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CORVETTE TODAY #101 - Co, rvette News & Headlines, Late March 2022
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May 8, 2025
It’s officially Springtime and the CORVETTE TODAY podcast continues to keep you up-to-date on what’s happening with America’s Sports Car. Keith Cornett from CorvetteBlogger.com joins your CORVETTE TODAY host, Steve Garrett, with the latest on Corvette as we get closer to the 70th anniversary C8 Corvettes. Here are some of the topics covered in this weeks podcast: 1. The Bowling Green Asembly Plant is shutdown all this week 2. 2023 Corvette pricing to be announced March 23rd 3. Corvette Racing at Sebring overview 4. IMSA sets BoP (Balance of Power) for Sebring, and Corvette had to add more weight 5. Is Sky Cool Gray with Strike Yellow seats going away for 2023? 6. A C8 HTC owner creates a see-through window for the LT2 engine 7. Ever heard of Corvette-driving Angelyne? Now there’s a series about her on Peacock.
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0:00
[Music] welcome to corvette today the podcast
0:06
that talks about everything corvette with your host steve garrett mc and dj at one of the largest corvette weekends
0:12
in the country corvette fun fest president of the corvette club of kansas city missouri and radio disc jockey at
0:19
the number one radio station in kansas city for over 40 years here's steve garrett
0:28
thanks for listening to corvette today the podcast that talks about everything corvette brought to you by mid-america
0:34
motorworks car show season is here get your corvette ready by shopping over 60 000 corvette specific parts and
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accessories at i'm your host steve garrett i appreciate you tuning in you can listen to corvette
0:47
today on all podcast platforms you can also listen on your smart device just say alexa or hey google play the podcast
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1:01
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1:26
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enthusiasts like yourself at mid-engine corvette forum.com also a shout out to
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canadiancorvetforum.com welcoming corvette owners from around the world it's time to get the latest corvette
2:20
news and headlines with my buddy keith cornett from corvetteblogger.com as you know keith is a regular guest on
2:26
corvette today he's here twice per month every other week to keep you updated on what's happening with america's sports
2:32
car keith welcome back to the show it's springtime and you're fresh back from sebring how was that yeah what a
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fantastic weekend in fact the whole week was really great not only did we go down to sebring but i actually took a few
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days off for vacation went up to savannah saw my family up there for st patrick's day if anybody's been to
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savannah they know they really do it up right there so after the thursday parade in savannah we boogied back down to
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tampa and then friday morning i was down in sebring two hours from tampa kind of a whirlwind week but boy just so much
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excitement going on a lot of news not all that good but there are things that are going on that i think we will be
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taking a closer look at i think more things will come into focus as we continue down this journey it's going to
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be a wild ride the next few weeks steve so let's buckle in and get going here that sounds good my friend let's just
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dive right into it let's get into corvette production at the bowling green assembly plant as far as corvette
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production goes two weeks ago we did 910 cars during the week which was the highest total since january 10th and
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that was the week that they did that special saturday shift so hopefully we will see some more of that in the coming
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time but we've got a shutdown coming up that was announced on friday it's a part specific shortage is what they said
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luckily we're only expected to be closed for the week with the reopening expected back on march 28th got a message from
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trevor thompkins of chevrolet pr he does say yes i can confirm bga is shut down
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next week on both shifts due to a temporary parts constraint what we're looking at is supply chain manufacturing
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and engineering teams are working closely with suppliers to mitigate further impacts and they are expected to resume operations on march 28th we are
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hearing that it is chip related there's been a lot of talk about ships forever now if you've looked around the
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automotive landscape the industry it's not just corvette and the people that are saying come on gm get your act
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together it's everybody's being impacted by this and there was some talk about the consortium of the big three getting
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together and manufacturing their own ships chips i know there's some talk about that i don't know exactly where they are in that process but i saw a
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report that these chips these integrated circuit boards they can take up to six months to create so you're not just
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going to fix this problem overnight we've actually heard ford's pushback dealer allocations to may toyota is
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scaling back production by a hundred thousand vehicles per month right and then you got a little war in ukraine
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going on which is affecting all kinds of automotive parts and supplies coming out for the european automaker so they're
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scrambling looking for replacements and that's just gonna again impact the global marketplace so things are really
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crazy right now for the most part we've been protected by this gm has prioritized the use of chips and they've
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given corvette an adequate supply and then from there the corvette team has actually been prioritizing where do we
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put these chips in the car occasionally we've seen some things have to go we've lost the rear park assist the beeping
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noise that you get when you're backing up that was a chip but that's an easy one to retrofit it's just right the
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trunk actually we're going to see those retrofits happen in fourth quarter but now we're getting some other stuff
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that's happening we've got magnetic ride which is on constraint and then we've got a stingray base model is on
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constraint with supply and demand they're having to make choices and figuring out which way to go in terms of
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being able to meet the demand here so yeah it's been a crazy time and these ship shortages are just on top of then
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you have some vendors are having trouble getting things done we know that black trident wheels have been backward for a
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while in fact corvette action center says also tire pressure sensors there's no high wing right now so we are being
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impacted by part shortages it's mostly chips but is some other things and so people are just having to make decisions
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you know if you had an allocation that came up in this last motorcycle and you had the base stingray in your mind your
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choice is either to spend sixty four hundred dollars to get the z51 or to wait and then if you wanted the mag
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right on top of that you decide not to get mag ride or you wait so there's a little bit of waiting that's always been
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baked into the process but now it's just even more exasperated by these part shortages again we just tried to tell people stay positive you waited this
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long it's your dream car make it your dream get what you want with it these things are going to come back around it
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might take time the team is working hard on it just have patience we've been pretty lucky actually when it comes to
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chips and i'm not surprised that this has finally caught up with us we will get through it and hopefully in just one
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more week we'll get back to production also keith i know that the 2023 stingray order guide is out early which is good
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news right yeah this thing always seems to leak early it was expected on monday friday night you go to the gm fleet
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order guide you can download it there we'll have it up on corvette blogger as well what the order guide tells us is
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everything that's included on the 2023 corvette stingray if this is stingray only there is no z06 order guide out yet
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and it also shows us the new features and then some of the combinations just to run through them real quick of course
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the imsa c8r edition that's going away that was a 2022 model we've already heard morello red dipped interior and
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the sky cool gray strike yellow interiors are going away that's something that we kind of figured might be happening we got confirmation on that
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surprisingly and we just mentioned this the five spoke trident wheels in black those are going away gm has just had
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amazing trouble trying to keep those in stock looks like they just decided to cut loose on that one for 2023 the new
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features are of course we have the full dip adrenaline red interior that's gonna be pretty exciting if you want a lot of
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red you're gonna get a lot of red with that one the big news obviously 70th anniversary special editions we've got
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the special paint the try white and the carbon flash metallic black that's going to be pretty exciting the stealth
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interior trim package that's available on the stingray and you can get it with the 2lt and the 3lt packages one of the
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things that's not available on stingray we were hoping was that level 2 carbon fiber interior right that is going to be
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z06 only okay that's a little disappointing i was hoping that we'd get a little bit more dress up for stingray
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owners but nope they want to let the z06 shine a bit with the 70th anniversary package one of the hallmarks of that is
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a special wheel a black wheel with a red stripe gm is calling these the 20 spoke
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wheel they're pretty amazing we will talk about this in the rumor section as well we caught our first look at one
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these are 20 spoke wheels and carbon flash and then they have the red stripe around them for the 70th anniversary but
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then there's also two more versions for the stingray that anybody can order so you can also get that same 20 spoke
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wheel in a bright machine face or in gloss black so that's pretty exciting so a new wheel option for stingray buyers
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one of the other new things coming out black exhaust tips for the car they've always been the silver the stainless
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steel yeah so you can get those now in black but it does require the npp performance exhaust to get the last
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edition are chrome lug nuts and then every car in the 2023 model run will
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have a special 70th anniversary plaque which appears inside the interior pretty exciting stuff i think the big news here
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obviously 70th anniversary version this is not a limited edition this is a special edition so there's no limits on
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it anybody can order it traditionally we've seen that the anniversary editions make up a huge number of production in
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those anniversary years so we're expecting big things from this car absolutely right i'm looking forward to it myself and it was also announced that
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pricing for the stingray comes out on march 23rd which is wednesday yeah so we'll have that actually have no idea
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what's going to happen is inflation really to the point where we're going to see just stuff going up because of that
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only sometimes gm will put pricing to maybe tamp down demand just a little bit
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we've already seen like z51 raised a couple of times with all the trouble now with mag ride will we see an increase on
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that boy i hope not that's something we're watching though closely we will hopefully have that on march 23rd when
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it comes out and again that's stingray only we're not expected to see z06 pricing anytime really soon ordering
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opens on march 31st from the stingray boy we're coming off a shutdown and this last motorcycle for 2022 with the
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different constraints there on the stingray base and the mega ride again who knows how that's going to look we
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ask everybody's patience and we'll work through this together and we'll see what we get absolutely right and speaking of
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the z06 buddy it doesn't look like we're going to start seeing z06 stuff until summer isn't that right yeah there's
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been some indications i've been trying to stay positive and thinking well you know maybe this could happen but yeah
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they're saying summertime we saw summer availability on the car but now we've actually had corvette team members
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telling us we might even see ordering in summer which means car might not arrive till august or september that's kind of
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disappointing but we've waited this long and we're actually only 170 days 160
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days or so from september that's how crazy some corvette z06 buyers are they've already done the math to figure
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out how many more days they have to wait i caught that over on our friends at the corvette forum there's some waiting done
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we've got a seminar coming up with the corvette team member from sebring they talk a little bit more about all that
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that sounds good just get a calendar out start marking x's on the days and pretty soon you'll be there it'll work out yeah
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that's a good idea there you go also chevrolet announced that the swiss edition a c8 is going to be sold in
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switzerland which is really really cool switzerland is the home of louis chevrolet and he was the son of a
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watchmaker so it's all kind of coming back together seems like this is just another launch edition they just called
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it the swiss edition because it specifically set up for switzerland they're doing the same thing coupon convertibles are available they'll have
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three colors for the coupe three different colors for the convertible everything comes standard with a z51
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performance mag ride front lift and trident aluminum wheels while inside you'll have gt2 seats the hud
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performance data recorder and the 14 speaker bose performance audio system so again a launch addition customers in
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switzerland at a later point will be able to do some custom ordering but for now they're getting these all they actually don't have dealerships there in
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switzerland they've got these mobile showrooms set up for cadillac and corvette buyers kind of a cool thing
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that they're doing there and again it's just another indication that the new c8 corvette is going to be a world car very
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cool i like that that's an interesting concept not having any dealerships and having traveling road shows almost and i
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can imagine you know driving your c8 with the alps in the background that would be pretty cool a heck of a ride there's a photo op for sure buddy well
12:36
let's take our first break keith and when we come back we'll talk about corvette racing and corvette rumors here
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everything corvette brought to you by mid-america motorworks car show season is here get your corvette ready by
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america's sports car in the second section we're going to talk about corvette racing and corvette rumors
15:01
keith we had a great weekend for corvette racing at sebring why don't you overview what happened there last
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weekend you know if you could write a script and say how could we have almost the perfect weekend there this would be
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it things went really well for the teams we're two series now so we split the cars we've got the wc the world
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endurance championship that's a gtlm spec car so we're still racing with the same configurations racing against
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porsche and aston martins and bmw i believe really a nice field over there and again with corvette being a world
15:30
sports car it makes sense to be racing in that series and finally if we want to
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be at the 24 hours le mans they're basically saying we have to race in wec this was the opener for the weekend of
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wec as all these teams come over here to sebring and they run the thousand miles of sebring on friday very exciting stuff
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nick tandy and tommy milner there's three drivers for the number three car for the 12-hour race but for the
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thousand miles of seabring it was just those two guys boy they really took it to these other challengers and i'm so
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glad to see how well they did it was dicey for a while we got hit from behind had a little trouble closing the door so
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we lost some time there but then the leading porsche also had some issues in pit lane finally at the end of the race
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it started lightning really crazy and some rain and they stopped it a couple times so finally they did end the race
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early and we ended up in second position so great job with corvette racing on
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that and a fantastic opening session for the wec couldn't ask for a better
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outcome at that race when we go to imsa now the following day was the 12 hours of sebring leading up to that we are a
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little upset because we did so poorly in daytona didn't have the pace of the leaders we fought like hell we ended up
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with a position six finish i believe still got some good points out of that and then to find out that they added
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even more weight during the sebring balance of performance updates there and when they set the bounce performance
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updates for sebring that's essentially they're setting them for the rest of the year so we're a little concerned about that as well but then right before
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qualifying at sebring they actually gave the corvette a little bit more power and boom now we're in the thick of it we've
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qualified third things were really looking up and then i got to tell you it was a storybook ride for the three guys
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antonio garcia jordan taylor and nikki katzberg this was the first sea ring win since 2017. it's our 12th overall but
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it's really the first time we've won the sebring 12 hour race in the c8r and of course it's our first race to win in gtd
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pro so just a fantastic outcome for the car we led 247 laps if you think about
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the wc race it was shortened they're expected to run a thousand miles there we led 913 miles of the 12 hour race in
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gtb pro i mean that's how dominant it was and especially at the end antonio garcia he's our night owl and he just
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laid down the laps there at the end kept a great gap between the second place ferrari and storybook ending for
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corvette racing there they said one of the biggest factors i think that helped them was they did that tire test which we talked about jordan taylor was at
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back in february they said that had they done testing tires at sebring during race week they wouldn't have had the
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same data the same understanding and they actually said that they saw some competitor tires falling off where we
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seem to be stronger that's what corvette racing does they've identified a problem they said we're going to look at it
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we're going to study it we're going to test it and then they came up with some solutions and everything worked out great can't ask for a better weekend
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we've got a couple more races coming up next race for wec in the number 64 car
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they're going to be at spa on may 5th and 7th inside the next race there is long beach april 8th and 9th so good
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stuff coming up for corvette racing great start for the season absolutely right also corvette racing did a really
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cool thing for a guy named david james talk about david james keith and what corvette racing did for him sure well
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david james has been one of the crew members since forever and i think he's always been their truck driver so when
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they take cars to the races there's david james in the driver's seat get them down to wherever the race is but he
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does so much more than that not only is he a jack of all trades on the corvette team they do a lot of really great stuff
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that you never hear kids with cancer david james will take the truck over to his house and drop the car right in
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front of his house and let him see let him sit in it they've given rides to the kids with the races he'll put kids in
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the driver's seat at le mans they do the lunch time with the train horn he kind of coordinates that everybody that knows
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james they call him dj loves a guy it turns out unfortunately he's got cancer
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they're just having some trouble making ends meet he's not working now so richard prince the photographer for
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corvette racing actually set up a gibson go campaign just to help out corvette racing enthusiasts jumped in and donated
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over twenty thousand dollars to dj to help out we said prayers for dj i hope you're getting better just great to see
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corvette racing fans supporting and helping a team member in need that's who we are and what we do that's awesome
19:48
that's good to hear also in the rumors section keith the new 70th anniversary wheels and exhaust were spotted on a
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transport this is kind of encouraging yeah this was the first look and what we saw was these 20 spoke wheels pretty
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amazing because when you look closely at them it's almost like a two-piece design where there's spokes on top of spokes so
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if you look at the bottom spokes those are the spider design on the z6 wheels
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and then they put like another decorative outlay on top of that they call these the q9a 20 spoke carbon flash
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forged aluminum with red stripes and these are for the 70th anniversary so when you see these red stripes on a car
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in 2023 you know exactly 70th anniversary they also had we caught one picture of the blacktail pipes again so
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that's pretty exciting nice the guy that took the picture said that he could actually see the window stickers and
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they were pre-production bins zero zero one through zero zero four so what we had essentially was general motors has
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produced the first four cars of the 70th anniversary lineup they did it in a coupe and convertible in the tri-color
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white and then a coupe and convertible in the carbon flash black these cars were going to be used for photo shoots
20:58
and we're probably also going to see these used in brochures and online the hero cards that they do and in fact i
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was talking to harlan charles corvette product marketing manager at sebring he's actually going to be driving one of
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these as his marketing car soon so we'll probably see these at some shows here you can bet they're going to be at the
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ncm bash at the end of april but we might see them at some other location so well maybe some races and some other
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places so keep your eye on out for those very exciting that we're seeing those hopefully we'll see a z06 coming out
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soon as well with the 70th anniversary package i'm keeping my fingers crossed for the z06 as well that's for sure also
21:31
we spotted another c806 out in the california mountains that's a good place to test them out it is josh holder the
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vehicle chief engineer for corvette at sebring talked about this i actually specifically asked them they're they're
21:43
still validating the cars they haven't built pre-production cars yet if they do build a car it's an ex car which is
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experimental and those cars are all going to be crushed so very sad there so no cars yet have been built
21:55
pre-production so they're still finishing up the validation of the car which is all good i think that's one of the reasons why we're still looking at a
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summer availability for the z06 but one of the questions i asked they spent so much time in germany at the nurburgring
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validating i had asked josh if they're actually going to go back the ring just opened up for the spring would they be
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back there and might we see a fast lap and he said currently there are no plans to go back they're going to be finishing
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up all their validation here stateside if they do go over obviously they want to run a lap they had some issues last
22:24
year and some things came up where they were unable to they actually had a film crew there all set to go with that it
22:30
would have been exciting if we could have gotten it but no can do that time so hopefully if they get over there again we will see them run the
22:36
nurburgring they're still testing hopefully they'll be done with that soon i hope so too well buddy let's take our
22:41
final break and when we come back we're going to talk about the lighter side of corvette here on corvette today
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shopping over 60 000 corvette specific parts and accessories at
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i'm your host steve garrett with me every other week is keith cornett from corvetteblogger.com we keep you current and up-to-date on
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america's sports car in this final segment we're going to talk about the lighter side of corvette first off keith
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the national corvette museum appointed board members through 2024. yeah these are the managers we're going to be led
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for the next two years by kai spandy the plant director at bowling green assembly plant and then our immediate past
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chairman is glenn johnson who's been a member of the board for years great guy there we've got also kaye wagner she's a
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pediatric hematologist and oncologist she is the chair elect board secretary michael larocca ceo of ready computing
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and ready motorsports the board treasurer is neil watanabe cfo for loop media who's a streaming company we've
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got a nice well-rounded board then also you have all the other regular members on the board which also includes harlan charles i think we're in a good
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leadership position there and of course we also have our new ceo of the museum and i actually ran into her sharon
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browner she was at sebring this year we had a chance to talk for a few minutes some more changes coming to the museum
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including revamping the corvette hall of fame selections and how they do that hopefully we'll be able to talk a little
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bit more about that at the bash and when some stuff comes out about the hall of fame selections there so pretty exciting
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stuff for the museum very nice also we had an interesting story keith about a manual transmission for the c8 corvette
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it was a clutch by wire transmission talk a little bit more about that all right so i've got a younger writer his
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name's alex summers and he's a bit of a dreamer i love the guy he does great work for us he'll just come up with
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stuff out of the blue and send me this and this is one of these stories because gm put out a patent before the c8
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arrived called the electric slave cylinder for manually shifted vehicles and it was a way to do a clutch by wire
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system for a corvette of course we never ended up with one for the most part i think most of us have pretty much said
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okay that's fine the dct is faster it shifts faster and why would you want to be slower with a manual transmission
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that's really the question but what kind of got him going on this the shelby gt500 also has a dct transmission and
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there was a company hpj performance out of belleville illinois they actually did
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a manual gearbox switch for the shelby gt if they did it maybe they're saying well perhaps it could be done here of
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course the architecture is completely different that was a front engine car we're rearing a mid-engine car i don't
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know if that's going to happen and unless chevy is saving something for zr1 or zora i think it was just an idea that
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was patented and then they probably just moved on from it it was an interesting concept and it did generate a lot of views which is why we're talking about
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it i really don't see a manual transmission in the corvette's future anytime soon i don't either but boy i'll
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tell you what on corvette forum dot com and mid engine corvette forum dot com it's gonna start that whole controversy
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up one more time that's for sure also keith this was really exciting a hardtop convertible c8 owner created his
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own see-through window for the lt2 engine the pictures look terrific so there's been some talk about people just
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want to be able to pop it open at a car show everybody asks about it how can you see it the visual difference between the
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coupe and convertibles obviously you can see the engine and the coop just by looking through the glass but the convertible is hidden underneath the top
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and then an engine access panel there so we've seen some other people use magnets to create a seal for the top for the
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engine access panel in which case they can just lift it off and show it in the show the engine cover the really nice
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ones will fit on that engine underneath the engine access panel i mean it doesn't come with one because you never see it so i spend the extra money on
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that right but what this guy did his name is falcon f7 on corvette form he's
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actually built a dual pane window glass into this cover he's got a little cooling solution set up and he's still
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kind of fine-tuning it but yeah the pictures look really awesome we had more than a few people saying i'd buy that he
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might be on to something there that's awesome like i said i thought the pictures look really terrific i'm
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anxious to see where he goes with that also the 2023 z06 is not going to share any parts with any other general motors
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small block engines which i thought was pretty incredible yeah so actually here's a trivia pursuit question or
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corvette pursuit question if you go that route what does the lt6 the gm small block v8 have in common and it's just
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one thing it's the 4.4 inch bore center spacing it's what makes the small block
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a small block and also it's the one thing that is the same on both of them but yeah the lt6 built from the ground
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up shares no parts with any other small blocks jordan lead who said they were looking at 650 horsepower as their
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target they actually got there right away and then they realized wow we can really get some more out of that so we
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ended up with the 670 horsepower and 460 foot-pounds of torque pretty incredible engine and one of the things that also
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came out down in sebring now they're showing the c8r engine before it was always hidden they would never show it
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they covered it in the pits they were covered they opened up the hatch but now it's actually on an engine stand and you
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can see it the engine team will tell you that the z06 street car is even more powerful than the racing version the
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engines when you see them side by side look pretty similar there's a little bit different with the manifold covers on
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top pretty cool stuff there we talked about that i think our last time the gemini project was not just a moon shot
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this is uh returning to your naturally aspirated roots but it also refers to twins and the twins were the lt6 and the
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c8r engine very nice as a matter of fact i'll do a little sneak peek for everybody listening and watching
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corvette today coming up in april i'll have jordan lee the global chief engineer for small block engines and his
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assistant chief engineer who is dustin gardner i will have them on a corvette today podcast together talking about the
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new lt6 engine that'll be coming up in mid april so make sure you tune in and watch for that yeah we won't want to
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miss that one that's for sure that'll be a fantastic one it's easy to read about everything but when you hear the two
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guys that are in charge talk about it because it's their passion the story goes to a whole new level it's fantastic
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yeah we're looking forward to that one steve absolutely also carbon revolution is the company in australia that makes
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the carbon fiber wheels for the c806 they just celebrated making their 50
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000th wheel in the grand scheme of things for a manufacturing company that's not really a lot of wheels you
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put four of them on a car so you're dividing that down but they've been doing oem wheels for ford and ferrari
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and renault and then they just added general motors they're actually working on some programs for some other manufacturers as well they've got the
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state-of-the-art center that they've scaled up they're very confident that they can do a whole lot more the wheel
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that was produced that 50 000 wheel will actually go on the rear of the z06 pretty exciting stuff coming out of
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carbon revolution wheels you're saving weight and making the car look great it's gonna be fun to watch how that all
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comes together those wheels are fantastic we saw one of the wheels at the reveal of the z06 at the petersen
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automotive museum in los angeles i actually got to pick up one of the wheels it's so light i could pick it up
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with one finger these things are going to be fantastic hey have you ever heard of a person a young lady named angeline
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well she's a corvette enthusiast and now there's going to be a series about her on peacock yeah she is one of the first
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people famous for just being famous and how she got famous was back in the
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70s or i think it was the late 70s she had a billboard of herself put up in
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hollywood that's all it was it was just angeline there's a picture of her it got to the point where at one point i think
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in the mid 90s she had about 200 billboards up around los angeles so she's kind of been known as the
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hollywood billboard queen she drives around and these pink corvettes started with a c3 she actually had a c4 a c6 a
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c7 a c8 i believe is also pink or she's adding the pink one for the c8 so pretty
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fun stuff there's a peacock show that's going to debut on may 19th and it stars
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emily rossum as the corvette driving publicity seeking beauty she was also a singer a tour guide and a candidate for
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hollywood city council and she ran for governor of california during the two different recalls that they've had
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recently there she keeps her name out there and people know her corvette enthusiast that just does it a little
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bit different than the rest of us wow i didn't know she ran for governor that's kind of amazing also two states are testing traffic
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cameras with microphones so if you have a loud car you're going to automatically get a ticket whoa yeah you know i hate
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this and my readers hate this one of the reasons why we're talking about this is because we have so many different comments on it it's the whole you're
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just going to ticket somebody without knowing exactly who was driving it where it was being driven it's just a mess and
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what happens if here's a car and maybe there's a motorcycle behind you there's so many different factors that could cause that what will happen is some guy
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that's up in new york i believe got basically an automotive traffic ticket saying that he was being summoned to a
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location the location was actually like at a landfill where i guess they have a service center where they could use
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testing if he didn't go he's gonna get fined that he goes and his car has a greater decibel rating than what's
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required he'll get fined so it's just gonna be a mess that beautiful v8 that we've got he just needs to sing
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sometimes and you're on a highway that's been the one point where you'd think that loud noises and exhausts would be
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allowed so it's one of these things that just more government regulation coming down on people and looking for ways that
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we can extract money from them without actually doing the hard work ourselves it's the man trying to keep us down
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keith i hate it when that happens i know they've been doing this forever i know we'll kind of cut this out
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our final story is really kind of a feel-good story a man sold his split window 63 corvette and he cried when it
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crossed the auction block i felt so bad for him but it was such a feel-good story when i saw this i immediately
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burst out into tears okay keith you're a softy but when you just think about it long-time corvette owners i'm 54 this
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year i think for 56 years there's been a 1966 corvette in our garage these cars
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end up being more than just a car their family members you think about purchasing one and then the care and the
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servicing it over a lifetime and all the memories with your family it just makes the car so much more so real quick this
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story he was an original buyer of the 63 was married i believe then he got a draft card a year or two later and
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actually went off to vietnam so he sold the car came back from vietnam in the early 80s 80 81 he saw the car listed
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for sale in vet views magazine and bought it back since buying it back he just has turned it into a spectacular
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example of the 1963 corvette split window it was red just beautiful
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everything's number one condition just a fantastic car and so you think about that so he gets it back in 80 so another
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40 years goes by with this car his last drive shows him coming up with the auction block and he gets out i wasn't
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expecting this you know they're just talking about the car and how great it looks and split windows are hugely in demand right now and as he goes and
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stands by the back wall he literally just starts sobbing you just really feel for him his hands are shaking i had some
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cynical people saying oh it's just because he's making all that money but there's a reason he had to sell that reason's personal to him but it was time
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that didn't mean he had to like it the sale generated 350 000 for his car and
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actually with commission was 3.85 was the sale price so an amazing story for an amazing car that story did over 200
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000 pages viewed in just a couple days it went viral i've hardly ever had stories do that it really hit home with
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a lot of people they were sharing it everywhere and i just thank everybody for doing that oh just a fantastic story
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shows the emotional connection that we have with these cars absolutely right if i was selling a 63 split window i'd be
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crying like a baby keith that's for sure the other side of the coin is the guy that bought it couldn't be happier
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that's just kind of the life cycle of corvette ownership i guess absolutely right keith thanks so much for being
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back on corvette today we will see you in two weeks we'll be into april and getting ready for the birthday bash yeah
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and you know we've got a lot of stuff coming out we're at sebring we've got videos this week coming out more news
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coming out pricing so buckle in stay tuned because we've got some crazy weeks coming ahead of us thanks for listening
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to corvette today and please be sure to tell your family friends and other corvette enthusiasts about the corvette
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today podcast and also thanks to our sponsors mid-america motorworks car show season is here get your corvette ready
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you've been listening to corvette today with steve garrett if you'd like to contact steve with any thoughts on the
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podcast or ideas for guests on corvette today you can email him at stevegarrattdj gmail.com
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that's steve garrett dj gmail.com garrett has two r's and two t's or
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thanks again for listening to corvette today [Music]
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