Hope Santa’s got some coal left, because someone else has earned it for yet another holiday season leak. Alongside leaked shots for the 2013 Bentley Continental GT Speed Convertible and Mercedes-Benz CLA, a Corvette Forum member recently uploaded a number of drawings of the C7 Corvette that he says someone has been sending him. The post has since been removed from the forum, the original poster, “Blue Ox,” writing “the information I posted is less ‘public’ than was originally thought and… someone’s job could be in danger.”
There are no take-backs on the Internet, though. The drawings look to be from an owner’s manual or a service guide and show the coupe’s exterior, rear end and inside the rear hatch, then cover details of the cockpit, seats and engine bay. There’s a new steering wheel inside, and a large central screen with a new array of HVAC buttons underneath. Pilots will get to sit in new sports seats that finally appear to have the proper amount of bolstering for a Corvette.
The dash cluster that was teased in a video not long ago looks like it could be a central LCD screen flanked by analogue gauges for the speedo, water temp and fuel tank, not an all-LCD display. There will be a Track Overlay feature that tracks the car on a track and monitors speed, brake and throttle application, gear selection, G force and direction, lap time and steering angle, and it displays a graph for the Performance Traction Management. This will likely work with the (or is a display for) the Performance Data Recorder that is said to be able to save vehicle data, as well as video and audio, to an SD card.
Not shown in the photos but thrown into the discussion is Active Rev Match for cars equipped with manual transmissions, said to match engine speed to the next gear for both upshifts and downshifts. Last but not least, an Engine Sound Management system will alter the ‘robustness’ of the engine note via seven settings: Auto, Stealth, City, Tour, Sport, Track and Off.
There are just three weeks left until the C7 is revealed at the Detroit Auto Show. We wouldn’t mind leaving something left to surprise us on the official day, but we won’t be surprised if that doesn’t happen.
