Chevy teases midengine C8 Corvette by showing off its steering wheel
It's kind of a weird steering wheel.
Right now, automotive enthusiasts are hungry for midengine Corvette content. But with the reveal still a week away, everyone is pretty much taking what they can get. Chevy teased the car itself when it announced the date of its reveal, but we haven't seen much more from them until today.
Chevrolet on Friday published the first official image of the 2020 C8 Corvette's steering wheel. It's closer to the steering wheel of, say, the Ford GT than the outgoing Corvette. There are only two spokes on the wheel, each moving downwards in sort of a flipped manner to the Corvette logo's flags. There are audio controls below each spoke, and some limited switches on the spokes themselves. The massive open space above the wheel hub looks kind of funny, but that might be necessary if the Corvette has a large gauge cluster, digital or otherwise.
Chevrolet also put out a picture of each prior generation's steering wheel to give people an idea of how much it's changed over time. The first- and second-generation Corvette wheels were about as straightforward as can be, but those designs are much harder to replicate in the modern day, thanks to pesky airbags and the like. The last time we saw a two-spoke wheel from the Corvette, it was in the C4, which had a fun digital dashboard filling in all the open space.
The least attractive wheel of the bunch belongs to the C5 Corvette, with its airbag looking like a very obvious goiter. Then again, that was also the low point in the Corvette's interior design, with barely shaped plastic panels that basically became a meme in the automotive enthusiast community before memes became a "thing."
It'll be interesting to see where Chevrolet takes the Corvette's interior next, given the radical changes happening everywhere else on the car -- like, you know, removing the engine from the front. We'll know what's up for sure when the C8 Corvette makes its debut on July 18 at 7:30 p.m. PT, and you can follow along with us on GM's own livestream.
