Rotary boys' biggest cost - oil - has gone away, so why not?
Back in the late 1960s, General Motors developed the Experimental Project 882 (XP-882) car, which was also known as the Chevrolet Aerovette. The brand’s general manager at the time, John DeLorean, canceled the program due to its high cost but eventually authorized further work on the concept due to Ford’s plans to sell the DeTomaso Pantera through Lincoln-Mercury dealers. A few years later, in 1972, the XP-895 was born as a mid-engine Corvette with an aluminum body and a very special powertrain.
Behind the seats of the car, also known as the Reynolds Aluminum Car, was a four-rotor engine, consisting of two Chevrolet Vega two-rotor engines joined together. It produced approximately 420 horsepower (313 kilowatts) and was a unique piece of engineering. This finally brings us to the topic of this article - someone will build a modern-day, Corvette C8 with a four-rotor engine.
Unusual Corvettes:
Interestingly, Rob Dahm, who is the owner of a namesake channel on YouTube focused on rotary engines, will use a brand new 2020 Corvette for the project and not a crashed one. This probably means there will soon be a brand new C8 powertrain for sale on eBay so this might be something to look for in the future.
Dahm explains that he hasn’t bought a new C8 yet as he will wait for the rotary assembly balance to be done by another garage. Once this job is finished - and if it’s done properly, because that’s basically the foundation of the entire project, he’ll start looking for an opportunity to buy a new Corvette.
Of course, this is still a very early stage of the project - there’s no actual car and a running engine yet, but we are already excited to see how it would end up. We hope for a crazy Corvette rpm monster.