So,
lets forget about the exterior of the C7 for a little while. Some of us hate it while others love it and only time will tell how we react when we can actually touch it.

What about the interior? Here is what i remember from "new Corvette history."

When C5 showed up the magazines praised the feel of the rubber buttons on the doors and the gauge package that eliminated the "Star Trek" dash of the C4. The low "step in" height of the door sills made getting into and out of the Vette a breeze AND the seats where praised for not forcing the driver to resort to falling into them.The shape of the hood allowed for better visibility of the road ahead (18ft. closer to the nose if I remember correctly.) And the biggest praise was for the foot room afforded by moving the transmission to the back.

Time passed and the C5 interior was bashed for being cheap and plastic-y with bad fit and finish. Taking corners at speed showed how useless the seats become in performance maneuvers.

Along comes C6. Much was made about how Corvette needed improvement on the interior. Dave Hill spoke about how including the Cadilac XLR in the Corvette plant allowed a better budget for producing an upscale interior. GM bragged about the "cast skin" rubber/plastic dash and door panels. The magazines agreed that C6 was a much better interior design with much improved materials.

Time passed and the C6 interior quickly became focus of much criticism. The lack of baby seal skin and Noah's Arc wood grain became a glaring fault. The "plastic fantastic" was long on plastic and short on fantastic within the cabin.

So.... what will it take for Corvette's interior to not only gain praise during the honeymoon phase, but also 3 or 4 years into production. Will the magazines praise the interior because it is not the C6 interior only to poke fun at in a year or two when they decide they want an Audi A8 interior instead?

 

1- Seats have to be supportative for people who track their car, (should add recaro as an option)
2- Materials have to be less plastic, better fit and finish, make sure everything feels solid
3-Navigation unit has to be update
4- Actual door handles, no buttons
5- Info system lcd screen for gas usage, temp, speed, rpms, colored hud
6- Any other things I forgot

 

Well, this should turn into another pissing contest rather quickly.

Personally, I like the interior as it is. As posted in other threads, if this interior was in a Porsche today, the mag writers would grovel over it. And if a Porsche interior were in the Corvette, it would be rated "below par".

Let the fun begin.

 

Just an FYI,
I am not trying to stir the pot. I'm just trying to speculate on whether the next interior will be a success or something else for the 5' tall guy on Top Gear to make fun of.

 

IMO the Audi interiors are much nicer. Those would be something to compare against, if they could match the design and materials it would be a step up.

 

I know that amigo.

I'm not sure that anything Chevy puts in the 'vette will ever satisfy the Top Gear, C & D, R & T, MT and other Euro-loving whiners. We'll find out soon enough.

 

GM's shown they can make great interiors, just put it in the 'vette.





...minus the wood trim, of course.

 

The interior needs to NOT feel like a typical Chevy interior. The Corvette interior has certainly gotten better over time but it still misses the mark in a few areas. The seats are the main issue. They are soft, don't provide enough support and feel cheap overall. How is it that the base and optional Recaro seats in a CTS-V are so nice? One big failing, the Z06 and ZR1 have the same seats as a base coupe. That's just not right. Also, not having a provision to install a competition harness is just wrong. The C5 sport seats had an opening that made this possible.

 

I'm really expecting the interior to be 10x better than the C6's with an updated layout, better gauges and a MUCH better redesigned center stack.

They say they're going to take design queues from CUE.

I plan to buy my C7 with the 4LT-equivalent package. I want everything leather wrapped from the factory. I just hope they use a good leather this time. The GM leather feels cheap. The leather on my seats feel hard and somewhat uncomfortable after a while.

The seats need to be comfortable and still hold you. I don't care about name brands or anything like that. GM doesn't make their seats, we know this. But they shouldn't be buying the crappiest seats they can throw into a car for the Corvette. Lets hope they spring for something decent this time around.

GM has had really crappy GPS. I really love the GPS on my Android phone. NOTHING beats it. I use GPS a lot and as far as I've seen, every GPS I've used has paled in comparison to Google Nav. If GM could get even remotely close to that, I'd be happy.

A better center console. My C5Zs center console surprising has a lot of room for how shallow it is, but it lacks a few things my Trans Am had, like a change holder. LOL (Where do you guys put your spare change for meters and stuff?) I think it should also house a place to plug in an iPod or MP3 player or something via an RCA or 3.5/2.5mm jack. I fabbed in RCA inputs into my center console. They look stock and work great. They're pointless now because I use bluetooth for audio streaming, but at least they're there if I ever need them.

This is how I did it. Hopefully they do something like this too. (I stole the idea from Nissan)



I also hope they update the HUD. While I like my HUD, I'd like to change which gauges are displayed. The C5s don't have very many options. I don't use the side gauge at all (turn off) because it doesn't display anything I need.

 

The new Viper. Now, hold on a minute until I'm through. I believe in competition. The Italians know materials and interiors. Fiat has spent money on the Jeep interior. The Viper is designated as a halo car. The Viper will appear in April at the NY auto show. If the Viper interior gets an award winning upgrade as the Jeep did, GM will know a full year ahead of introduction what the new standard is.

One other point, MT says the career of the head of GM styling will be judged on three cars, one of which is the C7. I lovw thw pressue on creative people to produce!

Sounds like a perfect storm is brewing.

 

This list pretty much covers my thoughts. The big challenge for GM is to not only make it look/feel better but to still keep it in a reasonable price point. Porsches, Ferraris, etc, have nicer interiors, but the costs of those interiors is MUCH higher than the Corvettes.

 

The Stingray concept would have to have an interior like this for me to buy it:




The Jalopnik car would have to have an interior like this for me to buy it:

 

This. A new colleague of mine owns one of the biggest car dealership chains in our state, and I got to sit in the Gucci edition Fiat 500. A Viper with that interior would be bad news for a C7 with the same old lack of attention to the cabin.

 

Take interior from CTS-V. Insert into C7. Add Corvette badges.

 

I think at introduction the C7 will impress most people, the press included.

The trouble starts when the interior is basically the same four years later. Not just the materials, but the technology.

And when the interior is basically the same eight years later? (rings in) "What is a laughingstock?" Trebek: "Correct."

Adding leather and stitching is not enough. A different applique on the center console is not enough. Not when personal technology is hugely important. Not when legitimate shortcomings were identified years ago.

So I hope the Corvette business plan includes money to add support for whatever's hot in personal technology in 2016, and money for a substantially-new interior in 2018. If not, then GM hasn't learned its lesson and its halo car will continue to come up short.

And IMHO they're screwing up right out of the gate when they say that some CUE-like technology will appear in Corvette. Give Corvette the full-boat CUE as if it was a Cadillac or quit and go home.

.Jinx

 

my google nav app on my android is the best, the only cars I know that have google nav is Audi.

 

GM doesn't even need to reach that high it's chain. A Buick Regal is under 30k and for this interior snob is very classy.

 

So how is it anyone knows that a theoretical interior assessment by magazines would result in these kind of views?

 

Surely you're not implying that he's talking our of his sittin' side, are you? I'm sure he has some study conducted where they actually performed this transplant and is willing to share his results.

 

I'm not a fan of the current Corvette interior, but I agree with your statement about the mag writers. I'm especially not impressed with BMW 3 series interiors, yet the mag writers rave about them, and even rate them higher than the CTS. Yet, any normal person who sits in a BMW 3 series and a CTS will agree that the CTS interior is much nicer. The new ATS interior looks really nice. I would like that to influence the C7 designers.