Central Valley Corvettes of Fresno - October 2019

So what stalled this radical mid-engine shift for five decades? Chevrolet was having no
trouble selling every Corvette right off the assembly line in the late ’60s, so it made no
sense to mess with success. The concept worked in drumming up press and
conversation about the Corvette nameplate, and that was ultimately good enough. Just
a few years later, in 1974, you can see the Astro II’s tail design influence on production
(front-engine, obviously) Corvette models.
In person, the Astro II is petite. The only thing that doesn’t look small about this car is
the engine shoved under the massive rear clamshell. In some strange way, it looks like
a Corvette, so much so that even from a distance, when the badging is not visible, the
lineage of the car is obvious. Just under 44 inches from floor to roofline, it begs the
question how the GT40 program took out four more inches.