Project Corvette Stingray C7 Z51: Remodeling the Interior

by Mike Kojima

The C7 Corvette’s interior is a huge step up from its predecessors. Previous iterations of the venerable Corvette might have been awesome cars, but the interiors were plastic clad and had the look of a cheap rental car. Not so with the C7.

With the most recent Corvette, Chevy really pulled out all the stops when it came to the design of the interior. The level of fit and finish and the quality of the materials rivals that of the Japanese and German cars that can cost several times more.

We have a Nissan GT-R Black Edition and a Porsche GT3 RS in the MotoIQ Garage, and we would say that surprisingly the C7 is on par with those cars. The Porsche does have over $20,000 in Porsche custom shop interior upgrades, but the base RS and GT3 are probably less well-appointed than the Corvette while costing twice as much.

Although our Vette came with a nice interior from the factory, we wanted to pimp it out some more with some factory optional parts right from GM.

When we were shopping for our Corvette we noticed some of the better appointed C7s in the showroom had nice carbon fiber dashes and Alcantara covered interior pieces that really looked and felt good in the hands. While the car we found didn’t have those parts, we soon found out the most important components we wanted could be purchased from the dealer! As you can see here, we picked up the carbon fiber dash, an Alcantara covered steering wheel, shift boot, and shift knob. Chevrolet calls the Alcantara stuff “sueded,” but you know what we are talking about.

We chose this carbon fiber grill from the Chevy parts bin. It’s a pretty spiffy looking piece, and it brings the interior up to expensive supercar pimp levels!

The carbon is a matte finish reminiscent of vacuum bagged pre-preg.

So the whole dash isn’t carbon, it is a well-done carbon overlay of the stock dash. Everyone else does that and it is about the only way to get perfect fits. It goes right in like, well the stock dash!