Do you want to know more about the wheels everybody could be talking about at a future car meet? You’ve come to the right place, as we’re here to discuss a Kyza digital design that’s most likely going to make it to the real world via Rotiform. The rotary-animated C5 ‘Vette linking the four pieces? This time around, it seems like the vehicle is the accessory.
With digital artist Khyzyl Saleem, the question is not if he’s going to bring his designs to life, but rather which ones will make the cut. From working on other people’s SEMA builds to creating his LTO (Live To Offend) body kit company, the London-based digital master has proven he can make his pixels into metal, or other materials, for that matter.
Packing some of the most original ideas on the web, it’s not often that the self-taught artist revives his work, but he’s done just that with this Wankel-animated C5 Chevrolet Corvette wearing a Mazda RX-7 front clip (more on the vehicle below).
However, as mentioned above, the big news revolves around the multi-piece wheels of the car, which feature a three-double-spoke design with an actual twist.
“Brought back the R.E. Amemiya-styled C5 Corvette! 2 years old now, wow, time sure does fly [โฆ]. Fit with my custom Tri-spokes I also may or may not be getting made @rotiform,” the artist writes in the Instagram post below.
We’ve seen the American wheel developer working with social media-famous digital artists before, but the origins of the design might be what has prevented these rolling goodies from being built already.
According to an Instagram post dating back to November 2021 (the second one below), Kyza first came up with these wheels in 2019. Inspired b Japanese specialist Advan’s famous SA3R design, the artist played with the look, having come up with no less than fifteen versions by 2021โyou’ll notice some slight changes between the two posts and we’re not referring to the older one portraying a Kyza-widebodied Toyota 86.
The Kyza’s C5-RX-7 mashup is a dream linked to the cars in his garage
Two years ago, the artist felt inspired by the styling smiliarities between the C5 and the FD3S iteration of the RX-7, bringing these together in one of his designsโhe actually released two sets of renderings, with the one embeded below (the second Insta post) showcasing the car with a standout livery.
And while U.S. drifting enthusiast Levi Wait (aka drift_dr) had already placed an FD-gen RX-7 nose on a C5 in real life, the rendering in question took thinks quite a few steps further. For one, the contraption involves not the factory Mazda front end, but one released by infamous Japanese developer RE Amemiya.
The posterior, with its lower spoiler, brings a bit of a Longtail approach, while the slightly angleled placement of the mufflers is something else.
Kyza, an FD RX-7 and C5 owner himself (just to be clear, these are separate cars in his garage), imagined nothing less than a bridge-ported Wankel motor for the C5. And it all reminds us of that time in 1973 when Chevrolet built a mid-engined Corvette prototype with a four-rotor, as part of a larger GM Wankel experimental program that unfortunately never led to a production vehicle.