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Why Lamborghini Should Fear The Chevy Corvette SUV

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Why Lamborghini Should Fear The Chevy Corvette SUV
Credits: BY BRUNO MAIA

A front 3/4 render of a yellow Chevrolet Corvette SUV

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Looking at premium sports car brands, as well as other high-end carmakers' SUVs and the success they’ve achieved, it only makes sense that Chevy would be working on a Corvette SUV. Even Ferrari caved and built the outstanding, and very expensive Purosangue after the huge success of the Lamborghini Urus. So while Porsche paved the way with the Cayenne two decades ago, other German Brands such as BMW, Audi, and Mercedes followed, and the rest is history.

The Chevrolet Corvette is a true all-American Sports car that encompasses what the American car enthusiast value. It delivers the goods at a competitive price. It just takes one look at some of its competition to see the great value for the money the Corvette brings to the table. There is no reason to think it would be any different with a high-performance Corvette SUV, and that is why Lamborghini with its Urus, should be very concerned. In fact, all major sport SUV brands should fear the upcoming Corvette SUV, especially because it would likely blow the competition away. As much as purists would loathe the idea of a Corvette SUV, others would argue - what took Chevy so long to bring a Corvette SUV to market.

To put things into perspective, a Chevy Corvette 1LT with a mid-mounted 6.2-liter direct injection naturally aspirated V-8, and an eight-speed dual-clutch transmission has a starting MSRP of $65,895. That’s a sports car that leaves nothing to be desired when compared to some of the best the industry has to offer in its category. But it’s significantly cheaper than most of its competition, much like a Corvette SUV would also hopefully be. The estimated MRSP for the 2024 Lamborghini Urus is $235.000. Now, when thinking about the Corvette SUV, the consensus is that its starting MSRP would be in the low $70.000, and up to $100.000 on the top trim model. That would make it quite a bargain, and the Urus is not even close to being the most expensive performance SUV around.

One could also argue the performance gap between the Urus and a Corvette SUV could justify this price difference. The 2023 Urus packs a 4.0 liter, twin-turbo V-8 that makes out an impressive 657 horsepower @ 6,000 rpm and 627 pound-feet of torque. Assuming the base model Corvette SUV would employ the same 6.2-liter naturally aspirated V-8 from the Corvette C8, the Corvette SUV would be left behind in performance, for sure. The 6.2-liter from Corvette produces 495 horsepower @ 6,450 rpm and 470 pound-feet of torque at 5,150 rpm. While the Lamborghini Urus goes from 0-60 MPH in just over three seconds, the entry-level Corvette SUV would probably do the same in the low 4s. Not bad at all, but definitely behind the Urus also reaches a top speed of 190 MPH.

How Much Of The Urus Is A Lamborghini, After All?
Lamborghini

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Lamborghini Urus S. With so many parts used in different models, sometimes it's hard to know if you're buying a Lamborghini, an Audi, a VW, or even a Porsche.

One thing to consider, however, is that the Lamborghini Urus features two turbochargers on its ‘small’ 4.0-liter engine. The numbers it puts out could be reaching a borderline here and there in terms of stress to the engine, and it would not be advisable to try and milk more ponies out of this already re-engineered VW engine the Lamborghini Urus has. On that note, it’s certainly worth pointing out the Lamborghini Urus might be less of a Lamborghini than its usual customer might think it is. Just recently, Mat Watson from the YouTube channel Carwow showed what’s under a Urus and found a bunch of components from VW and Audi. See for yourself in the video below.

Now, Chevy’s parent company, General Motors, already employs a supercharged variant of its 6.2-liter engine on the Cadillac Escalade-V. And being of a larger displacement unit and a very well-built one for that matter, it easily makes 682 horsepower and 653 pound-feet of torque, numbers that would beat the Urus and leave the Corvette SUV near the top of its class. So, simply employing this already existing supercharged engine that has already proven itself on a full-size SUV that is the Cadillac Escalade could be a cost-effective solution to put the higher level trims of the Corvette SUV in a position to smoke the Lamborghini Urus, both in Performance and by an even wider margin, on price.

The Performance Of The Corvette SUV Could Be Even Better Than The Urus
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Chevrolet Corvette SUV

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As if that wasn’t a good enough solution, one could resort to third-party companies such as Hennessey Performance that could boost that Chevy engine to 708 horsepower all that while offering a 3-year, 36,000-mile limited warranty for the upgrade. The regular Corvette doesn’t use this supercharged engine from the factory for practical reasons. The car is light, RWD, and already boasts excellent performance. The supercharged Cadillac version of that engine with all that extra horsepower and torque would be overkill, and the traction control would be working overtime to keep those rear wheels from digging a hole through the ground every time the driver hit the gas pedal. But, alas, each customer knows what he or she wants and the Hennessey upgrade is available for C8 owners should they desire all that craziness.

The Corvette SUV, on the other hand, would offer AWD as is a standard in the segment and would be able to deal with that extra horsepower and torque easily. It would actually need it to compete in terms of performance with the Urus and other high-end SUVs from other brands. On top of all that, the Corvette's design looks gorgeous and the possibilities to make an even better-looking SUV that falls right in place with its audience are vast. This is indeed an opportunity Chevy shouldn’t pass up on.

About The Author
Bruno Maia(95 Articles Published)

A car and motorcycle enthusiast, Bruno enjoys writing about and following up on what's happening in the industry. He's easy and friendly. Known to drop the bass on occasion.
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Ugh, I hope Corvette never makes an SUV. Corvettes are for cool people, not SUV drivers! Just because Porsche did doesn't make it right. And we all know Porsche people are not Corvette people.
GM people, from Reuss to Tadge and more, say C&D's story is total fiction. Reuss said, basically, we'd be fools to believe a single word of the C&D story. At the Bash, Tadge say they were as surprised as we were to hear about this SUV. Of course, GM isn't going to comment on future product, but their denials aren't usually as pointed as these.
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Just remember the Porsche Cayenne and Macan are Porsche's cash cows and very profitable and funds all of the R&D of the Porsche car lines. I love my Porsche Cayenne and if there was a Corvette SUV, I would’ve purchased to meet my family hauler suv needs at the time.

Corvette as a brand vs a model would attract younger adults with family’s or keep those corvette owners from abandoning the brand by selling sports car because of a growing family.

That’s just my two cents, but it is also why the average age of the Porsche brand is 10 years younger than corvette purchasers which means you have them longer as a customer. Also, the entry level sports car Porsche gets younger buyers into the brand with the boxter, 4-dr Panamera, Macan, Cayenne thus eventually moving them up the spectrum of offerings that meets their family needs while staying in the brand and become a loyalist.

There is an entire thread on the debate about this so I won’t go any further on the topic. Here are a few threads of the past on this topic.

Corvette SUV Coming?

https://www.stingrayforums.com/thre...c-cars-in-its-first-year-of-production.84807/

Make Corvette its Own Brand?
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I don't claim to have any knowledge about a Corvette SUV. But the comparison to Porsche is a bit misleading. Chevy already has numerous SUVs for sale, so it's not clear that slapping a Corvette nameplate on an SUV will bring in new customers vs. cannibalizing sales of existing Chevy SUVs.
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