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[Music] welcome to corvette today the podcast
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that talks about everything corvette with your host steve garrett mc and dj at one of the largest corvette weekends
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in the country corvette fun fest president of the corvette club of kansas city missouri and radio disc jockey at
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the number one radio station in kansas city for over 40 years here's steve garrett
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thanks for listening to corvette today the podcast that talks about everything corvette brought to you by mid-america
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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 mamotoworks.com i'm your host steve garrett i appreciate you tuning in you can listen to corvette
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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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called corvette today and you're connected also visit the corvette today website it's corvettetodaypodcast.com
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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
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to canadiancorvetforum.com welcoming corvette owners from around the world it's time to get the latest corvette
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news and headlines with my pal keith cornett from corvetteblogger.com as you know keith is here twice per
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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
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unofficial start of summer and we've got some hot news for everybody yeah looking forward to it finally
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june's just right about in the corner here and summer show season is underway so let's get to it sounds good well
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let's start out as we always do in corvette news by getting an update on production at the bowling green assembly
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plant well you know we had something that only happens once a year and that's the startup of the new model year of
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corvettes they were scheduled to start on may 23rd however we got an early start as they completed the 2022's on
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may 19th so they started them up on friday may 19th with 97 corvettes built as of last friday we should have
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surpassed about a thousand cars i don't have that number yet for last friday's production numbers but we are closing in
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on the first thousand cars already built for the 2023 model year so that's good news as well unfortunately we don't have
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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
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final vin for the 2022 model year as shown on these production charts is 25
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165 however there may have been more completed that's not the total amount of cars there may have been more completed
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via the pre-productions that they do in the ctf car so still waiting on the full 2022 model year production stats from
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chevrolet they released that through the national corvette museum so hopefully we'll have those shortly as well that
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sounds good 25 000 is a healthy number for 2022. i'm obviously glad the 2023s
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are starting to roll off the line also i saw that the destination charge raised by a hundred dollars so it's 1
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395 gosh i remember back in the good old days when it was just 995 dollars
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yeah we've really been hit by inflation and fuel costs right now and you know imagine shipping cars all around the
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country with diesel fuel costs at six dollars or more right now it's crazy times for sure and that's probably why
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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
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the museum and the answer is yes the destination fees are required you know
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they were set up as to be one fee because they didn't want dealers that were closer to the factory that have a
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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
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gone up by 100 yep it sure has also corvette added two new videos to the c806 academy keith every time i watch
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these videos i get so excited about the upcoming z06 yeah these are exciting things anytime we get a official videos
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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
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kidding i'm not the first one was called conquer the air which is all about the aerodynamics and downforce of the car
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features kirk benion the exterior design manager talking about you know how downforce and these aerodynamics affect
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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
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is all about the design craftsmanship you know the choices of materials inside obviously the z06 we're going to have
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some more upgrades with that level two carbon fiber and some additional things like some upgraded door panels good
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stuff coming there so the beauty within the beast was the second video these are five videos now that are on the c806
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academy on youtube and you can search for it through there you can go through chevrolet and find them there once the
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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
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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
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watch these videos so it's a lot of fun also the national corvette museum names brian baker as the director of
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collections and education so is he the replacement for derek moore yeah it looks like it although brian baker's
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really got an impressive resume and it's not just curating cars he was a senior creative design manager at general
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motors wow also served as a vice president of design and marketing and american specialty cars and an adjunct
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professor at automotive history college for creative studies in detroit the guys got some gravitas in the automotive
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industry founded a company called auto archaeology a design consulting firm that represents automakers and patent
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design issues and he also serves as an on-camera expert for discovery channel and an automotive historian for espn so
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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
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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
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that actually showed used ca corvettes were going down in price and that was from january is that really correct
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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
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amount that sellers are charging over msrp right so it's still obviously more than msrp but we might be seeing a
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pullback this is an icy car study obviously we've been featuring them over the years their january 2022 study found
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that ca corvette stingrays were selling for 20 more on average with an average
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price of 16 645 dollars more that number pulled back slightly in april from 20
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down to 16 with the average price selling at 13 500 more they're still selling way over msrp
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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
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production older cars with higher miles are going to bring down that average price anyway there'd be some more
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factors there maybe we'll get another study in june or july that does another three month breakout looks back at that
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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
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now c8 corvettes that have been produced over those three years there are definitely possibilities that you could
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actually save a little bit on a used car depending on some of those factors like miles and quality and things like that
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right bottom line the c8 corvette is still a hot car to get even on the aftermarket yes it is buddy let's take
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our first break when we come back we'll talk about corvette racing and corvette rumors here on corvette today
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host and my husband steve garrett [Music] hey thanks for listening and watching
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corvette today the podcast that talks about everything corvette brought to you by mid-america motorworks car show
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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
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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
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corvette racing is preparing for le mans and that happens actually in two weeks that's june 11th and 12th again i tell
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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
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actually had my motor trend app since last year and it's been great because i can also watch all the insta races as
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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
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mans activities begin this weekend coming up with scrutineering in downtown le mans on june 3rd and 4th that's this
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friday and saturday and then the test day is actually sunday june 5th we're
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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
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course the race is on that saturday and sunday good stuff coming here very excited to see the cars back in france
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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
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got a great crowd in store for the team to support them there everything should be good there is an imsa race next
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weekend as well the chevrolet detroit grand prix at belle isle park this is only uh dpi the gtd regular cars there's
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no gtd pro cars because we're over in france for the month good stuff happening there of course we're going to
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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
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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
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with corvette there so i'm looking forward to it speaking of racing though indycar's conor daly takes nbc's
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parker's klingerman around the indy track in a z06 pace car i was jealous
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about that i wanted that ride that was good of course we're recording this just before the indianapolis 500 but leading
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up to the race we've had a couple drivers take some people around in the cars as you said conor daly took parker
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klingerman a nascar driver and nbc analyst in the z06 pace car very nonchalant drive around the 2.5 mile
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oval just talking away there but you know they're driving about 150 as they get on the straights there so they're
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moving out but yet you can see the car's pretty smooth there there was actually another one too just after we did our
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last podcast and that one featured joseph newgarden he took a colt's
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defensive tackle for a ride in a c8 corvette pace car and that was a little something because that defensive tackle
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is six foot seven inches tall and weighs 300 pounds wow he was able to fit the car and actually he fit pretty good
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definitely watch both of those if you get a chance all right we've got some juicy rumors here coming up keith first
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off the biggest rumor is trifecta performance claims that they have cracked the ecm in the c8 corvette wow
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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
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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
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been quiet about it the reason why this is big news obviously chevrolet and general motors the ecu's on the cars the
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cars computers are encrypted to protect against hackers and this is because the corvettes and other general motors
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products are now getting over-the-air update software updates let's do this global bee electrical architecture that
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moves data around between the car what they want is make sure that when they put out updates that they're all safe
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and secure that no one can mess with them of course that has also impacted the aftermarket tuning market which
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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
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happening is they've been using these piggyback systems that basically are set up to trick certain sensors on the car
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to behave and then to sign like more fuel and other things through port injections and other things like the
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fuel tank usa method did so obviously big news if we hear that trifecta did crack this ecu on the car but more and
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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
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replace the encrypted ecu with a programmable version that will allow you then to make those changes there but
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here's the problem at least in trifecta's initial blog post that they talked about they were unable to go past
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100 of the factory tune settings in the ecu they could decrease those settings but they couldn't go above them the
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problem actually may lie in other ecu modules connected on the car imagine
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that a braking ecu module might be look to confirm a certain programming aspect
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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
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still a lot of going on here and my knowledge on some of this stuff is limited in terms of just hands-on
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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
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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
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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
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per hour yeah they don't come out and say it but the manual has a table and they're depicting the minimum and
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maximum miles per hour that you can shift the car in we're specifically talking z06 for example you can up shift
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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
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hour at its lowest setting to 188 miles per hour its highest setting the supposition is that with just that 12
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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
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body be faster than the z07 with the dive planes and the high wing on the back that's designed to keep the car
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planted in the ground that's our suppositions that should be a 200 mile plus supercar well and to add on to this
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rumor there was an enthusiast that calculated the top end speed of the c806 at 208 miles per hour how did that
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calculate yeah it's pretty good we've got the formula on the site it comes from corvette forum this guy's obviously
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a superhero with his power being math he came up with a formula tested against the porsche 992 gt3 and he found that he
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was within one mile per hour of the official top speed with his formula so based on his numbers he's thinking that
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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
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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
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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
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really use how much time can you use right exactly and you know what there are those events that allow you to run
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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
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you got the horsepower and the top end speed available if needed you know absolutely well and the last rumor keith
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the c806 was spotted and the wishbone was the same as the body color that was kind of cool looking yeah you know since
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chevrolet first put out the very first picture of the z06 we know a lot of corvette enthusiasts have been unhappy
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with the way the trim appears around the side intakes when you have the body color trim the efy body color trim it
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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
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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
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efy body color events on an export spec z06 these are the corvette c06s with the
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quarter mounted exhaust should just be another option that customers can choose whether they want the carbon flash trim
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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
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that's the carbon fiber wishbone yeah we've seen this for the stingray not to get off topic here but they're supposed
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to be offering a factory oem carbon fiber boomerang we just haven't seen it
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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
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sure like to get it well i'll be over here waiting patiently for that carbon fiber buddy
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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
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by mid-america motorworks car show season is here get your corvette ready by shopping over 60 thousand corvette
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specific parts and accessories at mamoworks.com i'm your host steve garrett with me every other week is
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
26:31
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
26:54
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
27:08
a hypersonic coupe sold for 148. those thousand units of the c8r editions have
27:14
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
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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
27:43
one so it takes us back into history a little bit zora first saw the 1953 corvette in january 1953 at the waldorf
27:50
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
28:19
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
28:30
that's what they started with and chevrolet was actually working on their v8s at the time and zoro said when we
28:36
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
28:47
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
29:49
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
31:01
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
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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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steve garrett dj thanks again for listening to corvette today