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CORVETTE TODAY #148 - Reeves Callaway On The 35th Anniversary of Callaway Cars' and Corvette
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Jul 11, 2025
Reeves Callaway makes his return to the CORVETTE TODAY show to talk about Callaway Cars and the 35th anniversary of Callaway Cars and their relationship with GM, Chevrolet and Corvette. Your CORVETTE TODAY host, Steve Garrett, and Reeves trace the early beginnings of Callaway Cars, how they became affiliated with GM and Corvette and then discuss the future of his company. Help us celebrate the 35 year association of Callaway Cars and Corvette on this episode of CORVETTE TODAY!
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0:00
[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 Funfest, 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.
0:28
Thanks for listening and watching Corvette Today, the show that talks about everything Corvette and the only
0:34
current podcast dedicated to Corvette. I'm your host, Steve Garrett. I appreciate you tuning in. Corvette Today
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is brought to you by Wheelcraft. Want to dress up your Corvette with bright chrome or black chrome wheels? Visit
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wheelcraft.com and learn about their advanced PVD chrome finishing. They can refinish your wheels or offer a wheel
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enthusiasts from around the world. My guest on today's show is a returned guest. He's actually appeared on
2:33
Corvette Today on show number 11 way back in June of 2020. He's enjoyed a
2:39
storied career and a long association with General Motors and Corvette, a 35-y year association. As a matter of fact,
2:46
that's exactly what we're going to be talking about today. He's Mr. Reeves Callaway from Callaway Cars. Reeves,
2:52
welcome back to Corvette today. Well, good morning, Steve. Nice to be here. It's great to have you back, my friend.
2:58
It's been way too long. First of all, Reeves, as a refresher from our show back in June of 2020, which is show
3:04
number 11, let's talk about the early beginnings of you modifying and turbocharging BMWs in the late '7s.
3:12
Sure, that's a good place to start because it is an interesting story. It just shows that you can never be fully
3:18
prepared for the future. So imagine back in 1977
3:26
and imagine a young man who wanted to be a race car driver and who immediately
3:31
went dead broke by trying that path through life. And so I had to do something to put food on the table for a
3:38
young family. And I've always been fascinated by engines and engine technology. I thought that the greatest
3:47
device that I had ever installed on an automobile was a turbocharger. And in
3:52
doing that for BMW, not for BMW, the car company, but doing it for a BMW. I had
3:58
been an instructor at the Bob Bondant school. And our customer at the school
4:04
was the BMW car company. And after a few months of trundling a BMW 320i around
4:12
racetracks in North America, and I'll date myself by saying who the other instructors were, it was Sam Posey.
4:18
Yeah. David Hobbs, Nick Craw, who was about to run the SECA, and Jim Busby.
4:26
Wow. And myself. You know, that car only had about 100 horsepower. Yes. I decided that I would ask the
4:33
school, ask BMW if I could take one of the old used up school cars, take it
4:38
home, turbocharge it, and see what the result was. So, they said, "Sure, take it."
4:43
Wow. By the time I was done with it, I said, "Gee, this is really pretty neat." Because with the car having close to 175
4:51
horsepower instead of 100 horsepower, it actually made it a great little ride.
4:56
Wow. I was living in Connecticut at that point. The garage behind the house had people coming over from the neighborhood
5:03
to help me build turbocharger systems day after day. I gave the car to Don Sherman at Car and Driver.
5:09
Yeah. Who wrote a little one pager in the back of the book in 1977 that made it seem
5:14
like I was ready to supply turbocharger systems for BMWs to the world. Well,
5:20
Steve, the truth was I didn't have a drill press. But when the orders started to come in
5:27
from that magazine article, we found a way to make the castings and the tubing and put it into boxes and send it out
5:35
Friday afternoons once a week to the UPS man. And that was the start of Callaway
5:40
Cars. Amazing. Yeah, that car and driver review really got you off and running and that kind of caught the eye of
5:47
Corvette chief engineer Dave Mlullen. Let's talk about your early beginnings with Dave and Corvette. Sure, but
5:54
there's something that I need to insert in there first. We had always taken the time to make things emission compliant.
6:00
Even back in 1977, the BMW turbo systems branched out into being Volkswagen and
6:07
Porsche. Wow. The 924. And that caught the eye of someone that we always wanted to do
6:14
business with. We wanted to be the authorized agent for a real car company.
6:20
And guess who that was? It was Alfa Romeo. Alfa Romeo was having a terrible
6:25
time selling their GTV6 into the marketplace against the Maserati Burbo.
6:32
They came to us and said, "Could you come up with a twin turbo system for the little GTV6 and do it within a year and
6:39
have it be emission compliant and have it meet all of the durability requirements from Alfa Romeo?" We said,
6:45
"Let's do that. Let's really make this happen." And sure enough, a year later, the Alpha GTV6 Twin Turbo appeared, went
6:53
to the magazines, was warmly received, and we started to go into production
6:58
directly for Alpha. Finally, our first original equipment customer, and it was
7:03
a great little car. The trouble is that Alpha was in pretty deep yogurt at that
7:09
point and they closed the doors in North America just at the time when we had
7:16
produced the 35th car of the twin turbo version of the Alpha. So here all of our
7:22
eggs were in one basket and the basket was just cancelled. So, we were standing
7:28
around in Connecticut fully ready to go with no cars to build and no plan B.
7:36
It was a low moment for Callaway Cars. It just goes to show that you're only as
7:42
good as your last movie. There you go. And so what happened was General Motors
7:50
in the process of canvasing the competitive set bought one of the alphas
7:55
unbeknownst to us. Oh. And all of those cars go to Black Lake where they are reviewed by the
8:01
engineering staff at GM. And I got a call from Dave Mlelen who said, "We have a little GTV6 here, front engine, V6,
8:09
twinturbocharged, rear transaxle, fun little sedan to drive, and it happens to
8:15
be a dead ringer performance-wise for a 1985 Corvette. How did you do that?" And
8:21
that started the conversation with David about would we, could we, should we talk
8:26
about a twin turbo version of the Corvette. So that was really the gestation of the twin turbo program for
8:33
the Corvette. It was because of the Alfa Romeo. Very cool. So that's what I mean when I say you can't plan for the future.
8:39
That's very true. Now also in June of 86, the B2K RPO option was created.
8:46
Let's talk about that B2K option put together in June of ' 86 and what Corvettes it went into. Well, the plan
8:54
was loosely that if General Motors would help sell the car, would we build the
9:01
car? Oh, and so it was really a cooperative project between Corvette Group and
9:07
ourselves. Don't forget the horsepower of the 8687 Corvette had fallen down to sort of a
9:14
low point, you know, at 230ome horsepower, right? And the twin turbo came out at
9:20
345. Wow. Dave and I did not know how many of these things to build. So we asked the
9:28
Chevrolet marketing department to come in and say, "What is the market for?" A higher horsepower Corvette, a limited
9:35
volume, low production special vehicle with a secret ordering code. Nobody knew
9:41
about B2K at that point. How many could we sell? According to the marketing department, they came back to us quite a
9:47
while later and said, "If it's going to be double the price of a normal Corvette," and that's what it was. It
9:54
was about 50 grand in the days when a Corvette cost about 25,000 bucks. Mhm.
9:59
They said, "You can sell 25 cars." And we said, "Really? You want us to tool up for 25 cars? They're going to be even
10:06
more expensive." And they said, "That's all you'll be able to sell." So, I think the early prototype went to Road and
10:13
Track and there was a little tiny mention in the front of the magazine about a special option code that would
10:18
be a secret option code. It would be a twin turbo Corvette. Well, do you remember the days when the telephones in
10:24
your shop had lights on them? Oh, yeah. Well, all the lights on all the phones
10:30
at Callaway lit up and didn't unlight for 3 years. Wow, that's amazing. there there was a
10:36
small misjudgment of how many the public would tolerate of this special model. So
10:42
we spent the next three years playing catch-up in terms of how quickly could we build this enormously complicated
10:48
version of the car and that was the start of B2K. There you go. Now in ' 89 that B2K
10:55
option was really first seen on Sledgehammer and Sledgehammer went 254
11:00
mph. Let's talk about the arrow body design that Paul Deutschman did and the
11:06
record that Sledgehammer held for 25 years. Sure. And that deserves a little
11:11
clarification too because in 1989 B2K was a regular production option for the
11:17
twin turbo version of the Corvette, the roadgoing car. But in the background, the challenge was do you remember the
11:25
popularity of top speed testing for the magazines? Oh yeah. Okay. So we would build a car every year
11:32
for those events and it was very timeconuming and very expensive. It was almost a million bucks to build a car
11:39
that could go to the magazines, hand them the keys, have them to go drive it and it would operate flawlessly with no
11:46
problem. That was a tall order. We got tired of doing that at about the third year because we didn't have that kind of
11:53
money, right? I told Dave Mlullen, Dave, you know, we have an opportunity. We should build one
11:59
car that has an adjustable amount of top speed. Because it's turbocharged, you could just turn up the boost. And we'll
12:06
run it faster in testing than anybody's ever gone before. And then we'll only
12:12
use that car to win the event by a little bit. And then we'll put it away for next year and bring it out and do it
12:18
again. We won't have to build a new car every year. will just build one very capable car with an adjustable amount of
12:24
top speed but only show its top speed by a little bit of a margin to win the event.
12:29
Wow. So that was the mission for Sledgehammer. Now Sledgehammer started out as a regular B2K option,
12:37
right? It was car number 51. It belonged to Peter Levanos who owned Aston Martin.
12:42
And I don't mean owned a Aston Martin. Peter owned the whole company.
12:49
And as you may remember, we were building the group C engines for the Aston Martin effort at LMAL.
12:54
Yeah. So that was our connection with Mr. Levanos. We did build the sledgehammer
13:00
with the idea that it would go 250 mph. Paul Deutschman was a young Canadian
13:06
designer Montreal who had an enormously fine sense of engineering and of good
13:11
taste. We realized that the idea would be to not generate a lot of downforce.
13:17
That's not what was necessary. A drag reduction was what was necessary to go
13:22
full tilt, top speed. So, we built the mockup of the Arrow body, as we called
13:28
it, and we went and we tested the car and it went 254.76
13:34
m an hour. Wow. So, we screwed up somewhere because the goal was only 250 miles.
13:42
But the problem was that word leaked out that the car went that fast at the
13:47
transportation research center in Ohio. And you know what happened? Nobody ever
13:53
showed up for a top speed test again. Wow. That killed the magazine top speed
13:58
testing entertainment factor because now everybody knew that they could never win one of those events.
14:05
That's crazy. Isn't that fun? That's amazing. Now, B2K ran from 1987
14:11
to 1991. 500 Callaway Corvettes were produced, over 500 in the B2K program. Then came
14:18
Supernatural Corvettes. Let's talk a little bit about the Supernatural program and the increases Corvette saw
14:25
with that program. Sure. You know, it was sort of a logical step because the twin turbo version of
14:30
the car was very complicated and very expensive to build. It almost doubled the price of the car every year. We were
14:37
running out of customers for that. So the demand for that was going downhill.
14:42
We wanted to do something that was a lot less expensive and almost as significant. We did a normally aspirated
14:49
version of the car. It was also coincident with the L98 going out of
14:54
production and the LT1 going into production. It wasn't suitable for a big
15:00
horsepower increase, but it was a nice horsepower increase. I think it was roughly around 100 horsepower.
15:08
Nice. But it was a lot less expensive to produce. And so it widened out the market availability for a high
15:15
performance version of the Corvette. And it used the principle of resonant frequency tuning. Natural tuning. And we
15:21
just nicknamed it supernatural tuning. That's all. And it was normally aspirated, a lot less complex. The cars
15:28
ran like freight trains. And they were popular. Oh yeah, they were really popular. Well, buddy, let's take our first break. When
15:34
we come back, we're going to talk about the 35 years of Callaway Cars and Callaway and Corvette working together
15:41
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I'm your host Steve Garrett. With me today is Reeves Callaway from Callaway Cars. In this second segment, we're
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going to talk about the C8 Corvette and the 35 years of Callaway. Now, Reeves, the RPO code B2K holds the distinction
19:17
of being the only engine package for Corvette that was produced outside of General Motors. And it was fully
19:24
warrantied by GM and Chevrolet, wasn't it? It was. It was a great feather in our
19:29
cap. We're so glad that they had the wisdom to hire us to do that.
19:35
Sorry. I can say without a doubt that it has been a pleasure and an honor to work
19:40
with Corvette Group over these 35 years. It really is a great association. Also,
19:46
when someone purchases a C8 Corvette and wants that option, talk about the
19:51
process that happens once that car is purchased and what happens thereafter. The B2K option is really a reference to
19:59
the 35th year anniversary of the B2K program. The new option for the C8 to
20:07
honor that 35 years was called PCY. It was limited to 35 cars and they were
20:14
produced in 2022 and they were all sold immediately through General Motors
20:20
dealers worldwide, but there are no more of those. They were all sold. They were all sold.
20:25
That's wonderful. The way to get a Callaway version of the C8 is simply to go to the authorized
20:32
Callaway dealer network. You can see it on callaways.com.
20:37
We offer a whole package of options for the C8 and we are about to release for
20:45
production the supercharged version of the C8. Wow. That's the big news for 2023. The
20:52
Stingray version of the car in supercharged form will be distinct from
20:58
the Z06 version of the car which is normally aspirated and 5.5 L in
21:03
displacement. The Stingray version of the car supercharged will be 6.2 L with
21:09
positive manifold pressure and a big torque increase. Wow. So, what's the horsepower going to
21:15
be? We cannot say today, but we'd be happy to let you know as soon as testing
21:21
is finalized. The cars are in testing right now, but until they are absolutely
21:26
complete, emission compliant, durability tested, and ready for production, we
21:32
won't release a horsepower number until we have all of those bases covered. That sounds good. You have two shops,
21:38
Reeves. You have one in Old Lime, Connecticut, and then one out in California. If a CA comes in for this
21:45
upgraded supercharger, what's the process that you go through and how long does it usually take to get that done
21:51
and taken care of? Good question. We have what's called a drop ship code with the factory. So that
21:57
depending on where your ordering dealer is. If he's west of the Mississippi, the cars get shipped to the TmAcula factory.
22:04
If he's east of the Mississippi, it gets shipped to Connecticut to be converted
22:10
into supercharged form. It takes about 2 and 1/2 weeks. That's what we're estimating at this point. And then you
22:16
have the option of either coming to the factory and picking the car up or having it return shipped to your dealer.
22:23
Very nice. Well, 2 and 1/2 weeks is nothing. No, it's very quick. We have a big backlog of orders and we'll be trying to
22:30
get through them as fast as possible. But when you send in your initial order request, you're given a production slot
22:38
number that will let you know approximately what time frame your car will be converted.
22:44
Are there any other things that come with the supercharged version of the Callaway Corvette? Yes, sir. Not that come with it, but
22:51
that are available on an alle cart ordering mode. Nice. If you take the 35th anniversary
22:57
version of the C8 that we produced, it has a great assortment of upgrades for
23:03
every area of the car. The aerodynamics are done with a whole set of beautiful carbon pieces. The wheels are changed to
23:11
something that results in a 20% reduction in unsprung weight and a fabulous look in different colors. The
23:17
double D exhaust system, you've never heard anything like it from a Corvette with our badge on it. So all of those
23:23
items are selectable by you as the orderer and you wind up with a very
23:28
nicely done specialized version of the car to your taste. Very nice. I like the alocart aspect
23:35
because you can add as much or as little as you want. Exactly. Well, Greavves, let's take our final break and when we come back, we're going
23:40
to talk about the celebration of the 35 years of Callaway cars at the National Corvette Museum. That's coming up next
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today is Reeves Callaway from Callaway Cars. In this third and final segment, we're going to talk about the
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celebration to the 35 years of Callaway Cars at the National Corvette Museum. Reeves, the exhibit at the NCM is called
26:55
Powerfully Engineered Automobiles, Callaway Cars, Making Fast Faster. Talk
27:00
a little bit about the background of the exhibit and how that came about. Well, as I understand it, Steve, this is
27:07
either the third or fourth time in the past 35 years that the museum has done
27:13
us the honor of displaying as many of the special cars we've built as we could
27:18
get our hands on and get down to the museum. So, it's a real pleasure to have
27:24
them recognize and be able to display to all the visitors the progress that
27:29
Callaway has made through the years working on and making a specialist version of the production versions of
27:36
the Corvette. And it's so nice because each of those cars has a great backstory. And I would encourage anybody
27:42
who's visiting the museum during that time to take a few extra minutes and walk through the display, look at what
27:48
has been written about each one of the cars and try to imagine having created them, developed and had the wonderful
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opportunity of starting with such a great starting point and wind up putting
28:00
the specialist touch on each of them in different ways. Reeves, I know that the
28:06
exhibit runs through the end of February. Do you know what cars are on exhibit there at the National Corvette Museum?
28:11
I do. Each one of the cars that's in the display, and I think it's about 13 or 14
28:17
cars, usually were constructed at the request of an owner who wanted something
28:23
extra special. And whether that meant paint work or body work, some aerodynamic modifications or some
28:30
reflection of one of the racing versions of the Corvettes. A lot of folks don't know that we were responsible for the
28:38
creation and the build of the GT3 versions of the Corvette race cars
28:44
worldwide. Wow. General Motors assigned us that to become the homologation holder and we
28:50
would build the cars all to the same spec at the Callaway competition shop in Germany and they were for sale to race
28:57
teams worldwide. We won multiple championships primarily in Europe
29:02
against Porsche against Mercedes against Audi and the ironic thing is we're in
29:08
the same town as Audi in Germany just a little bit north of Schutgard. So, it was a real pleasure to go head-to-head
29:15
with the best sports car manufacturers in the world and actually wind up beating them more often than not.
29:22
Absolutely. Ree, we touched on this a little bit earlier, but talk about what you see as the future for Callaway cars.
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Well, it's really exciting because as you can see, the business of hybridizing
29:34
these automobiles, the right combination of electric assist and internal
29:39
combustion engine development results in well, for instance, the -ray being the
29:44
fastest 0 to 60 car Corvette has ever produced, right? And we are a big fan of electrification.
29:51
Here's the way to look at it. you wind up with an enormously powerful rearwheel drive car and there's only so much power
29:58
that you can put to the ground before you become completely traction limited. So what options are open to you to
30:04
improve the performance of the car? They are to drive the front wheels. And the only way to realistically drive the
30:10
front wheels on demand is to have them be electrically assisted. So, this is
30:15
the next level of performance that's going to be available to what we might think of as the traditional Corvette
30:21
platform. Very nice. Now, if someone wants to get in touch with Callaway Cars and have some of the upgrades done, how can they
30:29
do that? That's real easy. It's just Callaways.com. All of the information on all of the
30:35
product line is there. I should underscore that Callaway's current assignment is not just for Corvette. We
30:41
do the Camaros, all of the cars and trucks from GM that are powered by the 6.2 L V8. And it even extends over into
30:48
the Cadillac range, whether it's the Blackwing or the Escalade, all of the Suburbans, all of the GMC's, the Yukons,
30:56
those are in production every day. And basically, the way to think about it is that they are high-performance, high
31:03
power variants of all of the General Motors cars and trucks that are powered by a 6.2 2 L or the 5.3 L V6.
31:11
Very nice. Reeves, it was so great having you back on Corvette today. We've got to do this again sometime really,
31:18
really soon. Absolutely, Steve. Let's do it again. There's always something great to talk about and especially with your guidance
31:25
through the information thicket, we'll make sense of it. Sounds good. Thanks again, Reeves.
31:30
Thank you, Steve. Thanks for listening to Corvette Today and please be sure to tell your family, friends, and other Corvette enthusiasts about the Corvette
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