Autoblog has released these pictures of what appears to be the mid engined car that’s been in the rumour mill for an awful long time now. Jalopnik has put forward that it looks awfully close to being a Lamborghini Gallardo, and it’s not a big leap to see that. It would make sense to either make the car look like something else, or use a proven chassis to test a new drivetrain.
Codenamed by GM as “The Emperor”, it’s unclear wether it’ll be branded under Chevrolet or Cadillac.
The main rumors have been that it will be a Corvette, but that throws up a bunch of questions. Given the Corvette Z06 has been marketed as a supercar already by Chevy, actually releasing a Corvette supercar would be an admission/demonstration that the ZO6 is not a supercar. On top of that, the car not being a traditional Corvette by layout would surely infuriate generations of Corvette loyalists.
At the same time Cadillac is not a brand anyone would naturally associate with a supercar, and that would present a serious challenge when it comes to branding.
Given the heritage of performance cars I suspect it will come out with a Chevrolet badge and it’s own new model name. I just hope it gets a real name rather than the world market friendly alphanumeric soup designations for models so many car companies foist upon us.
There’s good reason for the hype already over this car. Having seen what GM has achieved with the Camaro and the Corvette, this should be spectacular.
You can see all the spy shots of the GM prototype at Autoblog.
