Jared has spent 15 years covering the auto industry, getting his first break with autoX—one of Asia’s biggest auto magazines. Since 2010, he has reviewed hundreds of cars and motorbikes around the world, worked with Top Gear, Autocar, Evo, Motoring World, and Quattroruote, served on the IMOTY jury for five years, and is a founding member of the Automotive Journalist Association of India (AJAI).
The rumors have been swirling, the spy shots have been taken, and now we have a massive leak from GM itself, and all of this leave us to believe with a strong conviction that a new C8 Corvette Grand Sport is coming. If this is true, then it makes perfect sense for the C8 Grand Sport to be slotted between the Stingray and the hybrid E-Ray.
The Grand Sport is no stranger to the Corvette model lineup, and with this new variant making a comeback, the Chevrolet Corvette will now have almost as many different variants of one single sports car model as the Porsche 911 does. To most people, spotting the differences won’t be easy, and only true sports car enthusiasts will be able to tell them all apart. But, for now, we have come up with our own exclusive render of what the upcoming 2026 or 2027 C8 Corvette Grand Sport will look like, and it’s wearing its most legendary colors as well.
Leak alert: 2027 Corvette Grand Sport may land with a new 6.6L V8 and 525–550 hp. Hear the rumored burble and what it means for C8 buyers.
The Corvette in its most basic form already looks like a killer. A new Grand Sport badge feels like the most logical next move for Chevy. Historically, this has been the Corvette’s sweet spot because it borrows the right hardware from the higher trims without going full deep-end crazy. And if the recent rumors are even close to accurate, the 2026-2027 Chevrolet Grand Sport might not just be a parts-bin special, because it could be something that sets itself apart completely.
Nevertheless, the design of the C8 Grand Sport will not be too far off from the current models. For our render, we leaned into what makes a Grand Sport instantly recognizable from 50 feet away, and we believe that’s the iconic blue-and-white combo. Grand Sports have worn that look across generations, and it’s basically become the uniform for “track day Corvette” without needing a single word of explanation.
Visually, the goal was to make it feel like the bridge between the Stingray and the more powerful models like the ZR1. It needs to be a little aggressive though. The front end is all about presence with a lower, and wider stance, as well as sharper intakes.
And then there’s the stripe treatment. The white center stripe is a Grand Sport calling card. On a mid-engine C8 shape, it also helps emphasize the car’s width and gives the nose a clean, purposeful focal point.
New heart for the C8? Rumors point to a 6.6L V8 and a widebody Grand Sport. Here’s what dealers heard – and what it could mean for Stingray and E-Ray.
The 2026 C8 Grand Sport story has been fueled by multiple breadcrumbs—most notably a now-deleted clip that allegedly let people hear the character of the next Grand Sport engine, and a parts-book style leak from GM.
The biggest takeaway though from the leak-driven side of the rumor mill is that the upcoming Grand Sport may be tied to the return of the LS6 name, and the specs being floated point to something that’s not simply a warmed-over V8. We could be seeing a newly developed 6.6-liter V8 capable of pushing out anywhere from 500 to 600hp. It has been reported by many that Chevy is developing an engine that deliberately sits in the gap between the standard Corvette and the more extreme ZR1 cars—more special than a Stingray, more usable day-to-day than the highest-performance monsters, and tuned to be a driver’s car first.
If Chevy follows the Grand Sport playbook from past generations, expect it to land as an enthusiast middleweight.
The timeline talk points toward the 2027 model-year window, which would likely mean an official reveal sometime late 2026 if Chevy sticks to normal cadence. That doesn’t mean it’s arriving quietly, though—if testing ramps up, expect more spy shots, more “accidental” leaks, and more forum sleuthing connecting dots GM would rather keep unconnected.
Back in the late ’60s, Chevrolet produced an extremely rare, barely-tamed race car disguised a street machine.
Grand Sport history matters because it’s never been just a sticker package—it’s a Corvette badge rooted in racing DNA and a track-first attitude that started with Zora Arkus-Duntov’s original ’60s program and later returned as a true performance identity. Traditionally, Grand Sport has meant widebody looks, upgraded brakes/cooling, and a setup built to be driven hard without going full extreme, which is why bringing it back now could make sense as the C8 lineup grows into a full performance family with a clear “sweet spot” gap to fill.
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