I suppose it’s inevitable that every car-crazed youngster will at some point fall in love with a Corvette show car. One generation fell in love with the Mako Shark, others became besotted with the XP882. I had the 1990 CERV III.
There’s nothing obvious about the CERVIII that explains why it inspired me so. It is fundamentally just another futuristic show car replete with every conceivable electronic trick and gizmo–and like most completely unrealistic show cars, it had very little impact on its production counterparts. For me, though, it meant much more.
While I grew up with an innate love of Corvettes, that love was matched by a basic frustration. As powerful, sleek, and capable as Corvettes were, to me they symbolized a crippling lack of creativity. After the rapid innovation that characterized the Corvette’s evolution from its debut as a cruiser in 1953 to a world-class sports car in the 1960s, America’s sports car got stuck in a rut. Not in terms of capability, mind you–since the C4 Corvette debuted in 1984, Corvettes have consistently been fantastic all-around performers for the price. No, what bothers me is that Corvettes have been so formulaic.
Since 1968, it’s as if all Corvettes have been built to a slowly evolving set of the same blueprints, specifying a pushrod V-8, a long, low, and wide fiberglass body, shark nose, tiny interior, and, until recently, hidden headlights. There have been some excellent cars made under that formula, but slavish adherence to those blueprints have kept Corvettes from really breaking new ground. Tradition overruled innovation.
If I was in charge, I wouldn’t limit my design and engineering teams to continually remaking a car according to a 40-year-old formula. Instead, I’d reconsider the definition of what a Corvette really is. I’d define it very broadly–as a uniquely American sports car that provides near-exotic performance, without pricing the car out of the reach of the upper-middle-class.
How you get there isn’t nearly as important as the final result, and I find it hard to believe that the best approach to building a sports car hasn’t changed over the last 40 years. Perhaps a big sports car with a V-8 and a fiberglass body really is the best way to hit that target, but at the risk of blaspheming, might not a much smaller twin-turbo V-6-powered AWD Corvette be an interesting possibility? And why must we continue to riff on the styling of the 1968 Corvette rather than look back to the more groundbreaking earlier Corvettes?
The CERV III excited me because it was a truly fresh take on the Corvette; it broke down the mental barriers that had limited and defined Corvettes for years. Instead of a fiberglass body, the CERV III used carbon fiber and Kevlar; instead of a front-engined setup, the CERV III was mid-engined. Power still came from a V-8, but it was a twin-turbocharged version of the Lotus-tweaked, four-valve-per-cylinder DOHC LT5 from the Corvette ZR-1. All-wheel-drive and four-wheel-steer systems replaced the Corvette’s typical rear-wheel-drive setup.
The styling was even better. The CERV III was still too big, but at least it wore its size elegantly. Aerodynamic but not devoid of character, reminiscent of former Corvettes while still breaking genuinely new ground, the CERV III still looks beautiful to me nearly two decades later. Of course, it also looks an awful lot like the sublime Jaguar XJ220.
Between the structure, the engineering, and the styling, the CERV III was pretty obviously an exotic concept car. But it’s the fresh approach I was interested in; and nearly two decades later I still could be interested in even a dramatically toned-down street version of this car. It wasn’t to be, of course–Corvettes today are fantastic performers but are still built along the same formula.
I’m also a little biased because the CERV III was my very first video game car lust. The CERV III, along with the Lamborghini Diablo and Pininfarina Mythos, headlined Test Drive III. TD3 was a truly revolutionary 1990 driving game that allowed unlimited freedom to drive through a real-world environment that included multiple routes, short cuts trains, traffic, police, stop lights, a choice of radio stations, short cuts, and even the ability to drive off-road to explore the world off the highway, all rendered in stunning (for 1990) polygonal detail. Oh, and the CERV III crushed the opposition. Forget the Lamborghini–anybody who didn’t take the CERV III was a sucker.
I wasted untold hours on TD3 as a teenager, and in so doing have racked up more virtual miles on the CERV III than any real car I’ve driven. The video below is a 10-minute clip of gameplay, and as I watch it I’m shocked to find that even now I still know where all the corners are and can remember every note of the hideously annoying MIDI soundtrack. Kids, appreciate your XBox 360s and PS3; this is what gaming was like in the early 1990s.
–Chris H.
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