First Drive: Chevrolet Corvette Moray Concept
America's sports-car icon meets Flash Gordon, Italian style
By Winston Goodfellow
Photography by the author
Motor Trend, November 2003 Above: One part C5, one part Manta Ray concept, several parts Giugiaro.


Fabrizio Giugiaro must be a huge fan of "The Jetsons." Take a swoopy carbon-fiber body with a transparent canopy, mate it to a fifth-generation (C5) Corvette platform and running gear, and you can imagine George Jetson cruising to work at Spacely Sprockets in the Corvette Moray.
The looks of Italdesign's latest show car may not be for everyone, but a close examination of those well-proportioned lines and flashy details accomplishes exactly what Giugiaro and Co. desired. The craftsmanship is outstanding, amply demonstrating that Italdesign Giugiaro is capable of making compound curves and hard lines with a high degree of skill.



Why a Corvette? The most obvious answer is the car's 50th anniversary. Less known is Fabrizio Giugiaro's love of this most American sports car, particularly the 1963 "split window" and 1968-1982 "Mako Shark" coupes and convertibles. Look closely at the lines along the top of the Moray's fenders and the canopy's split roof: The link is undeniable.

If the exterior is an exhibition in superb handiwork, the interior's liberal use of chrome and bright colors is over the top, and purposefully so. "People expect that type of flash in a show car," Giugiaro says with a shrug of the shoulders. Once you get past the razzle-dazzle, some serious thought comes through. Giugiaro stresses cars should be easy to use, and so it is with the Moray. The center console's supplementary controls are minimal in number and work intuitively. Take off the bright chrome finish, and it's easy to visualize the ventilation and A/C controls in a production car. That ease of use came in especially handy during our test drive. Outside temperatures hovered around 100 degrees, yet the Moray's "fish-tank" interior remained comfortably cool.


Giugiaro left the Corvette's road manners intact; the underlying C5 chassis is essentially stock. The Moray is a breeze to pilot through the swarms of onlookers in traffic, and passing a slow-moving truck on a tight, two-lane road is a simple throttle jab away. The steering is light and direct, and the car's on-road demeanor is entirely different from the high-strung Alfa Romeo Brera, last year's Italdesign Giugiaro show toy. The Moray drives much like any automatic-equipped Vette Roadster and is rolling proof of Giugiaro's insistence that the company's concepts be fully operational runners.

Don't look for the Moray to show up at your local Chevrolet dealer. This Vette will remain a one-off, an experiment in interior design that also reflects one Italian's passion for America's sports car on its 50th anniversary.

Italdesign Moray Concept _
Price Let's call it a mil
Vehicle layout Front engine, rwd, 2-door, 2-pass
Engine 5.7L/350-hp V-8, OHV, 2 valves/cyl
0-60 mph, sec 4.9 (est)
On sale in U.S. Don't count on it