A four-door Corvette ?

While this writer sits at a café directly across the street from one of our nation’s largest Corvette dealers, news has broken of a potential addition to the Corvette family. We can see it now: hundreds of people flocking to the dealership to see what all the fuss is about: another set of doors and a backseat.

What we find interesting here isn’t that the Corvette could spawn a four-door model. It’s that Mr. Bob Lutz, GM’s vice chairman, isn’t opposed to the idea.

Of course, he may be thinking that if Porsche and Aston can pull it off, so then can General Motors. Whether or not people are willing to buy four-door sports cars seems to be a discussion that was clarified decades ago: in other words, “yes.” In fact, more people buy sports sedans than they buy sports coupes. It’s not hard to figure out why this makes sense.

But does it make sense for Corvette? Some people think that Lutz’s “four-door Corvette” is actually just a metaphorical primer for the forthcoming Impala, itself a rear-wheel drive stormer based on Zeta architecture that should finally give Chevy a serious mid-size car with actual high-performance capabilities.

Or is Lutz actually talking about a real, four-door Corvette? An four-door coupe, done in the style of the Mercedes-Benz CLS, but with a real-world pricing strategy of around $55,000? Anything is possible in the era of Lutz, but this one sounds too far afield for us to consider seriously.