C6 Walk around Let's start at the front of the '05 with those new, fixed headlights. When the THR web site staff began looking into the development history of the C6, we learned the new lights were controversial, first, with the exterior designers then later, amongst a larger group of Corvette stakeholders at General Motors. When it was time for stylists to decide on the lights, the parties were split about 50-50. Chief Designer, Tom Peters, made the decision to go with the fixed lights. Once Design Staff was unified, Vehicle Line Executive (VLE) and Corvette Chief Engineer David Hill, had to make the final decision on whether to production with the new lights.

The "dead front view" shows a number of new styling cues. The lights, of course are the big difference. Also. note the pointed nose and the trapezoidal hood, both from C3, and the high-peaked fenders, from C2. Lastly, Corvette is now a front and bottom breather, with a grille opening, rather than bottom only, like C4 and C5. Image: Richard Prince

Again, the parties were split 50-50, with design and engineering "for" and traditionalists in GM marketing and at Chevrolet "against". Hill, was quoted about his choice, saying during interviews with both C5/C6 Registry Magazine and the "Corvette Action Center" (CAC) web site, "There were definitely marketing and Chevrolet concerns about breaking with the winning tradition. When the decision was to made, the split was about equal, with half of the organization feeling it was a definite wrong thing to do and the other half thinking it was definite right thing to do; so the VLE (Hill himself) made the call.

"I give the organization credit because," Hill said, " once that call was made, everybody got on-board and worked to make it the best possible headlamp design. We tried a number of things that were distinctly different than the old pop-ups, before we settled on what we have."

When asked what his initial reaction was before the different parties stated their cases, Hill replied, "I was an advocate for the engineering side just because of the technology and being able to breakout from constraints which we had before. Finally Hill was asked, with everybody split 50/50, what was the one thing that pushed him away from the pop-up lights. "My tiebreaker on Corvette," he answered, "is always: when it's technically better for performance, it's the way to go." Such is how the 2005 Vette got its fixed headlights.

Critics claim they're the like lights on a Viper, an Eclipse or a Miata but, at Tom Henry Racing, we're unanimous that the resemblance to Dodge, Mitsubishi or Mazda is, at most, obscure. Reality is: when a car company puts projector lights on a low, sloping, aerodynamic front end; there aren't a lot of ways to style the light assemblies, if they're to work well. The C6 front may seem vaguely like other cars, but the look is all the Corvette's own.

The new lights will remain controversial with purists but for those looking to the future, they put a 21-st Century face on the car and, more importantly, they provide far better lighting for fast night driving. Image: Richard Prince.

Each headlight assembly consists of a Xenon, high-intensity-discharge (HID), projector low-beam and a halogen, projector high-beam, plus parking, turn signal and daytime running lights. All are under a clear, polycarbonate lens and their mounts are body color The new headlight system provides 66% more light output and a 25% wider beam pattern than the pop-up lights of the '97-'04 models. Eliminating C5's pop-up mechanism finally gives Corvette an effective, "flash-to-pass" feature and it cleared the way for cost-effective use of HIDs. Corvette now has lighting with which to go fast in the dark, a very useful improvement. The old pop-ups, while loved by some designers and traditionalists at Chevrolet, were about as useful in performance driving situations as Paris Hilton is at an engineering seminar. The '05's headlights look pretty cool and are a refreshing change from 42 years of hidden lights.

The 2005 Corvette's high-peaked fenders some straight from the '63-'67 "midyear" or "C2" models. This is the fender of a 1965 Coupe with the 396 Big-Block engine. Image: Tom Henry Racing.

A couple of other sharp-looking, C6 exterior design features are: the pointed nose, seemingly inherited from the '68-'82 "C3", along with a traditional Chevy styling cue last used on a Corvette in 1972, an “egg crate” front grille. Sidestep around next to the driver's door and look forward over the fender and hood. For several years, scuttlebutt out of GM had been that the '05 would be more influenced by Corvettes of the past, but we had no idea leveraging some of those past styling cues would look so good. We think this view of the C6 shows the grace with which Tom Peters and his design team rolled the C2 influence into the the '05. Image: GM Communications.

Chief Designer, Tom Peters, seems to have taken the best C5, some C5-R, what we liked best about the C2 and a little of the C3 mixed it well, then styled C6 from the A-pillar forward with that blend. The higher-peaked fenders come straight from the '63-'67 design portfolio, the more-trapezoidal-shaped hood is reminiscent of the '68-'82 shape. The prominent "power bulge" in the center of the hood is common to various
'63-'82 models.

Now, the side view. Obviously, the car is shorter. In fact, there was a five-inch reduction in length, two inches off the front and three off the rear. Shortening and a 1.1-in decrease in width makes the '05 virtually the same size as one of its prime competitors in the high-sports market, the Porsche 911. In the weight department, the two are close, as well, with the base, C6's curb weight of 3179 lbs. and the base Porsche 911 Carrera Targa's 3119 lbs.–within 2% of each other. Interestingly, the C6 is quite a bit lighter than two of it's other competitors, the Dodge Viper and the Ford GT.

The F/A-22 Raptor, shown here turing air-to-air missile firing tests, is the U.S. Air Force's newest, most advanced and most deadly jet fighter. Some think the Corvette ought to have missiles to shoot at those pesky Vipers. It is the side view of the F/A-22 that influenced Tom Peters and his C6 Design Team. Image: U.S. Air Force/Judson Brohmer. Sideview of the C6. Where the F/A-22 played a key part is in the profile of the car's "upper" or the shape of it above the belt line. Image: Richard Prince.

You see more C2 in how the high-peaked fenders extend onto the door skins. The B-pillar and the hatch glass have obvious '63-'67 lineage. In styling the sideview of the C6, the U.S. Air Force F/A-22 Raptor jet fighter, also, influenced the Corvette designers. Only in America will you find a car with an exterior design based partially on a 42-year-old sports car and partially on its military's most modern jet aircraft. About this influence of the Raptor, Tom Peters told Tom Henry Racing, "Stealth aircraft, initially, were very angular, like the (F)117 (Nighthawk stealth fighter of Gulf War 1 and 2 fame). The F/A-22 is a further evolution of that technology. It's more refined, more sophisticated but every bit as purposeful. C6 is similar in that it's also more refined, more sophisticated, but still very purposeful.

"The F/A-22 has a great combination of shear surfaces, hard-edged lines and more subtle, organic areas of surface development. The transitions from the shear surfaces into the organic forms are very intriguing, so I felt it was a good icon; a good source of inspiration for how we wanted to take the Corvette forward. I'm not saying we, literally, interpreted or extracted something from the plane and put it directly on the car. We attempted to capture the spirit or the essence of the Raptor.

"Aircraft often embody form that follows function. The plane's purpose, design, all aspects of it, are very functional. They're meant to do a specific task. In the case of the F/A-22 bodyform, it's to: 1) fly very fast (the first, non-experimental aircraft to "supercruise" or fly faster than sound without afterburner) 2) incorporate stealth technology, 3) offer its pilot outstanding visibility and 4) carry its weapons internally.

"The F/A-22 is awesome. Visually, it's very directional. It has a lot of tension. Everything's going forward. The canopy has a sports car like appearance. I especially wanted to see how that could influence the upper (the car's shape above the belt line) on the Corvette. Most intriguing is the airplane has this shear, linear quality, overall, but then, on closer inspection, you see these transitions into more organic shapes, like those that encase the engines."

The 3/4-rear view shows more C2 influence in the halo bar and the rear hatch. Image: Richard Prince.

Next, we stood about ten feet off the left-rear quarter. The styling of the rear deck is more sculpted with a slight, "dihedral" shape. After a 14-year hiatus, round taillights, a classic Chevrolet styling cue, are back. Playing on the F/A-22 influence, reflector optics give the illuminated tail lamps a glow reminiscent of jet afterburners and that visual clue is very cool. Perhaps a result of what GM learned in the wind tunnel with the C5-R endurance road race cars, there is a black defuser panel at the bottom of the rear fascia which, also, carries the back-up lights. In the middle of the defuser is an opening for the exhaust.

Finishing our walk-a-round from directly behind the car, note the '97-'04 Vette's trademark, quad exhaust is retained. We also saw that mini-deck spoiler/center-high-mounted stop light (CHMSL) assembly. It's about a third of the car's width and is gray, regardless of body color. There's an interesting story to why this part of the car is colored that way and Tom Peters described to us. "It was part thematic and part aerodynamic. Just like the front, rather than going straight across, we wanted to create this "center fuselage" with the fender forms. Visualize the hood and the hood cut line that separates the fender shapes from the hood shape. I wanted to carry that consistently in the rear, too.

"See that line which sweeps through that cut line on the hood, goes through the belt (line), tracks back next to the backlight (rear window) and, then, into the spoiler. I wanted to do everything I could to create the rear as horizontal as possible and not as tall and thick like C5. So, (the CHMSL) added to that. If you look at the dead-rear profile, it's lower in the center, underneath the CHMSL and, then it kind of "dihedrals"–goes up into the fender shapes. "Aerodynamics required that center rear be higher," Peters continues. "The top of the CHMSL is virtually the same height as C5 because that is exactly where the (aerodynamic testing in the wind) tunnel wants it to be to minimize drag.

From dead-rear you can see how the shape of the tail has that dihedral effect mentioned by Tom Peters. Visible are the big round lights, an influence of the '68-'82 C3 and the '84-'90 early-C4 models. You can also see the defuser panel that surrounds the exhaust and holds the reverse lights.  Image: Richard Prince

"I thought that, thematically and proportionally, I didn't want to add weight to that. Originally, the CHMSL was all a piece of red lens. We found out in crash (testing) that when you stroke (cause the surface to deform) that area of the fascia, the lens got scuffed. The law (Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards) states it can't be damaged at all. It can't even be scuffed, so (the all-lens CHMSL) was a no-build (couldn't go to production). We went with an accent color because I didn't want to go body color 'cause, to me, it added visual height and didn’t want to do that.

"From what I understand, in the later crash tests, it is not getting
damaged so, I don't know if they're going to do it in the first year of production, but maybe they might be doing some SPO (Service Part Operations, GM's replacement and aftermarket parts organization) things and then, maybe later, go back to an all lens CHMSL, but I'm not sure."

Tom Henry Racing already has available a body-colored, C6 CHMSL which GM markets through Chevrolet dealers via its Genuine Corvette Accessories line. Tom Peters commented on SPO's interpretation.

"When you put that on, you get a rear view that looks kind of funny," Peters continued. "You don't see that dihedral transition. You see this body colored bump, so from a design perspective, I not sure I support that. I know people who've seen it and say it's doesn't look the same–it doesn't look like the initial intent, which was to have a little bit of accent going across with the fender shapes kinda flyin' off.

Tom Peters has said he wanted the C6 to have a lot of tension when viewed from some directions. It seems to show here in this side view rear. Image: Tom Henry Racing.

"Remember, I talked about tension? Another thing: design wise, from sideview or top-three-quarter, your eye goes back to that spoiler detail. It's a way to create, visually, my idea of drawing-back-the-bow or a kind of a tight, tension-oriented profile. The gray accented CHMSL is a visual detail which supports that feeling of tension going through the car. "In the end, passionate Corvette customers are going to make individual judgment calls."

Our guess is some C6 buyers will want to convert to the body-color CHMSL  and Tom Henry Racing has them available. Call or e-mail us for details.

For '05, exterior colors are: Victory Red (new), Daytona Sunset Orange (new), Machine Silver, LeMans Blue, Arctic White, Magnetic Red Metallic, Millennium Yellow and Black.
 

Bottom line: C5's exterior design was a tough act to follow, but Tom  Peters and his team of designers did a heck of a job in blending increased influence of past Corvettes, the theme set by the 1997 Vette, a  little bit of the C5-Rs and a little bit of the F/A-22, with the result  being C6, which is...well, like we said above; we're stunned.

When you come to Tom Henry Chevrolet and see one of the 2005 Corvettes we  have for sale, we think you will be struck by the car's good looks, too.

C6 Interior