Mid-Engined Rotary Corvette

[Kitdy]

Well, found this originally on Autoblog and got linked to The Telegraph.

Basically, it's what the name of the thread is, pretty neat eh? I suggest you visit the links as I'm too lazy to recount the story here.

They produced a four-rotor and two-rotor engines, the two-rotor being four-litre GMCRE2.

Pretty damn cool! Pics below.

[2ndclasscitizen]

Why'd they call it a Corvette? It was doomed to fail for that reason.

[JorisP]

Why'd they call it a Corvette? It was doomed to fail for that reason.

It was doomed from the word "rotor"... Just as the MB C111, the NSU Ro80, first mondial oil crisis willing.
Which is a crying shame, seen a rotary engine is a LOT more logical than a piston engine. Less wear, less moving parts, etc. It just needs some (well, a lot of) development.
More power to Mazda!

[NicFromLA]

Wankels the lot of you.

[Falcon500]

I was just reading about this so its strange it turned up in here.

As a concept it was well ahead of its time the quad rotor used was claimed to give almost as much performance as the 396 where the 2 rotor entry level was apprently the same performance as the 327.

Zora Duntov was very supportive of the car and the auto show's proved the car might of been popular but I think its for the best it didnt see the green light.

The Red one (picturted) was the 2 rotor where the Silver one with Gey interior was built by Duntov's team in America (The origonal concept was outsourced to Italy the 2 rotor). Is there any picture's of the digital dash they had? that was an intresting peice of equipment too.

[NSXType-R]

That's real cool. The front reminds me a lot of an Alpine.

Never would have caught on, but doesn't make it any less interesting than the Mercedes C111.

[Ferrer]

I think it's a good looking car.

But changing the Corvette from a front engined galssfibre V8 engined car to a mid engined steel rotary powered car might have been suicide (comerically), especially with the oil crisis just around the corner.

[NSXType-R]

I think it's a good looking car.

But changing the Corvette from a front engined galssfibre V8 engined car to a mid engined steel rotary powered car might have been suicide (comerically), especially with the oil crisis just around the corner.

Which is why they never made it?

[cmcpokey]

GM's brief flirtation with the Wankel rotary engine led to two of the most famous Corvette show cars of the seventies. Mitchell though that a smaller, mid-engine Corvette, powered by a compact rotary engine, might replace both the contemporary Corvette and the Opel GT. MacKichan, by then a chief of Advanced Design, headed the project, which began in early 1971 and came to be known as XP-897GT. He picked the Dino 246GT as his target for size and proportion. Designers Dick Finnegan and Otto Soeding penned the actual shape, which both derived from and improved on the aluminum-bodied, XP-895. To complete the car in time for a new product presentatiom to the board of directors in June 1972, "Mac" arranged for Italian Coachbuilder Pininfarina to construct the body on a Porsche 914 chassis that Duntov's staff had shortened and otherwise modified. Pininfarina finished the Rotary Corvett in time, but the car somehow missed the board meeting anyway and didn't make its public debut intil the Frankfurt Auto Show in September 1973.

In the winter of 1071-72, with the Italians working feverishly to complete XP-897GT, Duntov decided to design a big-block version. he assigned his assistant Gib Hufstader the task of mating two of the experimental rotary engines together--for a total of four rotors and 583 cubic inches--in another of the XP-882 chassis, still using the existing, modified E-body drivetrain. It was an incredibly complex task, but Hufstader completed it in only two months.

Styling the car proved equally complicated. Mitchell believed that the widely copied Kamm tail of the production corvette had grown stale and cliched, and wanted to experiment with gently tapered rear ends, like those of the Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union Grand Prix cars of the thirties. The trouble was, as Dr. Kamm had pointed out back then, that tapered tails only look aerodynamic; unless they are made impractically long, they actually increase lift and dragby increasing the surface area exposed to turbulant airflow. Henry Haga, who then headed Chevrolet Studio Three, knew this, and the conflict between aerodynamics and aesthetics led to at least one explosive arguement with Mitchell.

According to John Lamm (who, incidently, is not related to Mike Lamm), Haga finally gave in. "Unless we try and can say we've tried it," the studio chief told Jerry Palmer, then his assistant, "we can;t say it doesnt work." They developed a double-ended body, based on the 1970 show car but more graceful, with folding gull-wing doors. Paul Bracq, then BMW's design chief, told Road & Track European correspondant Paul Frere that the four-rotor Corvette was the most brilliantly designed car he had seen for a long time.

The four-rotor Corvette returned for one more season on the show circuit; Mitchell rescued it from storage in 1975, installed a 400 cubic inch Chevrolet small block, and renamed it the Aerovette. General Motors still has the car.

--Taken from Corvette: An American Classic by John F. Katz, Friedman Publishing 1993

[NSXType-R]

Does anyone have pictures of the 4 rotor concept?

I know it was in silver.

Motortrend had a section on it. I might scan it later.

[cmcpokey]

Does anyone have pictures of the 4 rotor concept?

I know it was in silver.

Motortrend had a section on it. I might scan it later.

XP-882 - Google Image Search