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CORVETTE TODAY #114 - Meet Corvette Chief Engineer, Josh Holder!
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May 8, 2025
In 2020, Corvette named a new Chief Engineer - Josh Holder. Josh is the perfect person to be Chief Engineer for America's Sports Car! Holder sits down with your CORVETTE TODAY host, Steve Garrett, to talk about his upbringing in a Chevrolet family, his love for Corvette at an early age, and how being the Chief Engineer for Corvette is all he ever wanted to be! Josh can talk all day about the new C8 Corvette, but this episode of CORVETTE TODAY allows you to get to know Josh Holder, the person-not necessarily the engineer. Josh is a Corvette guy-through and through. It's an amazing American success story! You'll thoroughly enjoy this episode of CORVETTE TODAY while you get to know your Corvette Chief Engineer better!
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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 wheelcraft
0:34
want to dress up your corvette with bright chrome or black chrome wheels visit wheelcraft.com to learn about their advanced pvd chrome finishing they
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can refinish your wheels or offer a wheel exchange for most models and it comes with a 5-year warranty visit
0:47
wheelcraft.com today or call 833-840-5334
0:52
i'm your host steve garrett i appreciate you tuning in you can listen to corvette today on all podcast platforms you can
0:59
also listen on your smart device just say alexa or hey google play the podcast called corvette today and you're
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connected also visit the corvette today website it's corvette todaypodcast.com
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fellow corvette 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 i am so excited and honored to have on the
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show the chief engineer for corvette mr josh holder josh welcome to corvette
2:36
today well thanks steve thanks for having me it's a pleasure to be with you i'm glad you're here buddy first josh
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talk to me about your early years tell me about your family talk about growing up and did you live in a car family well
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i grew up in the beautiful mountains of northwestern montana and i definitely
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grew up in a car family i would say from my grandfather to my father on down my
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family was very loyal to not just to general motors but to chevrolet we were
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very much a car family that's cool now what got you into cars in the first place well my father and uncles were
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into drag racing long ago as i can remember so as a toddler i recall
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watching my father drag race and it's hard not to get into cars when being
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that young and impressionable getting exposed to auto racing they did that for a number of years as i was a kid my
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dad's profession was a auto mechanic so he had an auto repair business that combined with the drag racing for which
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my uncle did up until just a few years ago they were definitely in the cars it
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was a big influence on me when my parents ultimately bought a corvette they kind of moved on from drag racing
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to auto crossing so that exposure to cars directly of course got me interested in it but then it expands
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your mind to anything in the media tv magazines anything to do with cars i was
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interested in it man you really did come from a car family buddy yeah that's really cool so what got you into
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corvettes in the first place were there other cars before corvette or was it always corvette that got you interested
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i really think it was always corvette certainly one of the very first cars i think everyone can remember a time that
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when they first saw a corvette certainly i can i remember the first time i got to ride on a corvette like i mentioned when
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my parents bought their first corvette i was certainly hooked of course i liked other cars muscle cars saw a lot of
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those with my exposure to drag racing camaros and firebirds when the fourth generation corvette came out that was a
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big deal for me it was a big deal for my family it was a lot of topic of conversation it was just such an amazing
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car at the time so that was certainly a vehicle that left an impression on me and of course the cars that we
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fantasized about like a lamborghini countach and the ferrari 308 and a
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testerosa of course i was interested in those but always had a passion for corvettes well you had to be the cool
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kid on the block if your parents owned a corvette didn't you yeah well i like to think so but of course my friends were
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certainly interested in seeing the car you know my dad would let me help using air quotes he can't see but
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help him restore the first corvette they bought which was a 73 big block in that
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time i was handing tools and trying to stay out of the way but i remember looking that car as it was taken apart
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and investigating how things maybe could be better or different or learning about how systems worked it just fueled my
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interest in cars knowing what's under the hood and underneath the skin you always had a mechanical mind then didn't
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you yeah i was known maybe got into a little bit of trouble for taking things
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apart i think a lot of us on team corvette had that same kind of passion certainly any engineer with curiosity
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sort of comes up in that upbringing and nothing like the complexity of a car to bring that out absolutely right and also
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josh i just want you to know that lamborghini countach that white countach that v12 scissor door countach was the
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poster on my wall as a teenager as well yes i know which one you're talking about i had the black ones oh yes yep
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very cool my room was filled with posters most of the wall space was taken up by corvettes there you go hey tell me
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about some of your biggest influences in the automotive industry and how that kind of really got you into the car
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industry itself well i would say the cars themselves were at least my biggest influences early later i got to know
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some of the people in fact i'd say what really solidified my desire to be an engineer and to hopefully one day work
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on corvette i was at a state corvette meet a montana state corvette meet with my parents and an engineer from gm came
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to the meet and did a presentation on the development of the c4 corvette wow
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and he was showing a lot of the work that goes into testing corvettes and i was just fascinated by that at the time
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and thought you know someday i hope to be able to do that since then obviously i've got to know and meet a lot of
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people that have been influential i never did get to meet zora duntov he's actually the only corvette chief
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engineer i haven't met and even worked with dave mcclellan was retired before i started at gm but i did get a chance to
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work with him in his retirement life he was doing some outside consulting work and of course when i came to gm dave
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hill was one of my heroes i got to work with tom wallace and ted jecter who i read about before i even came to gm and
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of course he's my current boss very cool now josh you own corvettes don't you i do yes my wife and i own six corvettes
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wow i wouldn't say we are attempting to be collectors our collection is not exotic we're just
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much better at buying corvettes than we are at selling them we've never sold one you sound like me
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yeah so i bought my first corvette in 1996. it was a brand new one a 97 c5
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c5 was a pretty compelling design it was a big change you know kind of like the c4 was right i bought that about a year
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out of college maybe not even that long and i remember at the time you know i just gotten a real job
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and the car cost more than i made in a year so it shows sort of my passion for
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corvette and maybe borderline insanity to spend that kind of money on a car like that but i certainly don't regret
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it after i bought that car i decided that maybe i should put a big block
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engine at it so a few months after its purchase i had it all apart in the garage this curiosity
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has never really ended and put a 502 cubic inch big block in it with the idea
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someday that hey if i don't get a job at gm maybe i can start a business modifying corvettes wow i'm glad i
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didn't have to do that and it worked out for me but that was my first corvette i met my wife who also works at gm in
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bowling green on the c6 launch and she owned at the time a 2003 c5 so we have
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two c5s nice during the c6 launch i bought a another corvette of 2006 v06 to
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me the time that corvette really stepped into the supercar territory of course the 505 horsepower ls7 and an all
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aluminum frame my cars is still pretty amazing even today and was fortunate enough to get a very early version of
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that car by that time i had some help and influences inside the corvette team
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later my wife and i bought a 90 zr1 that's a really low mileage very
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original car it's won some awards a few years ago i was able to get the first mid-year i always had a passion for the
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mid-year corvettes and got a 64 365 horse convertible and then the most
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recent acquisition was actually at barrett-jackson scottsdale this past winter we got a 65 restomod coupe that
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my dad and i are going to redo it was done maybe in the early 90s so it was resto modded before it became as popular
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as it is today we're going to work on that together as sort of a circle back father-son corvette project very cool
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what a lineup josh that's fantastic yeah keep it busy for sure absolutely right
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what would be your dream corvette you've got six what would be the dream corvette that you would want to own oh man i
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think my dream corvettes are probably pretty common with other stream corvettes uh 63 split window z06
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obviously a lot of people's list and if you're going to go that far why not the unobtainable grand sport right you know
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it's such a cool iconic car of course an l88 has got to be on the list i'd probably pick a 67 but it wouldn't be
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picky if it had an l88 in it of course the serve 3 obviously not a production car but the chevrolet engineering
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research vehicle the third version of that was very influential on me it had a lot of and still today if you think back
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has got a lot of very high-tech features on it for the time four-wheel steering all-wheel drive active suspension
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mid-engine very revolutionary design for aerodynamics so that car left an
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impression on me now i get to see cars like that that we retain and i can tell you that the serv3 doesn't
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actually run as good as it maybe wants used to it needs a little bit of love but it's still a very cool car more
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recent the c6 z06 i'm obviously biased because i own one but the 2011 carbon
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edition it's one of the lightest weight corvettes we've done in recent times that have an affinity for and then i
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would say that corvette's yet to come yes be on my dream list as well that sounds good that's a good list i didn't
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think you'd have more than one but i like that list totally and i'm with you on the 63 grand sport that's for sure
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yes well buddy let's take our first break and when we come back we're going to talk about your start at general motors we're talking with josh holder
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this is the corvette today podcast with steve garrett hey thanks for listening and watching
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i'm your host steve garrett with me today is corvette chief engineer josh holder in this section we're going to
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talk about josh's start with general motors josh talk about your college days first and did you always want to be an
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engineer i would say yes i think i always wanted to be an engineer i mean what kid doesn't dream about being a
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fighter pilot at some point i'd say my practical desires have always been toward being an engineer and not just an
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engineer but an engineer on corvette so i certainly have my dream job i left
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beautiful montana to go to college in flint michigan so it was quite a change
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i started at gmi which used to stand for general motors institute it's now called
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kettering i met some great people there i got a lot of networking in the auto industry
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and which you know the hub is in southeast michigan areas a lot of good experience at gmi that college
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experience is a co-op so you go to school for 12 weeks and then work for 12
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weeks it's a really really great experience when i was there the auto industry was at the bottom of one of its
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cycles as i prepared to go to my work term i got a couple of job offers and both
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wanted me to change my major from mechanical engineering to something else and instead of doing that i decided to
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transfer to weber state university that's in ogden utah they had a
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automotive engineering curriculum at the time later converted to a traditional mechanical engineering technology
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curriculum but that was a great experience for my undergraduate education they had a technical center
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there as well to train technicians to work on general motors products so gm
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sponsored that technical school so there was a lot of very interesting donated properties around the labs corvettes and
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camaros and other engines and cool things to look at so when i could get my nose out of textbooks i would stick my
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head in there and try to get my hands dirty where possible after graduating from weber state it was a number of
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years in fact i was working for gm by this time i got my master's degree from
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purdue so your focus was always on getting a job with general motors and working on corvette then wasn't it it
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really was i'm being very sincere when i tell people that i have my dream job i
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didn't want to get just to one of the big three automakers i was hell bent on getting in at gm's i am very fortunate
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it took a while to get here but obviously the experiences that i get to have as chief engineer on corvette are
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exactly what i've wanted to do since from a very young age that's a great story buddy what a great story now i'm
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sure this is also a great story tell me the story behind getting the job at gm i
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sent gm many many resumes i i've lost count i would call it relentless
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persistence i think somebody in the hr department finally got sick of them coming in and decided to give me a
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chance when i graduated from college i first got a job with a company that did
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contract work for gm and i was a manufacturing engineer that
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helped develop and design the assembly systems for the body structure so when
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many people think of a car assembly plant they picture robots doing welding and you see sparks flying and that kind
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of equipment was what i worked on while i was in that role though i never stopped trying to get in a gm and
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finally like i said i got the chance i remember during my job interview one of the interviewers near the end just asked
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are you just looking for any job at gm or this one in particular
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and i responded that i was looking for any job in gm and that must have been the right answer because i got the job
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and actually it was the same sort of work that i was doing at this contract company just in a direct way for gm so
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finally got my foot inside gm's big door that's perfect well what a great transition now when you got to gym tell
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me more about what the first job that you did for gm really was so as i mentioned it was manufacturing
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engineering very focused on assembly and automation a lot of cool stuff you're a
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mechanical engineer this is exactly the kind of things you'd like to do and i was no exception of course the first
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product i worked on at that time this was in the mid 90s it was what was going to be the full-size utility in 2000 so
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suburban and tahoe when that started to wrap up i finally again continuing my
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relentless persistence convinced my supervisor at the time to get me a similar job on corvette very cool all
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right so give me the story behind your move into corvette so my first job on corvette was again
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doing body systems manufacturing this was at the end of the fifth generation the beginning of the sixth generation so
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i've been working on corvette for 20 years which is a rarity inside gm to
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work on one product for that long it was my chance to meet some of my heroes i
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talked about the chief engineers that i'd read about coming to gm and got to see and talk to and meet dave hill for
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the first time it was just such a thrill to finally be on team corvette and of course the first time that anyone walks
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into bowling green especially you know as an employee working on corvette it was like going to disneyland for me
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it was hard to keep focused on my task at hand and not just wander around the plant and look at all the amazing
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corvettes and process a build and learn more about how the car is assembled it was just such a thrill to finally be on
20:58
team corvette great story buddy great story hey let's take our final break and when we come back we're going to talk
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about more specifically you working with corvette we've got josh holder the chief engineer for corvette here on corvette
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[Music] hey thanks for listening and watching corvette today the podcast that talks
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about everything corvette brought to you by wheelcraft want to dress up your corvette with bright chrome or black
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call 833-840-5334 i'm your host steve garrett with me
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today is corvette chief engineer josh holder josh in this third segment let's dig a little bit more into you
24:17
specifically working on corvette now when you got to corvette you weren't exactly chief engineer your program
24:24
engineering manager for corvette give us a little overview of what that job entails program engineering manager is
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basically you can think of it as like an assistant chief engineer you're responsible for approving every single
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engineering change you help to manage the imperatives as we call them cost the
24:44
mass all the things we track very closely we often say as leaders on
24:50
vehicle line teams that you could have every well-intended engineer bring all their very best parts together and it'd
24:55
make a really terrible car and so that's one of the things a program engineering manager has to do is balance that but i
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didn't actually start as a program engineering manager that's a pretty sought after job and i had to work my
25:08
way up to that i started as a manufacturing engineer on corvette and then moved to the product
25:15
release side of corvette in body structure area so i was a manufacturing engineer on body structures then a
25:21
design release engineer on body structures i got to help launch the sixth generation do6 so the all-aluminum
25:29
frame that was a pretty significant technical leap for corvette and for gm and actually for the industry following
25:35
my stint as a design release engineer in body structures i moved to validation so as a program validation engineer
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responsible for tests and development and developing test plans and measuring the performance to those plans in fact
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it was very much like the gentleman i mentioned earlier in my life that came to montana and did a presentation about
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the ways we test corvette that's what i was doing as a program validation engineer and then finally got the job as
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a program engineering manager and did that for a number of years went back to bowling green to help launch c7 and then
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of course came back and got to work through the development of the eighth generation wow that's a lot of jobs on
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corvette even before you became chief engineer and you became chief engineer in 2020 how does that differ from the
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program engineering manager so i mentioned that you know the day-to-day work the program engineering has to do
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engineering manager has to do i would say a chief engineer has more broad responsibility we are typically the
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decision maker the tiebreaker the referee budget manager the cheerleader for the
26:41
whole team it is very much looking out for and removing roadblocks on behalf of
26:47
the team on behalf of corvette on behalf of our very passionate customers to make sure that the car is the very best it
26:53
can be because a program engineering manager has such specific focus chief engineer usually included in things
27:01
further out in the planning horizon which is obviously very exciting especially for someone like me that
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loves all things corvette it's just more broad responsibility in that way i gotcha okay now taj is executive chief
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engineer taj jupter your title is chief engineer tell me about the differentiation between those two titles
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so taj has responsibilities for multiple vehicle lines i have one
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vehicle line the corvette in 2020 it was announced that taj was expanding his
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role to help inject some corvette engineering we call it into electric vehicles at gm so bring some performance
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and excitement into electric vehicles ed payatek who was the chief engineer for corvette at that time moved with him to
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these electric vehicles so taj got expanded responsibility with that announcement and when ed moved i got the
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golden chair as i call it that happened to be vacated and got to be the chief engineer on corvette
27:58
certainly the 20 years i've spent on corvette helped build my qualifications for that
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job i report to ted jektor who's a as you said executive chief engineer he still remains very focused and involved
28:10
in corvette he's just got an even larger bandwidth of responsibility wow you know
28:15
the mid-engine corvette the c8 is a fantastic automobile and i know it's got your footprint all over it when you
28:22
think about the development of the c8 what are you the most proud of you know i can look all over the car i could bore
28:28
you to death with the walk around and tell you a story about every part on the car and why we did what we did and how
28:34
much we talked about what most people would consider the most mundane detail i'm fortunate enough to have a couple of
28:40
patents on the car a few of us are obviously so certainly proud of those achievements but i would say the thing
28:46
i'm most proud of is the culmination of all that work and really that's the driving experience i know it sounds a
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little like a wishy-washy kind of canned answer but i'm being genuine and for anyone that's got a chance to drive the
28:59
mid-engine ca quarterback you know exactly what i'm talking about really all you need to do is sit in the car
29:05
and you can tell the transformational difference but you know the command view of the road the way the car rotates
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around you of course one of the big reasons we did the mid-engine was to transfer some of that weight and get all
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that traditional corvette power to the ground the handling that that brought out in the way the car rotates around
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its driver and envelops the driver is an amazing experience and that's really what i'm most proud of absolutely you
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know the transition from a front engine platform to a mid-engine platform is such a dramatic change and it was 60
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years in the making because zoro talked about that early on how many years did it take to transition
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from that front engine platform to a mid-engine platform and get it right right out of the box well i'd like to
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think we got it right out of the box it was a long process in fact i don't think it's an exaggeration to say it was a
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60-year process zoro worked on the chevrolet engineering
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research vehicles which were mid-engine he called them a powerful learning tool at the time you know even back then
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corvo was exploring the bandwidth of performance and the handling dynamics that a mid-engine could offer i myself
30:15
in my tenure on corvette got a chance to work on a mid-engine version that was going to be the seventh generation
30:21
corvette actually yeah and so even recently we've worked on mid-engine
30:27
corvettes so i would say this approach of sort of standing on the shoulders of giants yeah it's the first time in the
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eighth generation that we've put one into production but we built on a long legacy of knowledge and i'm sure that
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went a long way in helping us to get this eighth generation corvette to be as great as it is how long in earnest does
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it take the corvette team and all the people on it to go to a mid-engine platform how many years were you guys
30:54
working on it before that c8 was launched you know it's funny i doubt most people realize that the vehicle
31:01
development process and what really happens but i can tell you what doesn't happen and that is it's not somebody
31:06
doesn't call a meeting and we get 100 people in a conference room and we say okay we're going to do a new quarterback
31:11
go work on it it's a very slow and sort of orderly ramp up of resources so it starts out
31:19
basically idea generation wish lists and that list is a living list i would say
31:24
in fact we meet customers every day that tell us what they like what they wish they could have how we could make things
31:30
better we're always keeping track of that and saying okay we could potentially do that in the current
31:35
generation corvette or that's such a dramatic change we got to save it for the next one so this list of wishes
31:40
saved for the next one goes into this discussion phase and it starts to bubble up into requirements that make sure that
31:47
if we're going to do the car it's going to beat our competition and continue corvette's legacy there's certainly a
31:54
lot of pressure to do any new vehicle but especially a corvette imagine
31:59
getting the chance to work on one and to not screw it up yeah it's got almost 70
32:05
years of production and this loyal following that brings customers from all
32:10
walks of life you meet all different kinds of people that have almost nothing in common except the corvette and so
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it's more than a car it's a legacy that we're all proud of and so that is not lost on any of us and so we are very
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thorough when we get the rare opportunity to embark on an all-new corvette but to answer your question i
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would say that the measure by which most people would consider large numbers of people working in
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earnest on the eighth generation corvette was about five to six years okay but i like to say we're never done
32:41
working on corvette we never stop we're always trying to make it better and we're always thinking about how it could improve in future generations it's great
32:48
to hear that you have a working list that never dies and you keep improving it on every year plus this car is the
32:54
halo car for chevrolet and for general motors and to be honest with you josh you guys didn't just hit a home run you
33:00
hit a grand slam with this car this is a phenomenal world car and there's more to
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come it's only going to get better and better well thank you very much steve for those words yeah we're very proud of
33:11
it i'm super fortunate to work with a very very talented team of people that helped make corvette happen well buddy
33:18
thank you so much for taking the time to be on corvette today i want to get you back on the show we'll do a deeper dive
33:24
into the corvette and then hopefully by then the z06 will be out and on the streets we can talk about that a little
33:29
bit more as well sounds good steve thanks again josh my pleasure nice talking to you thanks for listening to
33:34
corvette today and please be sure to tell your family friends and other corvette enthusiasts about the corvette
33:40
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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
34:30
podcast or ideas for guests on corvette today you can email him at stevegarrettdj gmail.com
34:38
that's stevegarrettdj gmail.com garrett has two r's and two t's or
34:45
connect with steve on social media on facebook twitter or instagram using at steve garrett dj
34:51
thanks again for listening to corvette today [Music]
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