Using a Callaway style front end. When looking at the drawing remember there are no sharp edges. The body lines are shown as sharp but are rounded out. This is wide body with all body mods including side splitters.

 

I would be curious what you would do with a C 7 ??????????

 

Just had to chime in on the BSM.... I agree...looks incomplete w/o

 

Good Question. The answer is a lot! I would love to see the return of some roundness to the C8. This new edge design things to me has become too sharp. If the C5 has lower drag then what is the point of making the car pointy?

The C7 is a great car but to be honest I am still on the fence with it's appearance. I will mess with one and post what I come up with

Saw a minion Peep today, thought of you

 

 

Love the designs; keep 'em coming. I'll throw this out there... If you want to shorten the front and rear overhangs, maybe start out with a C6. GM already made those changes to what's basically still a C5. And they threw in the exposed headlight housings too.

 

I like that drawing better than just the side shot. But like someone said you might get there closer with a c6

 

C5 has lower drag but a lot more lift to go with it. Sharpness aids airflow management and can create "gates" in the wind tunnel that affect the boundary layer, which then redirect and affect airflow around the car. Sharpness also creates more efficient air separation, versus rounded edges, so that's a factor.

Dreaming up designs is one thing, but making it functional, with draft angles that allow efficient, affordable, low production manufacturing, is another. Not to mention, the front end design of the above doesn't appear to even meet current headlight height standards. It also appears you'd have to redesign the entire rad/condenser arrangement to even make that work also.

 

Honestly, you're getting a little out of hand here.

You are "designing" things with total disregard to what lies beneath. You are disregarding structure, function, hood clearance, crash requirements, visibility, and every other thing I can think of.

Don't get me wrong, I only produced cars on a very small scale, from a manufacturer standpoint, and our company didn't survive (as with many), but that doesn't mean that the lessons weren't abundant. Much was due to being saddled by partner/dreamer who drew car pictures all day, but also wrote the checks. What you're proposing is similar to how a man who has worked in the mill 45 years pushing a broom describes how to fix the real estate market and the federal reserve...it may sound good to the locals but, you're about about 5210ft shy of a mile here.

I appreciate your enthusiasm, but lets keep it at that level and not start criticizing engineers with a combined 1.4 million times your expertise. Every car manufactured is a series of compromises and the challenge to the engineering team is to meet the compromises, but build a machine that is successful in it's market category. You're criticizing the platform that saved GM in many ways and saying how much better it could be. Sure...the Corvette could be far better if the msrp were 340k, that's a no brainer.

What you're designing here is a fantasy and you keep repeating this "winning shows" bs. What "shows"? The local yocal parking lot car show that has a raffle and some trophies...who cares? Guys with stock C4's and lambo door kits, with mirrors under the hood win shows and have stacks of trophies on this forum, you think that's an indicator of taste?

By all means...if YOU want it, build it. I'm not faulting that at all. I'm just irked by criticism of a car, created by a team of people that can do plenty more than use a paint program. Again, more power to you, but don't be takin shots.

To specifically critique your list here:

The nose has been shortened considerably - (wouldn't meet impact standards, have room for impact bar, then cooling/ac, then rack, then engine)
The rear quarters brought up and back considerably - (Could be a substantial visibility reduction in a car that many customers already felt had huge blind areas)
The window lines have been lowered and angles changed
Rear brake cooling ducts have been integrated into the body - (And these "ducts" vent to where exactly? Does the duct make a 90 degree turn before the wheel well? So they are functionless basically?
Front brake cooling ducts have been moved into the corners and integrated into the front bumper - (Same question as above...no room for a duct of any kind, in a very low pressure area, etc)
Sealed Beam headlights replace the pop ups
Angular and symmetrical changes. Everything from the mirrors, brake ducts to door handles all reside within body lines. (All personal preference)
The hood is lower at the base of the windshield (Engine clearance is already minimal...guess you're lowering the engine and reducing ground clearance?)
The front fenders have a touch more flare
The front wheel well size has been decreased (Under braking dive/high lateral G's, you'd need a substantial amount of spring rate put into the car to avoid destruction of the fenders, which would make daily driving extremely harsh...essentially track focused)
The roof height has been dropped substantially (And it's already low so...how does that work?)
This car is also a wide body with suspension dimension changes but still uses the basic lines of the car. (I'd like to hear about your "dimension changes")
Side duct lines have been widened considerably


Consider that, when our company was part of a large study/survey of what defined a great supercar, I had many theories of what I thought would be the outcome. What was most important to people? It ended up being ingress/egress. When you talk about lowered seating, bigger bolstering, lower roof height, lower/lower/lower, you're talking a lot about ingress/egress, not to mention curb height standard.

Trust me...I've driven race cars to the office in my time...cars with 40" roof height, huge sills to climb over, etc. I'm game for that, but not many people are. Again...build it for you, but dont' criticize the C5 for it.

 

Not only couldn't have said it better, couldn't have come close. Seems the OP figures he has better design expertise than the GM design team.
OP, build it, then come back with pictures. Figure out how to do it all into the reduced size package you have shown (is the car not already pretty snug under the hood, behind the grill.. where is all this size reduction being taken from?).
Then take your ideas to GM and ask how much to build a production car based on your design. Seriously... you can draw, but apart from artwork, where are all the mechanics and pricing of components taken into consideration with your "better" (um, no) design?

 

Id be happy to discuss it in person or on the phone. My criticism comes from a consumer standpoint and the issues I feel my own car has. I could go back and counter all the counters and perhaps thats what makes a great car in the end. These designers that know millions of times more than me also produced the following cars which honestly appear to have been designed while under the influence.I believe you can teach people to be engineers but you cant teach them to have artistic vision

Pinto
Chevette
Pacer
Gremlin
Cordoba
LeCar
79 King Cobra
Corvair
Pontiac Aztec
Kia Soul
Ford Fiesta
Amc Matador
Any 80's Chrysler
The list could go on and on
Most of these cars were garbage under a ugly shell. Complete fail.

The C5 is a very good car but I have to wonder why some of its issues werent addressed during the design phase. This buoy effect on the driver from the poor high seat height and seat bolstering is horrible for a 58k car. This steering column.lock thing is laughable at best. Gm has never really fixed this issue. As a consumer I have every right to critique what I bought.
Just one example from the counters that is easily explained. More thinking goes into these drawings than people think.

Lower seats/ remove the power seats low profile the rails and seat frame.use a thinner but denser foam. 2 inches closer to the chassis. Now the roof height can be dropped an inch or so or more.

Damn RC. I hate typing on my phone. Why do you do this to me? Lol

 

American cars cannot compete with German nor Japanese cars. American cars lack the fit, finish, reliability, resale value that foreign cars enjoy. American car designs leave a lot to be desired. Lack innovation is also a problem. I don't think that these things are very important to American car companies.

Once this country was the leader in all of the above, however we have got our butts spanked by foreign companies. The greatest, most powerful country today cannot build a decent car anymore and have not been able to build a decent car since the 1970s. They are trying for the last few years but still very far behind.

On a new car purchase, there is always a better option with a foreign car.

 

Just a quick thought. While we all debate on how to make the primitive automobile better, lets remember that magnets are propelling 8000lb loaded roller coasters from zero to 100mph in 2.5 seconds. The combustion engine is probably laughed at by the aliens. So as we rev up our all mighty engines and think we are the kings of anything, there is always something far better than what we currently have. No matter what it is

 

Well that isnt true. you can buy a nice e46 bmw for like $5000 now. i almost bought a fully loaded z3 for $2500.

Japanese cars? I bought my fully loaded 350z for $7500 back in 2009. The car probably sold new for almost $35k.

There was a z4 3.5 that sold at carmax for $25k, the original sticker on it was in the 70k area.

How about an a4? no, just burn the money instead.

Fit and finish maybe, but value and resale? germany is way below

 

Yes, BMWs are the ultimate depreciation machine. You can't compare a garden variety E46 to the Corvette though. You'd have to compare it to ths M cars, which you won't find for the prices you listed. A decent E46 M3 runs about $15k these days, roughly the price of a C5. A clean, very low mileage example can run $30k+ depending on color and options.

Generally, the more expensive the car is initially, the more depreciation there is to deal with. I don't think any car, short of a limited production exotic, is immune to depreciation.

 

All of those cars you listed sold. Not everyone wants a race car for the street. Ever sat in rush hour traffic for an hour and a half? I'd rather do it in any of the cars you listed as "complete fails" than the car you'd like to design the C5 to be.

Not sure why you're criticizing the column lock. It's not like they designed it to fail randomly. While the C5 has plenty of issues, none were purposely designed into the car. All were either related to budget or were unknown problems that would develop through real world usage.

 

Budget? 58k window sticker. I need not say anything else. They should have fixed the column lock thing through a successful recall. Period. Gm blew it off. Still does.

Traffic? Total moot point. Did you buy your Corvette to be a master of sitting in traffic?

All experts. All driving the same cars with the same mods. How boring. No wonder this select group of dudes dont like my ideas.

 

A 58k sticker price for a car that outran Ferraris and lamborghinis. (The z06, anyways)

 

Thats not what was meant by budget. Please reread the thread path. 58k is too much money for a car with issues like column lock. Thats what was meant by this

 

Where are you getting $58k from? The most expensive C5 available? My '02 Z stickered just under $51k, which cars were $58k?

Traffic and usability isn't a moot point. Usability is a huge aspect of any car design. My car is very mild, but it wouldn't make a good DD based off the few mods I've done to it. You have to consider things like that unless you're building anything else than a toy.

Even if I gave you a $58k budget to build a car, how are you planning to accomplish it? You can't build a usable prototype of anything for that amount. Have you ever seen the actual budget it takes to develop a car? There is a reason so many halo cars are sold at a loss.