’s Too Late for it to Be Any Good

For the last decade, it seems like every lull in the automotive news cycle is accompanied by rumors of a Mid-engine Corvette or a Corvette SUV. We’ve usually brushed off these reports as gossip or click bait, but we do currently live in a world where the V8 sits behind the cockpit of America’s Sports Car, and the right people have joined the ranks of those crying “wolf” on a ‘Vette SUV, so maybe it’s time to start checking the size of the feet under our dear grandmothers’ crocheted blanket.

When the calendar turned over to December, there was already speculation and ugly renders running rampant in the vehicular corners of the ‘net, claiming that a very not-a-Corvette Corvette was indeed in the pipeline over at the RenCen. While it is always fun to repost such things to watch our ‘Vette crazy readers – rightfully – freak out like they just heard the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast, things took a dramatic turn to the serious when one of the most trusted names in our field led credence to the existence of a Corvette Sub Brand lurking on the horizon.

A Corvette Performance SUV Doesn’t Have to Be a Bad Thing

Photo Credit: General Motors Design / Instagram

Since Porsche took the plunge and forced a high-riding wagon on its rabid fanbase twenty years ago, the “performance SUV” has gained serious momentum, reaching a fever pitch now that even Enzo Ferrari’s proud racing company has bent to the financial pressure to offer Prancing Horse on stilts. AMG and BMW’s hallowed M division have been fielding entrants for years, and Chrysler, or whatever they are calling themselves this month, has been shoving 6.1, 6.4, and Hellcat Hemis in Durangos and Grand Cherokees since 2006. Even Aston Martin and Lamborghini are out there tacking their respective badges on Liver King’d Kia Sorentos.

While these physics-defying sleds originally came under enthusiast fire as poser mobiles that only served to make a quick buck and sully the reputation of once-great companies, they’ve become legitimate performers. In its new Turbo GT guise, the 4,972-pound Cayenne is capable of lapping VIR quicker than dedicated road course rats like the Nissan GT-R Track Edition, 2011 Corvette Z06 Carbon, Lamborghini Murciélago SV, and in-house sports cars like the Cayman GT4 and 911 Carrera T, while providing similar returns in the all-important “smiles per gallon” category.

The bottom-line benefits of selling tall ‘roid-raging hatchbacks is too appealing for GM to stay on the sidelines, but the possibility of acceptable driving dynamics, out-and-out speed, and versatility that could be packaged in a hypothetical Corvette SUV makes a ton (or two) of sense to enthusiasts, too. If the General would have followed Porsche to market with a Corvette Utility Vehicle in the early aughts, we could be heading into Gen-IV of such a vehicle with highlights including LS6, LS7/9, and LT4-powered variants. Sure, the LS2 Trail Blazer SS and the new Escalade V are sweet, but trucks that were designed to be lithe and fast from the get-go would have been much better; throw in the benefit of continual improvement and we’d be looking at a range of beautifully developed family/week-day rides for Corvette devotees everywhere by now!

If such a creation is truly going to come to pass this time, we can’t help but think that GM management has officially waited too long and is about to miss the mark as bad as their golf buddies in Dearborn did with the Mach-E. The theoretical previous-gen Corvette SUVs listed above don’t seem like they would have been that bad. In fact, just imagining something that is capable of 1. Hauling the whole family AND the dog, 2. Going out in any weather condition, 3. Going offroad, or at least alleviating the persistent on-road anxiety caused by the threat of “nose scrape.” It actually sounds like the perfect complement to the car we all love; it doesn’t have to be blasphemous at all! But, all of those concessions hinge on the fact that drivers would interact with these vehicles the same way that they do their Corvettes, it would feature the familiar and uniquely wonderful character of the LS and LT V8, and it would the sound like a Corvette. Simply put, the only way to make a real Corvette SUV is by including the 8-cylinder heart and soul of the genuine article.

The Harsh Reality of 2023 and Beyond

Photo Credit: SRK Designs

Unfortunately, any Corvette spinoff, be it a sedan, SUV, or likely both, will hit the market with an electric powertrain as GM ushers its V8 lifeblood out to pasture. This immediately removes any inherent “Corvette-ness” from the equation, and all that’s left is a silent crossover that will never be a Corvette in anything but its marketing material, no matter how fast or powerful they make it.

All of this SU’Vette talk comes on the heels of decades of GM teasing Cadillac’s return to its “Standard of the World” roots with breathtaking flagship concept teases like the Sixteen, Ciel, and Escala. While the production side of Caddy Inc. left hopeful fans hanging with lackluster stand-in products like the front-wheel-drive XTS. Now that the company’s electric skateboard chassis is ready for prime time, the company has done an immediate and complete 180, going all-in on the bespoke $300,000 [eyeroll] Celestiq. Cadillac diehards took this course of action as a slap in the face, and while your irrelevant middle-class author would rather see a Blackwing-motivated flagship from the Wreath-less Crest, a quiet, smooth, aloof, 1-speed plug-in powertrain actually seems rather ideal for luxury/ chauffeured around town applications.

The second that electricity takes the reins of enthusiast driving machines, though, everything that we hold dear as drivers, things like feedback, engagement, and the almost lifelike individual personalities that different engine configurations provide, all wind up on a milk carton. The powers that be are trying to introduce an automotive hellscape marketplace where every car is mechanically indistinguishable. The 911 vs. Corvette rivalry will go from an edge-of-your-seat grudge match between the growling low-end torque of a pushrod V8 and the high-revving, have-to-keep-it-on-the-power nature of a flat-six to a faceoff between heavy, whirring battery packs that both deliver power the exact same way, take no skill to operate, can’t be modified, and are purchased based solely on which shell and interior combo the buyer finds most attractive. It is boring to think about and worse to write about, but it’s the A-to-A driving hobbyists who have the most to lose in this scenario.

What We Can Do

The only way we as enthusiasts can fight back is by taking our buying power elsewhere, even if that means buying used for as long as it takes. Our only move is to use our financial leverage to entice governments and big corporations – that begrudgingly need us plebs in order to stay afloat – to stop meddling with the natural forces of an economic marketplace that has been resisting their “electric revolution” from the beginning. Regardless of how the media tries to paint the EV niche, the truth is just 3% of new cars sold in the US last year were electrics – and 74% of those came from Tesla, leaving GM and friends to fight over a .78% slice of the new car pie. To create natural (read, real) demand, a superior product needs to be introduced; nobody wanted a flip phone once the iPhone hit shelves, but what car companies are trying to sling is much more like New Coke, the Zune, or LaserDiscs than the industry and world-changing product that they are spending billions to gaslight the public about.

Regardless of our disinterest as consumers, C-suites industry-wide are sticking to their fully electric by 2030-35 business plan; the hope being that one of them will inadvertently stumble into the magic bullet that truly elevates the plug-in automobile above what’s sitting in the garages of Average Joe’s and Jane’s garages around the developed world, and even the most average of those cars have the benefit of more than a century of optimization on their side.

While the normies that make up a vast majority of the population and make all of the difference when it comes to major societal shifts are on our side, it is crucial that serious drivers resist the temptation brought by manufacturers who are tirelessly baking “incredible performance” into their slate of upcoming four-wheeled appliances. Keep this in mind; electric motors might have made a 576-horse Kia hatchback and an 8-second Croatian Hypercar possible. BUT if we say that howling through the gears of a C8 Z06 at 8,600 RPM is full-on intercourse, then the thrill provided by even the most mental EVs would be a silent pornographic movie, at best. They’ll get you to the same place, maybe even faster (unless it’s too hot, too cold, the charge is less than full, or some other minor inconvenience turns them into gigantic paperweights), but all of the intimacy and joy will be noticeably absent, leaving the participant with a completely hollow experience.

As stated above, and even if the public has yet to embrace them, electric powertrains do make a lot of sense for luxury cars, commuters, pure drag cars, and other sizable chunks of the market, but they flat-out don’t work when they are applied to “driver’s cars” that are desirable because of their intangible engagement and communication characteristics, long-distance travelers, trucks that actually do truck things, or as a shortcut to turning sports cars into enthusiast-acceptable SUVs.

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