If you'll indulge me with a personal story for a moment: when I was in high school, my father bought himself an NB Mazda Miata. But I wasn't allowed to drive it. It was a five-speed manual, and he was convinced I'd either wreck the car or the gearbox or both. Then, when I came home to visit from college one day, I learned he traded up to a C5 Chevrolet Corvette Z06. And he said I had to drive it. 

The Miata was too much for me, but the car with about three times as much horsepower? Good to go. Dad logic, you might call it. 

All of this is to say that learning to drive stick on that Corvette left me with a soft spot for America's sports car. Yet the whole world is electrifying now. Where does that leave a performance car that's so deeply linked to the V8 engine? 

Well, if this design study bears out, then we don't have anything to worry about. This week, General Motors unveiled a new "advanced design study Chevrolet Corvette concept car"—the first of several to be revealed this year, apparently—that could in some way preview a potential future all-electric Corvette hypercar. 

It's crucial to note that this is in no way a final design, nor has GM given us any new details about a confirmed all-electric Corvette beyond some past statements by executives. But the fact that it exists at all shows that GM is clearly thinking about this sort of thing, both in looks and what Corvette fans would want out of it.

"It was important that they all pay homage to Corvette's historic DNA, but each studio brought their own unique creative interpretation to the project," Michael Simcoe, GM's senior VP of global design, said in a company blog post. "That is exactly what our advanced design studio network is intended to do—push the envelope, challenge convention and imagine what could be."

Here's a video preview from the folks at Top Gear: