At the time, the 1984 Chevrolet Corvette outperformed the Porsche 928 on the Car and Driver skidpad. The Corvette showed .9g of lateral acceleration, while it’s European counterparts only recorded .82g. How did Chevrolet do this? Well, in the late seventies, GM’s engineering team decided that the Corvette needed to be built differently, so GM developed it’s “uniframe”. None of the exterior body panels contributed to the actual structure of the vehicle, so the new design wasn’t a true unibody. Instead, the perimeter frame was connected to the door posts, windshield, and floor pan to give the design its stability.

The C4 Corvette was the product of countless hours of labor, and was an engineering masterpiece. The C4 Corvette used plastics in its rear bumper and its body panels instead of the fiberglass found on earlier models, and all exterior fiberglass seams were covered by rub molding installed around the car. The brakes included aluminum components, and even though the ‘84 car had more ground clearance, the center of gravity was lower than the Corvette from the 1982 model year. Referred to as the “spaceship” by some enthusiasts, the 1984 Corvette utilized no analog instruments. The entire dash made use of LCD technology, and even the tachometer was a digital readout.

The ‘84 Corvette shipped with 205 hp and a four-speed automatic. A manual transmission with automatic overdrive was available as a no-cost option, but only 6,443 cars were ordered with this transmission. Every car shipped with 16” wheels (RPO QZD), and the base price of $22,361,20 reflected this. With 51,547 coupes sold during 18 months of production, the ‘84 Corvette was the second most sold Corvette in GM history.