Later on, our focus would shift to Shelby Cobra and the odd foreigner, until the rise of Corvette’s archnemesis, the Porsche 911 Turbo. Countless artful pairings and terrible puns positioned Turbo vs. ZR-1. Then the Dodge Viper entered the fray. We spilled gallons of ink on it, as well as Corvette tuners from Hennessey to Lingenfelter, and pulled off top-speed tests and cross-continent road trips. As Corvette (and Porsche) engineers began to push the performance envelope into the supercar space, so did we with comparisons involving Lamborghini, Ferrari, and some newcomer called GT-R.
In the imagined space, we devoted pages to what stunning new tech would push Corvette performance past the jet age. Gas turbine engines? Four-rotor Wankels? Hybrid-electric? And then, of course, were the cover stories focused on the imminent arrival of the mid-engine Corvette.
I chuckled to myself while tabbing through the folder of 800-plus covers and jotting down instances of C1-C7. What on earth were my forebears thinking with all of this Corvette lust and mid-engine lunacy, especially in the late ’80s through the ’90s? Had everyone lost their minds? Then I got to 2014, my third year as editor-in-chief, and discovered that I, too, was guilty: Six issues with Corvette on the cover, including one all-caps skyline blurb atop the Nov 2014 issue: MID-ENGINE CORVETTE PG 20.
View 10 Photos
Pictured: The June 1970 cover of MotorTrend.
Now that the mid-engine Corvette is finally here and we’ve blown out the candles on our 70th anniversary cake and tipped over the last bottles of champagne, I’m feeling a bit empty. What will we splash across our covers in the decades yet to come?
All-electric, 250-mph, all-wheel-drive Corvette, anyone? You read it here first.
Editor’s Note: At the first planning meeting for this issue, more than a year before we went to press, I opened with the statement, “I hate anniversaries,” and then tasked Miguel Cortina, Scott Evans, and Christian Seabaugh to come up with a plan to create retrospective stories you would all want to read and enjoy. Huge thanks that trio, along with Alisa Priddle and Frank Markus in Detroit, and our entire family of photo, copy, production, and online pros. We went out of our way to revisit the stories MotorTrend used to tell, and we wrangled vehicles from across seven decades, all to give you a taste of state-of-the-art, way back when. I hope you enjoy the issue.
More from Ed Loh:
Photo Gallery
10 Photos in this Gallery