The ’76 Mid-Engine Aerovette Was Almost the 1980 C4 Corvette

by Scott · October 21, 2025

Bill Mitchell’s last Hail Mary pass was the mid-engine C4 Corvette.

To download the October 1977 Car Classics magazine PDF article about the 1976 Aerovette, CLICK HERE.

The 1976 Aerovette was almost the first production mid-engine Corvette, as a 1980 model. However, first, we need to go back a few years. In 1970, GM President Ed Cole paid $50 million for a license to develop Wankel engines. Cole loved advanced technology, and at the time, the simplicity of the rotary engine looked great on paper. Reality was different, as Mazda can attest to.

To sell his rotor-motor cars, Cole needed some sexy prototype cars, branded as “Corvettes”. A two-rotor car was styled and built by Pininfarina in Italy. The Two-Rotor would have been a nice secretary car, kind of like the Pontiac Fiero ten years later. But the silver bombshell hotty was the Four Rotor car, built on Duntov’s 1970 XP-882 transverse mid-engine concept Corvette.

But the stars weren’t aligned for GM’s Wankel enterprise. The engines got terrible fuel economy, and emissions were a nightmare. The entire rotor-motor fizzled before Duntov and Cole were forced into retirement. But VP of GM Design, Bill Mitchell, had until 1977 to retire, so with Cole and Duntov gone, he had the Four-Rotor Corvette’s Wankel engine replaced with the small-block engine from the 1970 XP-882. The only thing that changed was the engine.

Mitchell wanted one more big score before he was out the door. But he had the same challenge others who championed mid-engine Corvettes had: the sales success of the existing production Corvettes. Costing and Sales executives argued, “Why should we spend a lot of money in tooling when there’s no customer demand for a mid-engine car, and the current Corvette keeps selling more and more?”

In other words, if it ain’t broke, we’re not fixing it!

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However, when you read Rich Taylor’s article in the October 1977 issue of Car Classics magazine, written before Mitchell’s retirement, the article expresses the position that the transverse mid-engine Aerovette would definitely be the new C4 1980 Corvette. There was a very brief period of time, perhaps just a few weeks, when the 1980 Aerovette was green-lighted.

Of course, no one knew in 1977 how bleak things would get over the next few years. The transverse mid-engine Corvette would need an all-new transaxle drivetrain that would be very expensive. Despite the fact that the Corvette was riding on a chassis designed in 1960 and was getting long in the tooth, Corvette sales went from 28,566 in 1968 to 53,807 in 1979.

When we are talking about spending tens of millions on new tooling on a platform for just one limited-production car, it’s hard to ignore the numbers. In retrospect, who knew that it would take over four decades for a production Corvette would be a mid-engine sports car. It is a curious thing that the C8 Corvette’s platform hasn’t been used by Cadillac to be the next-generation Cadillac XLR. Perhaps someday.