The new 2020 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray has launched and GM supplied us with plenty of images and footage from the production car. Now that we can see all the exterior and interior details, there is one question we need to answer:
How close was Chazcron ?
In the months before the reveal, Chazcron from Mid Engine Corvette Forum was one of our go-to sources for Corvette renders. He made it his hobby to collect and reverse engineer spy footage and then rebuilt the C8 Corvette in 3D with incredible and convincing details.
It’s time to put them up side by side and see just how accurate he was.
There is a remarkable similarity between the renders (in blue) and the real 2020 Corvette Stingray (in red). The silhouette lines are almost identical. Chazcron has done a great job guessing what’s hiding under the camouflage.
There are some deviations of course. For start, the real car has slightly less pronounced edges.
At the front, the bumper is missing some of it’s trim and has the dive planes pitched at a different angle. The complex interaction between the vertical slats and the lower lip of the bumper is smoother and more refined on the real car.
Other than that the shape of the bonnet is really accurate. The headlights are practically the same and the wheel arch perfectly integrates with the door and hood.
The side mirrors have sharper angles in the real Corvette, but the general shape and size is the same.
Looking at the windshield we see some more pronounced differences. The glass is more curved on the real car – in the renders, it looks flatter and less elegant. This becomes more apparent when looking from the side and top.
We can clearly see a difference in the back edge of the bonnet. In Chazrcron’s render, it’s curved – almost circular. In the real C8, the shape is similar to the steering wheel – more of a rounded rectangle.
There is also a noticeable deviation in the shape of the door. The lip, which leads to the rear quarter panel intake, starts near the front wheel arch. In Chazcron’s render, it starts further back in line with the mirrors.
There is a line connecting the bottom edge of the lip and the rear wheel arch, which defines a small triangular piece in front of the rear tires and below the scoop. The render doesn’t have this piece.
Looking further down we see a shadowed area and then a second lip at the bottom of the door sill. It looks like the render has one too, but because of the shape above, it’s significantly smaller and less pronounced.
This picture is one of our favorites. When Chazcron published the render of the door (bottom right), the whole community, including us, thought there’s no way GM will have this in the production version. It looks ready to stab somebody.
Well, we were wrong, Chaz was right. In fact, the shape is very close to the real one, as seen in Jay Leno’s walkaround video. It’s sharper and edgier in the render, but otherwise really close.
Other than that, the main lines of the car look identical. The shape and size of the intake scoops is correct.
The rear end corresponds to the production version almost perfectly with barely detectable anomalies. The license plate section is slightly taller on the real car than the render and the rear cooling vents look slightly bigger.
Looking from the side, the rear bumper is following an arc with the middle section protruding ever so slightly. On the renders, the bumper looks more stepped and square.
All that being said, the majority of differences are really tiny and insignificant. We found most of them by overlaying the images on top of each other.
Most impressive of all, these renders were published before the Thursday reveal. Chazcron never saw the car unwrapped and had to guess most of the finer details.