Flashback Friday: Early C4 Corvette Promotional Film

An old promo film gives us a rare glance at the 1984 C4 Corvette’s canceled 15″ wheel option.

This brief promotional film dates back to the very earliest days of the C4 Corvette. In just six minutes, it breaks down the basics of the car’s styling and features.

It’s a wonderful trip back in time — a time when the C4 was fresh, exciting, and new. There are on-screen illustrations meant to evoke primitive computer graphics, backed up by a soundtrack dripping with synthesizers.

The video’s sci-fi intro features a mystery woman beckoning a man to a forest clearing, where a Corvette appears as a reflection in a still pool of water. The reflection disappears, as does the woman. In its place is a real Corvette, with the woman in the passenger seat.

It was the mid-1980s, and the car of the computerized future was there for the taking. As the voiceover proudly proclaims, “Corvette — a new classic, available now.”

The C4’s Long-Lost 15″ Wheel Option

While the features of the car are discussed, we find ourselves distracted by one particular feature of the red Corvette on screen — the wheels. They’re not the iconic turbine wheels seen on all production 1984 C4 Corvettes. They’re also not the well-loved “YJ8” wheels seen on later C3s. Instead, they look like something in between.

Originally, the base C4 was supposed to come standard with these 15″ wheels, with the now-famous 16″ turbine wheels as an extra-cost option. That option was canned at some point during the Corvette’s year off in 1983. Some promotional material — like this video and the 1984 Corvette brochure — show the 15″ wheels that were never actually offered for sale.

A few dozen 1983 model Corvettes were indeed built for testing. Almost all of those cars were subsequently crushed.

Now, the only car wearing these now-rare wheels is the lone surviving 1983 Corvette that lives at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It’s very likely that the car in the video is one of those doomed 1983 Corvettes. It gives us a feeling like we’re watching a ghost.

Styling & Features

A large portion of the video focuses on the C4 Corvette’s then-revolutionary styling and aerodynamics. The narrator states,”From its V-shaped nose to its razor-sharp spoiler, Corvette’s advanced aerodynamics are apparent from every angle.”

Similar attention is given to the C4 Corvette’s digital dashboard. At the time, it was a space-age feature. These days, it’s evocative of a decade of rapid technological growth, a decade when even the music was digitized, computerized, and programmed (not that that’s a bad thing).

We’re sure that some buyers mused that this would be the last Corvette they’d buy with wheels. We were all supposed to get flying cars about 20 years ago or so, remember?

What Were They Thinking?

One humorous scene at the end shows the new Corvette parking under a tree as the driver removes the roof panel and demonstrates how it’s stowed in the hatch. Then, inexplicably, the couple walks off toward the beach as the narrator closes with “Corvette — providing the outstanding level of performance you’d expect in a world-class sports car from Chevrolet.”

So, they’re just going to leave it there like that? The scene makes no sense. It’s a beautiful day — why would you drive to your destination with the roof on, then take it off while the car was parked? The more you think about it, the sillier it gets.

We’re sure that when they got back, the leather seats were hot enough to fry eggs, and the interior could probably use a good vacuuming to get rid of all the leaves and tree pollen. On a car so forward-thinking, it just seems kind of backward to us.

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