Corvette supercar spy shots

Is this Corvette's answer to the Ford GT?

You wait for one American mid-engined supercar to turn up and then two arrive at once and all that. Yes, on the day we were just talking about Ford gearing up to exploit the new GT's freshly earned Le Mans glory it seems GM may be working on a riposte. This is an interesting idea; the partisan divide between GM and Ford is one characterised by the muscle car battle between Camaro and Mustang but it looks like the two are squaring up to carry it through into the supercar arena.

Even PH's crack spy shot snipers admit this was a difficult car to snap, the accompanying blurb from the agency saying the elusive test mule has rarely been seen in daylight and these pictures were papped from a distance of over a mile using a 50.3 megapixel DSLR. With a very big lens. The pictures are correspondingly grainy, the car itself still heavily disguised.

But, running alongside a C7 Corvette, it would seem this is indeed a mid-engined supercar, complete with a flat rear deck and buttresses running up to the roofline. Whether they're simply prototype bolt-ons or a reflection of the final design the rear lights would appear to be similar to the C7, a recognisable lighting 'signature' a likely carry over to help reinforce the Corvette heritage.

Ford, as it is very keen to tell us, has mid-engined heritage thanks to the GT40 and translating that into modern-day race and road cars has some precedent. Can Corvette do the same without having the same sort of history? Only this weekend there was a Daytona Prototype Corvette at Goodwood; little more than a silhouette racer with a Corvette 'face' applied as a decal to the front. Like the test mule it also gets some C7 style rear lights for the merest hint of road car crossover so, in the home market at least, there is some relevance in the concept of a mid-engined 'vette.

Certainly the idea is more established the other side of the pond, Car and Driver among those reporting extensively on what the so-called 'C8' may be about. By the state of the mule we're still a long way of anything concrete. But it at least seems there's something brewing.