Camo’d ME Has U.S.A. Flag Sticker

[John]

I love the irony here of spending all the money to camo a U.S.A. made Corvette, yet someone stuck an Amaerican flag sticker on it.

Mid-Engine Corvette C8 Spied At the Nurburgring With U.S.A. Sticker (By AAron Brzozowski)

• — SEP 8, 2018

Did you know that 100 pecent of the people currently in GMAuthority‘s employ reside within the United States?

It’s true, and while as journalists we recognize the varied achievements of automakers from the world over, as Americans, we take particular pride in the feats of our own domestic automotive manufacturers. So, we were especially delighted when our spy photographer camped out at Germany’s world-famous Nürburgring Nordschleife produced a few images of the forthcoming mid-engine Corvette (C8) rocking the old red-white-and-blue on its derrière, if you’ll pardon our French.

As shown in these photos, the mid-engine Corvette C8 prototype proudly wore a “U.S.A.” bumper sticker with an American flag pattern as it drove around the distinguished European road course, representing its home country while on the old continent. There is perhaps something a bit funny about it wearing any sort of identifying feature while it’s all covered up in obfuscating camouflage, but we’re too darn proud to laugh.



Making us all the more proud as GM fans is that the forthcoming mid-engine Corvette is nearly ready to join a small, elite class of rear-mid-engine American production cars. While it’s a layout that’s long been embraced by several boutique European carmakers, America’s volume automakers have never been quite as keen to install the powerplant just ahead of the rear axle, although the Pontiac Fiero and Ford GT (and earlier GT40) are notable exceptions. The Chevrolet Corvair and DeLorean DMC-12 utilized a rear-engine layout, where most of the engine sat behind the rear axle, while AMC’s AMX/3 never quite made it to production.

Why move to a rear-mid-engine layout? It’s all about the distribution of weight between the axles. Putting mass at the rear of the vehicle helps keep the driven wheels glued for maximum acceleration, and under braking, much of the weight shifts forward anyway, helping the front tires slow the car and exercise strong cornering grip. Now, today’s Chevrolet Corvette – the C7 – already has a slightly rear-biased weight distribution, thanks to a front-mid-engine layout and a rear-mounted transaxle, but even more bias is never a bad thing.

The new layout should help the forthcoming mid-engine Corvette / Corvette C8 compete with the very best of them. It’s a good time to be an American.

http://gmauthority.com/blog/2018/09/...u-s-a-sticker/

[Sigmon]

Usa usa usa !!!!

[Bluevette]

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if they did this.

[Bikerjulio]

Obviously it's intended to improves sales in Europe

[LightningBolt]

We know it's a GM vehicle, the camo is there to obscure the final details of the design. Now... if it had the cross flags logo, that might be very telling indeed!

[Bikerjulio]

In noodling around the interwebs I came across this, meaning the "USA" stickers may not just be showing off, but rather a legal requirement in Europe for a US-registered car.

This European custom became an international requirement in many countries after the U.N.’s Geneva Convention on Road Traffic (1949) and Vienna Convention on Road Traffic (1968). It was agreed upon that a distinguishing sign of the country of registration had to be displayed on the rear of the vehicle. It also stipulated that the sign could either be placed separately from the registration plate or could be incorporated into the vehicle’s number plate and if the international registration letter was incorporated into the licence plate, it also had to appear on the front number plate.



These days, oval stickers with an international circulation mark are not as common anymore in Europe, since standard E.U. number plates have integrated the country code into a blue strip on the left side of the plate.