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CORVETTE TODAY #111 - Corvette News & Headlines, Early June 2022
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May 8, 2025
CORVETTE TODAY #111 - Corvette News & Headlines, Early June 2022 It’s the unofficial start to Summer and CORVETTE TODAY is shining brightly with news and headlines with Keith Cornett from CorvetteBlogger.com. It seems as though there never a shortage of Corvette information buzzing around. And this week is no exception. Here are a few of the topics covered in this show….. 1. Corvette raises destination charge by $100 to $1,395 2. Chevrolet adds 2 new videos to C8 Z06 Academy 3. NCM names Brian Baker as Director of Collections & Education 4. Trifecta Performance claims to have cracked the ECM on the C8 5. The online 2023 Z06 Owner’s Manual confirms the Z06 to go 200 mph 6. Corvette brings home the eNVy award for best premium sports car 7. Chevrolet not going to SEMA this year
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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
0:40
accessories at mamotoworks.com 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
0:54
called corvette today and you're connected also visit the corvette today website it's corvettetodaypodcast.com
1:01
and while you're there make sure you visit the corvette today merchandise store you can also sign up for corvette
1:06
today emails notifications and updates at corvette today dot ck dot page and
1:13
don't forget join the corvette today facebook group we have over 3 600 members and i'd love to have you as a
1:18
member as well and don't forget about the youtube channel now for corvette today see all your favorite corvette
1:24
today podcasts now on youtube first i'd like to thank our flagship sponsors of corvette today aerolary wheels a true
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meet a lot of fellow corvette enthusiasts like yourself at mid-engine corvette forum dot com also a shout out
2:14
to canadiancorvetforum.com welcoming corvette owners from around the world it's time to get the latest corvette
2:21
news and headlines with my pal keith cornett from corvetteblogger.com as you know keith is here twice per
2:26
month every other week to keep you up to date on what's happening with america's sports car keith welcome back it's the
2:32
unofficial start of summer and we've got some hot news for everybody yeah looking forward to it finally
2:38
june's just right about in the corner here and summer show season is underway so let's get to it sounds good well
2:44
let's start out as we always do in corvette news by getting an update on production at the bowling green assembly
2:49
plant well you know we had something that only happens once a year and that's the startup of the new model year of
2:54
corvettes they were scheduled to start on may 23rd however we got an early start as they completed the 2022's on
3:01
may 19th so they started them up on friday may 19th with 97 corvettes built as of last friday we should have
3:07
surpassed about a thousand cars i don't have that number yet for last friday's production numbers but we are closing in
3:13
on the first thousand cars already built for the 2023 model year so that's good news as well unfortunately we don't have
3:19
any 70th anniversary stingrays yet those cars are on constraint we should have some more constraint news probably in a
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week and a half or so we're waiting for the june allocations to come out so we're probably still a couple weeks away from that but it looks all good so far
3:32
final vin for the 2022 model year as shown on these production charts is 25
3:38
165 however there may have been more completed that's not the total amount of cars there may have been more completed
3:43
via the pre-productions that they do in the ctf car so still waiting on the full 2022 model year production stats from
3:50
chevrolet they released that through the national corvette museum so hopefully we'll have those shortly as well that
3:55
sounds good 25 000 is a healthy number for 2022. i'm obviously glad the 2023s
4:01
are starting to roll off the line also i saw that the destination charge raised by a hundred dollars so it's 1
4:07
395 gosh i remember back in the good old days when it was just 995 dollars
4:14
yeah we've really been hit by inflation and fuel costs right now and you know imagine shipping cars all around the
4:20
country with diesel fuel costs at six dollars or more right now it's crazy times for sure and that's probably why
4:26
we see that these are mandatory fees i always have people ask do i have to pay the fee if i'm doing a rhc delivery at
4:32
the museum and the answer is yes the destination fees are required you know
4:37
they were set up as to be one fee because they didn't want dealers that were closer to the factory that have a
4:43
cheaper price in their cars because their destination fees were less so it is just one standard fee it's a mandatory fee and unfortunately it's
4:50
gone up by 100 yep it sure has also corvette added two new videos to the c806 academy keith every time i watch
4:58
these videos i get so excited about the upcoming z06 yeah these are exciting things anytime we get a official videos
5:05
from chevrolet we have a little bell on our desk here that we ring we get all excited about it and if you think i'm
5:10
kidding i'm not the first one was called conquer the air which is all about the aerodynamics and downforce of the car
5:16
features kirk benion the exterior design manager talking about you know how downforce and these aerodynamics affect
5:22
the drivability of the car really good stuff so the first one's all about the outside of the car and then the second video the beauty within the beast which
5:29
is all about the design craftsmanship you know the choices of materials inside obviously the z06 we're going to have
5:35
some more upgrades with that level two carbon fiber and some additional things like some upgraded door panels good
5:42
stuff coming there so the beauty within the beast was the second video these are five videos now that are on the c806
5:48
academy on youtube and you can search for it through there you can go through chevrolet and find them there once the
5:53
z06 starts to come we'll probably get additional videos that show how to operate and program and do some of the customizations of the car but right now
6:00
it's just giving us a broad overview and we'll take whatever we can get absolutely right i can't wait buddy and like i said i get excited every time i
6:06
watch these videos so it's a lot of fun also the national corvette museum names brian baker as the director of
6:13
collections and education so is he the replacement for derek moore yeah it looks like it although brian baker's
6:20
really got an impressive resume and it's not just curating cars he was a senior creative design manager at general
6:26
motors wow also served as a vice president of design and marketing and american specialty cars and an adjunct
6:33
professor at automotive history college for creative studies in detroit the guys got some gravitas in the automotive
6:39
industry founded a company called auto archaeology a design consulting firm that represents automakers and patent
6:46
design issues and he also serves as an on-camera expert for discovery channel and an automotive historian for espn so
6:54
i would say that we are extremely lucky to have him as part of the national corvette museum i'm looking forward to
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meeting him he starts in june we'll cross paths probably at the anniversary show in september and so we welcome
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brian to our great corvette hobby and i think he's going to fit right in i think you're right keith i'm looking forward
7:11
to meeting him myself and we'll get him on the podcast that's for sure we'll get him on the show also there is a study
7:16
that actually showed used ca corvettes were going down in price and that was from january is that really correct
7:23
actually the study was from april but it looked at numbers from january and that's where the decline comes from a
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little bit maybe are we starting to see the cost coming down we're not talking the msrp costs we're talking about the
7:35
amount that sellers are charging over msrp right so it's still obviously more than msrp but we might be seeing a
7:41
pullback this is an icy car study obviously we've been featuring them over the years their january 2022 study found
7:48
that ca corvette stingrays were selling for 20 more on average with an average
7:53
price of 16 645 dollars more that number pulled back slightly in april from 20
7:59
down to 16 with the average price selling at 13 500 more they're still selling way over msrp
8:07
but we did see that number kind of pull back there could be a number of factors involved we've got three model years of
8:12
production older cars with higher miles are going to bring down that average price anyway there'd be some more
8:18
factors there maybe we'll get another study in june or july that does another three month breakout looks back at that
8:23
and then we'll know if there's a trend developing or not i think it's definitely possible just because there's a little over 60 000 corvettes out there
8:29
now c8 corvettes that have been produced over those three years there are definitely possibilities that you could
8:34
actually save a little bit on a used car depending on some of those factors like miles and quality and things like that
8:40
right bottom line the c8 corvette is still a hot car to get even on the aftermarket yes it is buddy let's take
8:46
our first break when we come back we'll talk about corvette racing and corvette rumors here on corvette today
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corvette today the podcast that talks about everything corvette brought to you by mid-america motorworks car show
10:51
season is here get your corvette ready by shopping over 60 000 corvette specific parts and accessories at
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mamotoworks.com i'm your host steve garrett with me every other week is keith cornett from corvetteblogger.com
11:04
we keep you current and up to date on what's happening in the world of corvette in this racing and rumor section we'll start with racing and get
11:11
a little preview of le mans coming up yeah we're kind of in a lull right now with any kind of real racing news but
11:16
corvette racing is preparing for le mans and that happens actually in two weeks that's june 11th and 12th again i tell
11:22
you just sign up for the motor trend app i think it's like five dollars a month they even give you like a seven day
11:28
cancellation if you decide to do that so if you just want to get it for the race you know you can do that and cancel i've
11:33
actually had my motor trend app since last year and it's been great because i can also watch all the insta races as
11:38
well with that spend the five bucks a month and just get it your life will be so much happier and be able to watch corvette racing in france the actual le
11:46
mans activities begin this weekend coming up with scrutineering in downtown le mans on june 3rd and 4th that's this
11:51
friday and saturday and then the test day is actually sunday june 5th we're
11:57
going to be in the thick of le mans coverage here before we know it the first practice sessions for le mans begins wednesday june 8th and then of
12:04
course the race is on that saturday and sunday good stuff coming here very excited to see the cars back in france
12:11
we're gonna have a big crowds over there i get emails from the guy that handles the corvette corral at le mans they've
12:17
got a great crowd in store for the team to support them there everything should be good there is an imsa race next
12:23
weekend as well the chevrolet detroit grand prix at belle isle park this is only uh dpi the gtd regular cars there's
12:30
no gtd pro cars because we're over in france for the month good stuff happening there of course we're going to
12:36
be supporting jake and the corvette boys le mans is probably the most exciting time of the year for corvette racing fans and boy it'd be nice to finish on
12:43
top of the podium this year that would be great i'm so excited for lamanna this year because we're getting back to normal and it's going to be a great race
12:49
with corvette there so i'm looking forward to it speaking of racing though indycar's conor daly takes nbc's
12:56
parker's klingerman around the indy track in a z06 pace car i was jealous
13:01
about that i wanted that ride that was good of course we're recording this just before the indianapolis 500 but leading
13:06
up to the race we've had a couple drivers take some people around in the cars as you said conor daly took parker
13:12
klingerman a nascar driver and nbc analyst in the z06 pace car very nonchalant drive around the 2.5 mile
13:19
oval just talking away there but you know they're driving about 150 as they get on the straights there so they're
13:24
moving out but yet you can see the car's pretty smooth there there was actually another one too just after we did our
13:29
last podcast and that one featured joseph newgarden he took a colt's
13:34
defensive tackle for a ride in a c8 corvette pace car and that was a little something because that defensive tackle
13:41
is six foot seven inches tall and weighs 300 pounds wow he was able to fit the car and actually he fit pretty good
13:46
definitely watch both of those if you get a chance all right we've got some juicy rumors here coming up keith first
13:51
off the biggest rumor is trifecta performance claims that they have cracked the ecm in the c8 corvette wow
13:59
yeah it seems like a wow and i was wow when i first caught that news but then you start to think about it and then the
14:04
other thing too that's got a lot of people wondering is that they've really been quiet they put out that one blog post on their site and they've kind of
14:11
been quiet about it the reason why this is big news obviously chevrolet and general motors the ecu's on the cars the
14:17
cars computers are encrypted to protect against hackers and this is because the corvettes and other general motors
14:23
products are now getting over-the-air update software updates let's do this global bee electrical architecture that
14:28
moves data around between the car what they want is make sure that when they put out updates that they're all safe
14:34
and secure that no one can mess with them of course that has also impacted the aftermarket tuning market which
14:39
wants to be able to put turbos on there and then go into the factory ecu's and then adjust them there right what's been
14:45
happening is they've been using these piggyback systems that basically are set up to trick certain sensors on the car
14:52
to behave and then to sign like more fuel and other things through port injections and other things like the
14:57
fuel tank usa method did so obviously big news if we hear that trifecta did crack this ecu on the car but more and
15:05
more it's starting to sound like the same kind of crack that was done by hp tuners with the 2019 zr1 and that was to
15:12
replace the encrypted ecu with a programmable version that will allow you then to make those changes there but
15:18
here's the problem at least in trifecta's initial blog post that they talked about they were unable to go past
15:23
100 of the factory tune settings in the ecu they could decrease those settings but they couldn't go above them the
15:29
problem actually may lie in other ecu modules connected on the car imagine
15:34
that a braking ecu module might be look to confirm a certain programming aspect
15:40
for the other ecu and if it doesn't work out if there's a check sum in there that doesn't check out it's just going to default to the factory tune there's
15:46
still a lot of going on here and my knowledge on some of this stuff is limited in terms of just hands-on
15:52
experience but i do read a lot and this is what we're thinking is they just could have a lot more chips that they'd have to swap out to actually do a full
15:58
tune on the car i think they're going to be limited at least in the near term well it's very interesting i'm anxious
16:03
to hear more from trifecta so this will be pretty cool yeah also these next two rumors are very interesting first off
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the online 2023 z06 owner's manual confirms that the z06 will go 200 miles
16:16
per hour yeah they don't come out and say it but the manual has a table and they're depicting the minimum and
16:21
maximum miles per hour that you can shift the car in we're specifically talking z06 for example you can up shift
16:27
into second gear as little as nine miles an hour but you then in third gear you can downshift into second gear at 69
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miles an hour so if you think about that you know your spread for that second gear is nine miles an hour to 69 miles
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an hour yeah but it's the fifth year that's the beast of this z06 you can shift from fourth to fifth as little as
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29 miles an hour however you can shift from sixth down to fifth gear as high as
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188 miles an hour so think about that fifth gear has a spread of 29 miles per
16:57
hour at its lowest setting to 188 miles per hour its highest setting the supposition is that with just that 12
17:03
miles an hour to go to get you to 200 that six gear should give you the ability to cross over to 200 miles but
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here's the ending where it gets interesting that graph will actually show that at sixth gear and seventh gear
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you're going to be arrow limited so what we're thinking is like the c8 stingray that base model is going to be faster
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than the z51 194 miles an hour compared to the 184 just because of downforce and
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more aerodynamics so we should see the base 06 which has a more streamlined
17:31
body be faster than the z07 with the dive planes and the high wing on the back that's designed to keep the car
17:37
planted in the ground that's our suppositions that should be a 200 mile plus supercar well and to add on to this
17:43
rumor there was an enthusiast that calculated the top end speed of the c806 at 208 miles per hour how did that
17:50
calculate yeah it's pretty good we've got the formula on the site it comes from corvette forum this guy's obviously
17:56
a superhero with his power being math he came up with a formula tested against the porsche 992 gt3 and he found that he
18:04
was within one mile per hour of the official top speed with his formula so based on his numbers he's thinking that
18:10
the z07 performance package again arrow limited will have a top speed of 194
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miles an hour while the standard z06 will have a top speed of 208 miles an
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hour and he does offer a plus or minus on his computations of plus two miles an
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hour so so it could be 206 but it could be 210. wow pretty cool there of course it's still not quite as fast as the zr1
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which had a rated top speed of 212 miles an hour very close there but we'll have to see once we get some official numbers
18:41
and hopefully we will get some official numbers on this because people just like to know how fast their car can go obviously little chances they do that
18:46
fast but boy it's nice to know that you could yeah i mean it's like how much horsepower do you need how much can you
18:52
really use how much time can you use right exactly and you know what there are those events that allow you to run
18:57
on airport runways and stuff right top speed so it's just nice to know where you fall it's always nice to know that
19:03
you got the horsepower and the top end speed available if needed you know absolutely well and the last rumor keith
19:09
the c806 was spotted and the wishbone was the same as the body color that was kind of cool looking yeah you know since
19:15
chevrolet first put out the very first picture of the z06 we know a lot of corvette enthusiasts have been unhappy
19:21
with the way the trim appears around the side intakes when you have the body color trim the efy body color trim it
19:28
sort of blends into the car so for those people that are really unhappy with the carbon flash spear on the car it is an
19:34
opportunity to really blend it in a bit more and i know a lot of people should be happy with that we actually saw the
19:39
efy body color events on an export spec z06 these are the corvette c06s with the
19:45
quarter mounted exhaust should just be another option that customers can choose whether they want the carbon flash trim
19:50
or if they want to go with the efy body color trim it's great to have choices well for me i needed a fourth choice and
19:56
that's the carbon fiber wishbone yeah we've seen this for the stingray not to get off topic here but they're supposed
20:02
to be offering a factory oem carbon fiber boomerang we just haven't seen it
20:08
yet nor have we seen the carbon fiber high wing although we've seen pictures that they were supposedly offering us who knows what that stuff is but boy we
20:14
sure like to get it well i'll be over here waiting patiently for that carbon fiber buddy
20:19
i know you will be steve let's take our final break keith and when we come back we will talk about the lighter side of
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you're listening to the corvette today podcast with steve garrett
23:36
hey thanks for listening and watching corvette today the podcast that talks about everything corvette brought to you
23:41
by mid-america motorworks car show season is here get your corvette ready by shopping over 60 thousand corvette
23:48
specific parts and accessories at mamoworks.com i'm your host steve garrett with me every other week is
23:54
keith cornett he's with corvetteblogger.com you can find all these stories and get a deeper dive on
24:00
any of them at corvetteblogger.com our third and final section covers the lighter sided corvette keith it was nice to see
24:06
corvette bringing home another award from envy as the best premium sports car
24:12
yeah this is actually the envy award brought to you by an organization called in moment they look at comfort quality
24:19
performance safety and ownership costs and they did a study with nearly 300 000 domestic owners and 50 000 canadian
24:25
owners and from that they found that the corvette stingray is the best premium sports car so yeah nice to have another
24:31
feather in chevrolet's cab and another award on the trophy shelf and speaking of chevrolet i was really surprised to
24:37
see that chevrolet announced they are not going to sema this year what's going on with that yeah this is a really big
24:43
surprise what had happened earlier was that ford and honda had already announced a pull out and maybe they just
24:48
thought well if ford's not there then we don't need to have the big footprint those displays and those footprints
24:54
those cost millions and millions of dollars to put on it obviously is a major expense but for us geez you have
25:00
chevrolet performance which is all about engines for the aftermarket the fact that they're not there is very surprising now we'll see their product
25:06
there maybe as part of other displays and other boost but not a specific chevrolet performance where you could
25:11
talk to the engine designers and builders and stuff and get your questions answered there that's going to be a big hole at the show and
25:18
disappointing for sure i was surprised hey let's talk about corvette sales at the mecum indianapolis auction that is
25:24
the 35th annual spring classic we had some big numbers for corvette sales there yeah these numbers are put
25:30
together by our detroit bureau steve burns and we're going to have a full breakout of these probably early next
25:35
week when we do our article on that he's going to wrap that up for us but we do have the highlights top 15 cars the
25:41
amounts trailed behind kissimmee a little bit because sydney's a huge auction the largest mecum auction of the
25:46
year i believe but prices are still high across the board you know in that top 15 13 of those cars were either c1 c2s or
25:54
c3s the classic still rule there 10 of the top 15 cars were c2 so of those cars
26:00
of those generations it's the mid years that just continue to rule these auctions one of the highlights of the
26:05
auction great money for the 1971 zr2 convertible there's only two of these cars in the world the zr2 convertible
26:12
it's got the 454 with the 450 horsepower engine it sold for 962 500
26:18
wow fantastic money there the hottest corvettes offered are split windows and zr1s according to steve he said 13 of
26:25
the top 15 were the c1 ct's and c3s so those other two cars were 2019 zr1s and
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they sold in the top 10. steve also tells us to keep our eyes on c4 zr1s as
26:36
they are creeping upwards with their prices five of the six offered at indianapolis sold for forty four
26:42
thousand dollars or more so that's great news for those c4 zr1 owners have just been waiting waiting and waiting to see
26:48
some price movements on their car hopefully that's happening now a couple more numbers here 10 c8 corvettes were
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sold in indianapolis those price ranges were between 100 and 3 000 and 176 000
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and the top ca corvette sold were both the c8r edition we had a hypersonic gray convertible self to high at 176 and then
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a hypersonic coupe sold for 148. those thousand units of the c8r editions have
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continued to sell very well that's great also this was really cool at the national corvette museum there is a
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letter from zora to ed cole and it was called turning points and it was the very first time it was on display tell
27:26
us what that letter really contained when zoro wrote to ed yeah this is pretty cool so the national corvette
27:32
museum has thousands and thousands of documents and archives and things in their collection that we've never seen
27:38
before and while there's been a representation of this three-page letter on the wall we've never seen the real
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one so it takes us back into history a little bit zora first saw the 1953 corvette in january 1953 at the waldorf
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astoria wrote to chevrolet and actually landed himself a staff engineering job
27:55
so now he's on the team and later that year december 1953 he writes a letter to
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his boss chevrolet chief engineer ed cole and basically he lays out this memo
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and the actual memo is called thoughts pertaining to youth hot rodders and chevrolet he's basically telling his
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bosses that ford is kicking our butt they have all these products for hot rodders and their jalopies and they're
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hopping up these cars and guess what when they grow up and they get into a career they're going to sell that hot
28:24
rod jalopy and they're going to get a ford family car a ford truck they're going to continue to buy fords because
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that's what they started with and chevrolet was actually working on their v8s at the time and zoro said when we
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release these v8 engines we should also have a ready supply of engineered
28:41
performance products to go along with it and let's let these youth now start hopping up chevrolets with their
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performance parts then hopefully when they get older they'll move into chevrolet sedans and other family cars
28:54
as their careers grow and their family grows that's kind of the genesis behind it so he wrote this letter and it really
28:59
is kind of like the holy grail for the chevrolet performance group of where are we going now we look at it back today
29:05
you know there's been over 100 million small blocks chevy's built the chevrolet engine platform leads after markets you
29:12
know the ls platforms for sure you know especially that ls3 which is just i think one of the most venerable small
29:18
block engines ever built for chevrolet performance wise there's a lot of things you can do with that but it all started back to this letter so at the museum's
29:25
ncm bash they brought out the letter it's all protected in archives sleeves and stuff but you can see the actual
29:31
letter and zora's signature on it it's yellowing a bit because it's obviously 60 years old or so but really incredible
29:38
stuff there great video check it out it's just a piece of corvette history that you've never seen before that's so
29:43
cool and zoro was such a visionary not just a great engineer but he could really see what was going on and
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remember zoro was the one that said corvette needs to go mid-engine to compete and this mid-engine c8 corvette
29:55
was literally 60 years in the making because of zora it was unbelievable yep that's for sure wish he could be here to
30:01
see it that's the one thing is that we wish that he could see it i know i think about that all the time he would be so excited to see this new car finally
30:08
keith the 2023 corvette z06's exclusive new manual launch mode is going to be
30:14
really really cool it's going to be a tire smoker isn't it yeah you know this is another thing that we found in the
30:20
2023 corvette owner's manual i read it i read it i read it like this really sounds like burnout mode to me so i
30:26
reached out to vehicle chief engineer josh holder who confirmed us all for think about this way you're at the track
30:32
you pull up to your staging now you want to warm your tires all you have to do is you pull back on the paddles to
30:38
de-clutch the car and then while you keep one of them down you basically re-toggle one of them again so it's a
30:43
plus or minus it doesn't matter which one but you'll see a light then light up on the dash the performance transmission
30:49
light will come on it will tell you that now the performance transmission is now active what that does is the way that
30:55
josh explained it to us is because it's so hard to really it revs so fast and says it's so hard to know the launch
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point for that the manual launch actually takes into that into consideration it will help you get that
31:07
smoky burn out that you want he says that the regular launch control is for a fast launch clean launch but the manual
31:13
launch controls for a smoky launch some interesting stuff there you know some of the other things that you can do is if you're on the track and you do like a
31:20
hairpin turn you can easily activate the performance transmission and launch out of that curve like they call it a rapid
31:26
exit it's just another exclusive feature that's found on the z06 this is one that i'm very excited to try yeah me too this
31:34
sounds awesome i can't wait and we know what we know you're michelin guys well you have to ask them about this because
31:39
i'm sure that they love the idea of corvette z06 owners smoking their tires all the time that should be cool i can't
31:45
wait well buddy thanks for being here on corvette today we will see you in two weeks and happy summer that sounds great
31:51
looking forward to it see we'll see you in two weeks thanks for listening to corvette today and please be sure to tell your family friends and other
31:57
corvette enthusiasts about the corvette today podcast and also thanks to our sponsors mid-america motorworks car show
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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
32:41
podcast or ideas for guests on corvette today you can email him at steve garrett
32:46
dj gmail.com that's steve garrett dj gmail.com
32:52
garrett has two r's and two t's or connect with steve on social media on facebook twitter or instagram using at
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steve garrett dj thanks again for listening to corvette today
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