Chevy’s Corvette 2-Rotor

GM’s Design Staff created the Corvette 2-Rotor to flaunt the Wankel-type rotary engines that the Corporation was developing in the early 1970s. Ultimately lacking both an engine and an in-house sponsor, however, a brilliant design was lost.

It was the summer of ’73 and GM’s Wankel fever was in full flush. At the General’s Milford Proving Grounds a gaggle of its top executives clustered around a gorgeous silver two-seater coupe. It was a petite mid-engined sports car, slope-nosed and obviously mid-engined. Though it looked like the latest prototype from Porsche or Maserati, this was in fact a concept car for Chevrolet dubbed the “GT”. And under its glazed rear deck was a two-rotor version of the power unit on which GM’s president Ed Cole was preparing to bet his company, the rotary Wankel engine.