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Mark Reuss’ Pace Car Crash Makes The Case For A Mid-Engine Corvette

This past Sunday, GM product chief Mark Reuss, unfortunately, lost control of the 2019 C7 Corvette ZR1 pace car ahead of the Detroit Grand Prix. The executive spun and bounced off of a concrete wall at turn two. Fortunately, no one was hurt.

Reuss isn’t a newcomer behind the wheel of high-performance vehicles, though, and professionally drivers regularly find themselves in trouble at Belle Isle—a tight circuit and turn two is notoriously blind. It’s all the more reason General Motors and Chevrolet will introduce a mid-engine Corvette.

The Detroit News reported on Monday that Reuss’ wreck only furthers the case for a mid-engine Corvette with an all-wheel-drive system. The front-engine, rear-wheel drive Corvette has reached its limit. With more power added to the V8 engine up front, it only makes it more difficult to find traction at the rear wheels.

A mid-engine car will be inherently more steady, and that’s before the thought of sending power to all four wheels.

“Sunday’s incident would have been less likely to happen from a fundamentals perspective if he had been driving a mid-engine car,” said retired GM engineer Tom Wallace, who ran the Corvette program from 2006-08. “A mid-engine would allow more tolerance so it’s easier to put the traction down, while a front-engine car is going to shift to oversteer sooner.”

And oversteer is exactly what doomed Reuss behind the wheel.

If the latest intelligence proves true, the C8 Corvette will indeed include an all-wheel-drive setup, but only for a rumored hybrid variant with an alleged 1,000 horsepower. Still, other trims with less power and with power routed to just the rear wheels will exhibit more poise through corners.

Former GM Authority staff writer.

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Comments

  1. Not a case for Mid-Engine, but shows that AWD should have been incorporated in the C6 Z06 an then standard on the C7 models. Why GM is so resistant to putting AWD in their performance vehicles has boggled my mind for the past 10 years. NA always seems to be a decade behind Europe and Japan. This ‘Murica Mentality of RWD needs to go the way of the dinosaurs.

    Reply
    1. Or a more likely answer is that the Y-body cannot support AWD without significant modification; modifications that the car platform was never intended to have without a weight penalty, packaging compromises, and performance and handling changes.

      The main argument of the article for a rear-mid Corvette still stands.

      Reply
  2. so he was demonstrating the instability of the ZR 1 at the same time as producing a mid-engine version?

    Reply
  3. Rwd is more fun, lighter, causes less drag (drivetrain), handles better, is cheaper, better balanced and overall faster with exception to extremely tight corners depending on power levels and set up. AWD would have ruined the C6 Z06 and C7 corvette. Maybe for the top dog ZR1 it could be on it but all other models would have less joy. I am going to go out on a limb and say you also want to do away with the manual transmission?

    Reply
  4. I have to disagree. The current car like the one that crashed is light years ahead of what a full fledged mid to late 60’s race car was capable of. The big difference are drivers who know how to drive a car and keep it at the edge without any electronic gimmickry like stability control, traction control and ABS. Remember folks this was on the pace lap, what are they going there maybe 60 or 70 mph tops? Keep amature drivers out of pace cars please.

    Reply
    1. Did you read the article?
      Reuss is a Level 6 driver at GM which means he is more than certified to push the boundaries on Nürburgring…

      Reply
  5. Did Ruess take any practice laps? Imagine if race would have been run on rainy day. Gotta know limits of car and driver. So are w saying the current Vette is over powered and unsafe?

    Reply
    1. That’s just too much horsepower to put into a basically plastic car. If a “Level 6” driver can’t handle it on a smooth dry course then how are average Joe’s supposed to drive the car without getting into dangerous situations? I hope this doesn’t affect Reuss’ five million dollar compensation package this year although he single handily did more damage to the ZR 1 program than anyone could imagine.

      Reply
  6. Could be a don’t text, or take selfie, while driving

    Reply
  7. The messaging is a bit of PR nightmare for the ZR1 as is. Saying “wait until the next gen Corvette” doesn’t really fix it.

    If he said “I should have left it in competition mode instead of disabling all electronic traction nannies,” that would have gone better.

    Otherwise all I can gather is:
    – the car is a handful, or
    – the driver really screwed up

    On the bright side, maybe we’ll see some big discounts on the ZR1…it is a bit of a lame duck anyway.

    Reply
  8. I’m not sure if this is clik bait or a poorly informed attempt at rationalizing a need for a mid engine corvette – nevermind AWD.

    A mid engine car IS NOT more inherently stable. It’s advantage is purely one of lower moment of inertia, or in the case of a car; the axis on which it spins is moved toward the center of the car. All that is to say it’s more neutral from a handling point of view. The problem with the a car’s center of inertia being right at or near the cockpit, is that when it does begin to over-steer or under-steer, most drivers cannot react in time. The car will feel as if it’s snapping into over-steer, or turning in then suddenly not.

    The ONLY reason mid engine cars are becoming ubiquitous in the higher echelons of exotic design is because of placement of the engine allowing for more rear traction on acceleration. Oh, and now we have traction control and other computer nannys to sort the driving for you.

    As to AWD; there is a reason no race cars except for off-road racers have AWD. It unnecessarily increases weight, and they under-steer. Also, they are a bitch to control when sliding/drifting, thanks to an ability to oscillate between over-steer and under-steer at the same time.

    One can look on the www and see just as many rally and mid engine sports cars flying ass first, side ways and even nose first off roads all around the world to know that there is no “best solution” for engine placement/powered wheels. All things being equal, every option is merely a compromise. Especially considering the C5-7 are already mid-engined. They are in fact FRONT biased mid engined.

    Considering the ZR1 lost traction going over an uneven road surface while obviously having traction control off, or dialed down is all one needs to know to see no matter what the chassis design; his ham-fisted actions would have likely put any car into the wall that day. HE was still full on the gas when the car was at 90 degrees. Heck it happened so fast he didn’t apply brakes till after hitting the wall. If he couldn’t keep up with a relatively lazy reacting front-rear biased chassis; he would have probably been even worse off in a mid engined car.

    I will admit; a AWD would have probably pulled through with only a minor shimmy over the bump…

    Reply
    1. “I’m not sure if this is clik bait or a poorly informed attempt at rationalizing a need for a mid engine corvette – nevermind AWD.”

      And then…

      “I will admit; a AWD would have probably pulled through with only a minor shimmy over the bump…”

      You just validated the article article. Nicely done.

      Reply
      1. You’re welcome!

        Reply

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