The Corvette Impala Is The Chevy Concept That Was Ahead Of Its Time

This fully road-ready Corvette Impala was known at Chevy as the XP-101, and it was on display to test what the car-buying public thought about taking a two-seat Corvette and turning it into a five-passenger sports car. While the Corvette had a wheelbase of 102 inches, the Impala hybrid had a 116.5-inch wheelbase. At 202 inches long, the Corvette Impala was about 34 inches longer than a standard Corvette, four inches wider, and two inches taller.

It sat on standard Chevy sedan chassis with an “independent front suspension and a live axle with leaf springs at the rear.” It was powered by one of Corvette’s 265 CID V8 engines with two-four-barrel carbs pushing out 225 horsepower. It was also equipped with a Powerglide two-speed automatic gearbox (via Mac’s Motor City Garage). The Impala crossover, as with all Corvettes at the time, was made out of fiberglass and had a “tinted, wraparound windshield with a panoramic view” (via Chevy Hardcore).

A folding armrest (with map case) in the front seat allowed for three people to sit (if tightly), and while you could conceivably get three in the back, a fixed armrest (with power window switches) there would have made it rather uncomfortable. In addition, the car came with seatbelts, a feature that wasn’t nationally mandated until 1968, and one other interesting feature: as the car sped up, the speedometer progressively lit up with more intense shades of red (via Chevy Hardcore).

Despite making a second appearance at Motorama and the Chicago Auto Show in 1957, GM never made the Corvette Impala. In fact, according to reports, whatever concept cars still existed were turned into scrap sometime that year (via Mac’s Motor City Garage).