Honoring Chip Foose Design’s 30th with His Maniacal Chevrolet Imposter

By Tony Markovich - August 2, 2016

I’m not quite sure what it is, but something about this C6 Corvette is a bit different … oh, right, everything.

For those who haven’t heard of this guy before, this is the Chip Foose Design Chevrolet Imposter. It is a 100 percent customized 1965 Chevrolet Impala Super Sport with the skeleton of a 2008 C6 Chevrolet Corvette. Foose recently celebrated 30 years of design at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, so I drove down to check it out and get some photos of this wild animal.

This project was the result of Foose and his customer Don Voth contemplating a simple question: “What if Chevy’s Corvette division had made a muscle car in 1965?” The company already had the Corvette, and it already had the Impala SS model, so what would have happened if they made one to fill the gap? This is Foose’s vision of how that would have turned out.

When the Imposter was given the green light, Voth went to a dealership to buy a brand new C6. Then it was immediately brought back to the garage and completely stripped to start prepping for its new coat. Of course, the Impala body didn’t remain the same either. A quick run-down shows that, to make this work, the Corvette platform was stretched seven inches and the Impala was shortened 14 inches. The roof is now 1.25 inches lower and eight inches shorter, the deck lid is seven inches shorter, the windshield was laid down 2.5 inches, the bumpers were hand-made, and the rear wheel wells are raised two inches and pulled forward seven inches.

The Corvette’s 6.2-liter V8 remained in the car, but performance was bolstered, as well. Foose added a Magnuson supercharger, and the car has a custom exhaust with MagnaFlow parts. The coolest part might be the fact that Foose and his team kept all of the same electronics of the Corvette, and they all work. He completely re-worked the interior to feel and look much more luxurious, but it uses all the same components as the original Vette, down to the nav and stereo.

The Imposter sat in the center of the room, where Foose’s originality and execution was being celebrated, on Foose Design wheels and Pirelli Tires. As far as rest-mods go, this one is up there with the best.