When the Corvette’s Heart Beat in Strange Places

The Chevrolet Corvette has long been America’s sports car icon, but its V8 engines have powered a surprisingly wild collection of vehicles far beyond the showroom floor. From Italian exotics to Australian utes and even a retro pickup, here are ten cars that secretly, or not so secretly, borrowed their muscle from the Corvette.

The most obvious example is the Cadillac CTS-V, which earned its “four-door Corvette” nickname honestly. The 2004 original used the C5 Z06’s LS6 V8, good for 400 horsepower, while later generations borrowed supercharged engines from the C6 and C7 Corvettes. But the list gets stranger.

3-liter V8 until Chevrolet dropped in the C6 Corvette’s 390-hp LS2 for 2005. Even that couldn’t save the quirky truck from cancellation.

Across the globe, Holden’s Australian performance arm, HSV, built the 2017 GTSR W1 sedan and ute using the C6 Corvette ZR1’s supercharged LS9 V8, producing 635 horsepower. Only 300 were made before GM shut down local manufacturing. 0-liter LS7 into its Evantra supercar, eventually tuning it to over 1,000 horsepower, briefly making it Italy’s most powerful road car.

And the Pontiac G8 GXP, a four-door muscle sedan, packed the C6 Corvette’s LS3 V8 with 415 horsepower, arriving just as Pontiac was killed off in 2009.

Other oddballs include the Drakan Spyder, a 2,000-pound track toy with the LS3 V8 and a $175,000 price tag, and the Equus Bass 770, a retro-styled coupe using the ZR1’s supercharged LS9. The Mosler MT900 and Sin R1 both relied on Corvette V8s for lightweight, no-nonsense performance.

Finally, the VLF Destino replaced the Fisker Karma’s hybrid system with the LS9, turning a luxury sedan into a 200-mph muscle car. Each proves the Corvette’s engine was too good to keep to itself.