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CORVETTE TODAY #158-Meet Aaron Link, Chevrolet Global Vehicle Performance Manager, Performance Cars
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May 8, 2025
On this episode of CORVETTE TODAY, you get to meet another one of the men behind the scenes of Corvette. Aaron Link is Chevrolet's Global Vehicle Performance Manager. He is responsible for how your Corvette rides and feels when you drive it. Aaron joins your CORVETTE TODAY host, Steve Garrett, and talks about his upbringing, his school career and how he got his job with GM. Aaron has had one job...with GM! Aaron talks about his involvement with the C8 Corvette and its variants. And like so many on the Corvette team, this is his dream job! Get up close and personal with Aaron Link on this episode of CORVETTE TODAY!
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[Music] foreign [Music] today the podcast that talks about
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everything Corvette with your host Steve Garrett MC and DJ at one of the largest Corvette weekends in the country
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Corvette Fun Fest president of the Corvette club of Kansas City Missouri and radio disc jockey at the number one
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radio station in Kansas City for over 40 years here's Steve Garrett
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thanks for listening and watching Corvette today the show that talks about everything Corvette and the only current
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podcast dedicated to Corvette I'm your host Steve Garrett I appreciate you tuning in Corva today is brought to you
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by wheelcraft want to dress up your Corvette with bright Chrome or black chrome wheels visit wheelcraft.com and
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learn about their Advanced PVD chrome finishing they can refinish your wheels or offer a wheel exchange for most
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models and it comes with a five-year warranty visit wheelcraft.com today or
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aerolari.com and use the promo code ct111 for your 100 discount also Mid
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Engine corvetteform.com The Forum that focuses on the new mid-engine ca Corvette meet a lot of Corvette
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enthusiasts like yourself at mid-enginecorvetteform.com and a shout out to Corvette forum and
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canadiancorpetforum.com welcoming Corvette enthusiasts from around the world my guest on today's show is the
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global vehicle performance manager for Chevrolet performance cars he played a major role in the way Corvette drives
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and handles he's Aaron link Aaron welcome to Corvette today thank you very much Steve it's great to be talking with
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you tonight it's a pleasure to have you on the show buddy first off Erin talk about you let's talk about where you
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grew up did you come from a car family absolutely did yep I grew up near Mid-Ohio so have that background of a
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race track about an hour away a really good race track so I was in central Ohio for first 18 years of my life yeah my
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father has always been really into cars my Uncle Jerry as well and my dad's had
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a variety of cars over the years Porsche 914 before I was born his childhood
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dream car was a tri-five Chevy So He restored a 55 Chevy when I was in high
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school and I helped a lot on that nice so when did you realize you're a car guy and it was pretty early you know there's
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pictures of me with a big wheel up on jack stands working on the plastic
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pieces underneath I guess nice and yeah you know I kind of mimicked his involvement in the garage and wrenching
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and wanting to learn mechanical things and then a real appreciation for all
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things cars and sports cars particularly and then was able to learn how to drive
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at the limit and on road courses at a pretty young age it's kind of all came together with being with General Motors
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and being able to apply a lot of what I learned in the past and learned from my dad growing up in a very car culture car
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Rich family now where Corvettes a car that we're on your radar early on or was there a Corvette connection with you
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maybe at an early age there was yeah you know I mentioned my dad's 55 Bel Air
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that was kind of his when he was 10 years old that car came out right so that would have been his moment to think
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about why he would have loved cars and what made them special after my mom and my dad moved to South Carolina he bought
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a 62 Corvette he always liked that first generation that was just a few years ago when I was older but that connection's
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always been there for him one of his good friends growing up had a first gen I think it was a 57 Corvette so he had
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that connection my aunt had a C3 pretty much from when I can remember so there
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was always a touch point for us and always a Chevy family never anything else that always played strong for me
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very cool Aaron let's talk about where you went to college and what your major was sure so after going through high
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school in Ohio I wanted to go to an engineering school I think I remember taking one of those aptitude tests in
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high school and it was clear something engineering base or a pilot I think were the two that stood out for me as what
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this kid would be good at so I wanted to go engineering school and we drew a six hour radius around home I'm an only
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child so I wasn't going to be allowed to go to California or you know somewhere pretty far away and so I ended up at
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Virginia Tech one of the best experiences of my life I wanted something different than where I grew up geography wise it was very different and
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I really loved the vibe in Southwest Virginia it was a great fit for me I studied industrial engineering there
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which is a little different path in the automotive World typically that would be assembly plants and efficiency and
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balancing lines manufacturing assembly lines but when I interviewed with TM I
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entered the college graduate and training program which existed back then and it was a rotational program and by
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the grace of God and some luck to met some of the more important people on Corvette back in the day and kind of
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always maintain that connection where when the time came I was allowed to apply for the job so to speak and
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eventually find my way here that's great so when you graduated did you really Target a place like General Motors
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getting out of college I sure did Steve yeah it was on campus interviewing there so that's when the employers come to you
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know huge job fairs right a big school like that it's got a lot to offer and certain companies Target certain
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institutions as their key institutions and this has always been one of GM's so so it came down to General Motors or
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Exxon Mobil for me wow as the two choices Exxon Mobil is a very wealthy
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company lucrative company but they couldn't really tell me if it was going to be stationed on some oil rig in the
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Gulf or some Refinery it wasn't real clear GM's offer was we're going to put it through two years of rotations and
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you're gonna get to learn what you like about the automotive business and what you don't like where you see your fit and where you might do best so extremely
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appealing you know you don't have to pick your career when you're 22 years old and be stuck if you didn't pick
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correctly it gives a lot of bandwidth and variety to look at so luckily for me my second rotation was with Mike Neal in
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the Corvette performance team which I now am in charge of that was my view in
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the Corvette he was the vehicle Dynamics engineer on the cars c5s at that time
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and he let me do as much as I want and it's very Hands-On environment at Milford so it was one of those moments
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where I said well I didn't even know this existed this job this place this historic type of setting for developing
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cars so pretty clearly I was like I have to get back here somehow and I guess about 15 years later I did come back
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around that's perfect and so you've really come full circle haven't you it has been yeah you know when we spoke
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earlier a lot of it is the Capstone for most people you know if you can achieve improve your worth and get into this
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group or working on Corvette in any function in any fashion most people stay you know once you get there it's hard to
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find something that's going to be as compelling or rewarding and so there's rare opportunities there's not a lot of
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openings that typically come around so yeah in 2017 was when I got my shot and
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I'm so blessed and honored to be part of this in its 70th year now that's fantastic Aaron let's take our first
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break when we come back we're going to talk more about getting your job at General Motors and your path to Corvette
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and now back to the only current podcast on Corvette Corvette today with your
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host Steve Garrett thanks for listening and watching Corvette today the show that talks about
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everything Corvette brought to you by wheelcraft want to dress up your Corvette with bright Chrome or black
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or offer a wheel exchange for most models and it comes with a five-year warranty visit wheelcraft.com or call
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them 833-840-5334 I'm your host Steve Garrett
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with me is Aaron link the global vehicle performance manager for Chevrolet performance cars we are talking
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everything Corvette in the second segment we're going to talk more about how Aaron got into General Motors Erin
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tell me the back story about how you got into General Motors through your interviews there on campus at school
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yeah sure Steve that's a fond memory so now it's my 22nd going on 23rd year here
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at TM kind of rare nowadays to have a single company in your career like this we always talk about it in our group
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it's our dream job and as I mentioned earlier getting even know if something existed like what I'm doing now and once
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I did it was really a goal to get back there so yeah I joined the college graduate training program after college
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I had I think it was five rotations they planned for six but if you're needed
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more and one you might extend your stay or something like that so I think I had five a design job designing of
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suspension parts designing of fascia bumpers and then the job I mentioned being Mike Neal's shadow in the Corvette
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Development Group and then one in Hamtramck at our plant which at that time was building Cadillac tts's I
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believe Downtown Detroit and then one more in a quality organization so the goal was really to spread you around the
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company and find out the best fit for each person interestingly when the program ended it ended earlier than what
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we had thought about they kind of said all right you folks need to find some jobs for real so I called up the people I met through
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working with Mike one of whom was Dave Wickman who had my current job two people ago so he was a long time
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representative of Corvette and contributor from the C4 days I had met him and got to know him well and really
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respected his abilities and how he ran the group and I just said hey uh looking for a job because it's time to find
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full-time job now and so he was looking around for me at Milford and ended up finding a job as a technician in the
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vehicle handling lab so nothing related to Corvette necessarily we would call it like a vehicle Dynamics Center job so it
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serves the whole company right I became a technician right away so it was really fun for me because it's fully Hands-On
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so the job was basically instrumenting cars driving them for handling tests and
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processing the results so they called it a full service engineer you would set up the cars test them yourselves and then
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analyze the results and it's the way that GM was pretty much the company then invented how vehicle Dynamics are
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measured a gentleman named Maurice Ali in the 1930s developed equations to measure the feeling of handling
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understeer response time sensitivity Etc so it was this very elite group I got to
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join a very bright PhD type folks that are coming up with ways to measure what
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we feel you know you and I when we drive our cars when the steering feels too heavy too light or the handling balance
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isn't quite right how do you quantify that instead of saying I don't like it or I love it that lasted for about two
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years and then I was able to start a writing handling job and I like to tell
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people my first ride and handling project was a limousine wow about as far away from a Corvette as you could get
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huh the funny thing was for those we would make the Cadillac DTS in its
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normal form and they would leave out the back seat and all the trunk and then you'd send them to coach builders most
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in New Jersey New York and they would cut the thing in half straight it and then put it all back together wow that
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was an interesting project and the fun part was I would ride in the back
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and I would have somebody drive me that's great because the thought was well if you owned one of these you're
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not driving it sure it's got to ride best in the back seat so it was a riot I would be driven around and decide if the
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Springs felt right the shocks felt right but then a couple projects later I was allowed to step into more of the
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performance environment and I worked on Cadillac CTS-V the second generation nice which is the LSA powered sedan
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Coupe and wagon which are all still pretty revered and valuable so that was really when I became to get to know how
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to do this job in the vehicle Dynamics world it was trained to be the highest level of GM driving possible which was
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awesome that's another Pinch Me moment of okay I get to go practice on the best tracks in the country show that I can
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control the car and be within two percent of John heinrusy at the time would set the target lapse you know 14
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time and there's a funny story we all talk about now that he's retired but he would
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leave something on the table every time and if you got close enough to him he would go out the next day and reset a
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new time you got it like hey oh my gosh what a huge accomplishment they'd call you and
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say you better come back out he's a second faster than he was yesterday oh my gosh I'm received has been on the
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Corvette today too that's a funny story I couldn't imagine yeah I ran into him over last summer right after I was
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fortunate enough to win this job and he would have had this job four people go three people ago excuse me right so that
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was neat for me a full circle moment of saying like absolutely you've really been with GM all of your business life
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then haven't you I have yeah 22 now going on 23 years right out of college that's amazing Erin that's awesome Yep
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so yeah after CTSV I worked on the Camaro the fifth generation ZL1 I was
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gonna say tell me about your time with Camaro yeah you know that's another wonderful part of my career the fifth
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gen Camaro most people remember hopefully was done out of Australia when we owned Holden based on the Zeta
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platform that underpinned all the Holdings so they did the first model year the SS and the LTS and the rs's and
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then when and the ZL1 came to life which originally was called Z28 by the way it
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came to life with the LSA engine that I was very familiar with from the CTS-V and so I got to do the right handling on
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that project and that group I worked under Dave Workman who I mentioned earlier so that was then Corvette and
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Camaro development team all together that car I think won a lot of accolades and was our take on the 5th gen Camaro
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we then continued that into the the Z28 that had the LS7 that goes down in history it's one of the best engines
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ever and more fitting for a c28 than the LSA was absolutely that was 5th gen and
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then I was able to advance in the company and be the lead development engineer on the entire 6th gen Camaro so
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from 2012 to 2017 those models we were extremely proud of how that car set the
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bar in the segment in many respects kind of allowed me to demonstrate I knew how to do things more than just Tire tuning
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or shock tuning or bushing selections lead development as you're overseeing the entire a car in most respects pallet
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drives how it feels how it sounds Etc yeah and when did you start working on Corvette Aaron so then Corvette came
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along in 2017. okay the Sixth Gen Camaro was pretty much finished at that point
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and there was a need for a lead development engineer within the quarterback C8 world that became you
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know my dream job I was so happy to win that and be tagged for it because then it basically let me come back full
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circle from 2001 when I worked with Mike Neal so now I'm a full part of this not
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just a recent graduate right right buddy let's take our final break when we come back we're going to talk in depth about
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Corvette and the mid-engine car coming up next with Aaron link on Corvette today
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the state of Kansas this is the Corvette Today podcast with
20:05
Steve Garrett hey thanks once again for listening and watching Corvette today the show that
20:11
talks about everything Corvette brought to you by wheelcraft want to dress up your Corvette with bright Chrome or
20:16
black chrome wheels visit wheelcraft.com and learn about their Advanced PVD chrome finishing they can refinish your
20:23
wheels or offer a wheel exchange for most models and it comes with a five-year warranty visit wheelcraft.com
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today or call them 833-840-5334 I'm your host Steve Garrett
20:36
with me is Aaron link the global vehicle performance manager for Chevrolet performance cards Aaron that's a long
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title that doesn't fit really well on a business card does it no it doesn't and
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I guess normally in the world GM acronyms we're just called vpms there you go talk about your title a little
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bit more and exactly what your job entails sure I'd be happy to yeah I'm really enjoying this Steve so the vpm
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job has been around since about 2000 it's always been on my list as a goal a very specific position that I was able
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to be familiar with from the 2001 time frame it's a special role for sure and
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I'm very honored to have it the job basically entails leading a group of about 20 people to perfect the Driving
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Experience of a Chevrolet performance car so Camaro Corvette is what we've had
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in the past it was also the solstice and the sky a little two-seaters I love that Solstice in the sky yeah those were
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awesome cars yeah kind of the same group of folks did those as what we have now so we've kind of all had this in mind to
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achieve this level in this group I like to say where the car Whispers where we have to apply Art and Science to come up
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with I'll use the Z06 as a most recent Example The Experience of owning that car is really what I try to put myself
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in somebody's shoes to fulfill and it's a fun challenge think about okay we've got this ridiculously capable engine
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that's new to us completely we've never done anything like it in GM and it's been in the making for many years and so
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how do you feature that and complement it with the rest of the car so you have this holistic experience of I love what
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I bought you know that's what I want everyone to say and not have any asterisks to their statements you know
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where it's everything's great but X Y or Z you know we want it to be everything they've saved up for and aiming for in
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their lives you know it's not a small purchase by any means right and that would entail anything we can affect the
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most we can do so the seats for instance are the same as this thing right that came out in 2020 and there's three
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levels of them and they all work extremely well so those were developed early but the exhaust system is well
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known now but it's completely new for the Z06 and that was an important piece of this whole puzzle when you only get
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get one chance to do this it's going away from 65 years starting in 1955 and
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we're turning the recipe upside down with this exotic high revving lower torque engine and so how do you
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highlight that honor the past but then make it something that people are just shocked by in many respects that was
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kind of the goal there's an element of the design folks that have to make it fit the theme and then the engineering
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release side that has to get the supplier to build them correctly and Tool them and then the assembly client
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has to put it all together it's a huge undertaking definitely well you guys hit it out of the park and we're going to
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talk about the Z06 and the e-ray in just a minute but let's start with the stingray let's talk about your role in
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the development of the mid-engine Corvette sure I kind of came along after most of that was accomplished my
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counterpart at that time was the gentleman named Mike Petrucci he had the lead development engineer role on the
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first model year this thing rang and so he started that role I think it was probably 2012 or 2013 many years before
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the car really came out wow architecting everything about it the beauty of C8 is
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the architecture supports the models that we have now vo6 the e-ray they all
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have the same structure and foundation and backbone it's a really beautiful Story how we've got many thousands of
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cars coming off this architecture where in this segment in the mid-engine world there are specialty Vehicles sometimes
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where they don't have high volumes we've got this plant that can turn out very different versions of the architecture
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that we're seeing now so I really didn't become involved with this thing right at all when I started in 2017 I was put on
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the Z06 straight away gotcha all right so the Z06 is a fantastic machine talk
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about your role in the development of the Z06 and how it differed from Stingray sure yeah this is the heart of
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the matter for me in many respects I was the lead development engineer on the ZO6 that's the job I had before my current
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job a vpm job I said in a Reveal video If a 10 year old version of myself could
24:57
see this they'd be so amazed that it came to this where I was able to work on this vehicle where we had the best tires
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in the world the biggest rear tires we've ever put on a car a Corvette most powerful naturally aspirated V8 in
25:10
history and then in this mid-engine architecture that has such good bones for the weight transfer and the balance
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of the car the nose is so responsive without the weight up front and then the traction is just fantastic out of the
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rear it's like this perfect mixture of all the right ingredients and then our group is in charge of putting it all
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together to get the right outcome for the experience for me my background is ride in handling and vehicle Dynamics
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like I mentioned so a lot of that came working with our team to do the tire
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selections with Michelin the spring rates selection and bushing selection of
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the core pieces that Define the riding handling balance I don't have as much background in the noise and vibration
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side but the whole exhaust of this car was probably our greatest achievement in
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terms of changing the character from the stingray at one point they had the same Muffler setup and it just never really
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delivered what we wanted to so we tore it up in a lot of ways people supported it you know at the high levels and
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attaches level Ted himself supported it strongly that's cool now if the Z06 is a
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fantastic machine like I talked about the e-ray is a Monumental machine let's talk a little bit about the development
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the e-ray versus the Z06 and the stingray as well sure Steve said I have a counterpart as well Mike Kutcher you
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guys will become familiar with here soon when we do the e-ray drive event later this year he has a lot of background and
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hybrids and electrification that none of us really do in our group it's a new thing for Corvette for sure yeah so he
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came to the party with a lot of that background we compliment his capabilities and knowledge base with our
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background with the Corvette pair to dig as you could say and especially since c67 time frame here of just knowing what
26:58
each model needs to achieve so the array obviously is a brand new model we've never had before the first electrified
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first all-wheel drive Corvette is a pretty huge statement as you mentioned and I think the message on that car was
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always Harlan always termed at the Swiss army knife it's got a tool for every task there's no fear of taking your
27:17
Corvette out in All Seasons now and no fear of a hill that you can't climb nothing that it can't do the Z06 the
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Mantra was a urgent intense experience which I think we delivered on where it's
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rewarding in terms of what I like to tell people is I'm going to remember every drive and I take in that car
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because it's got this emotional passion in every piece of it that we've created whether it's a five minute drive to the
27:41
grocery to pick up the kids or an hour long Sunday morning Cruise somewhere that's gonna stick with me throughout
27:47
the day because it's just so powerful of a connection the e-ray is the jack of
27:52
all trades success well-rounded car we've ever done absolutely right what was the most challenging aspect about
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the e-ray Aaron from my perspective and again it was going on in parallel to the Z06 in many respects so I was seeing it
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from the periphery before I'd assumed this job last August where now I'm able to have more oversight on it and insight
28:11
the biggest thing that we always saw was the front motor would kind of be hidden
28:16
in the Driving Experience like we weren't really sure how to feature it without going too far where people lose
28:23
a rear wheel drive feel initially you really had to prod the throttle to get the motor to do anything it didn't
28:30
really show up until late in the game now we've got it where it's always
28:35
present in terms of output in terms of watching the gauges on the console or
28:41
you can see oh I'm getting a front axle contribution here and then also with the sound character of the car now you can
28:47
pull in the reveal heard the ominous tone that the car emits now when it's in electric mode it's a different
28:53
experience all together so I'd say the hardest aspect was just featuring the motor but not letting it dominate The
28:58
Experience we still want the small block to be the highlight of the car in many respects yeah yeah that makes sense
29:04
working on the mid-engine C8 generation what makes you the most proud Aaron hi
29:10
we were talking about that today at work in fact of just how we can put these cars up against anything that comes
29:17
throughout the world and not have to be concerned about something not living out to whatever it's competing against like
29:24
that pride is pretty hard to come by and a lot of it is focused on in the fit and finishes now the paint now the interior
29:32
quality is second to none and I think that's reflected in the JD Powers scores that recently came out where it's number
29:38
one in the segment exactly right people are just relishing owning these vehicles
29:43
now and again we're typically performance focused you know lap times quarter mile breaking distance get pet
29:50
numbers like all those magazine things that you grow up as a kid looking at we
29:56
tend to now have no fear of who we're going up against because the car is that good it stands up that well this is not
30:03
to put down any prior Generations it's more just the looks of this car and their proportions have thrust it Forward
30:09
into this Supercar world we just saw there was a Haggerty icons episode that just came out with Jason camisa that's a
30:16
Ferrari and a Lamborghini there against the e-ray and it dominates and he sees it that way too that's probably the thing I'm most proud of across every
30:22
model we have it can cover every base on the field and that Haggerty video was perfect it really was that was just a
30:29
great video and Corvette has lost the moniker for the money it's the best car out there we don't need to put the for
30:36
the money part with Corvette anymore it is the best car out there yeah you know I was kind of reading between the lines
30:43
like I was kind of saying yeah there was always this asterisk of wins on price or something like that it doesn't have to
30:48
it's got all the chops of everything else out there in the world in some ways more from a technology standpoint from a
30:55
usability standpoint you know that part when we see some competitive cars there's maybe one trunk and now we have
31:02
two with a small block with the highest output naturally that's pretty heavy it hasn't been in the world right an
31:08
all-wheel drive car and they all have two trunks usable storage a glove box a
31:13
center console like there's no compromise in how you can use this car to enjoy life and that's always been the
31:20
value of Corvette and the proposition of this is not some exotic that you have to service every 3000 Miles and take the
31:27
engine out and redo all sorts of things it's serviced at 3 000 Chevy dealers in the country it has warranties for a
31:34
hundred thousand miles it's almost like the culmination of everything that we've always thought about and dreamed of is
31:39
now seen and In the Flesh for people to purchase absolutely right it is the American Supercar for sure yeah you have
31:46
to be part of it it's America's sports car and now America's super car right yeah it makes the hair on your arm just
31:52
stand end up doesn't it it does and as we were talking about this is
31:57
what keeps us going the love of these cars you don't want to let anyone down you don't want to mail it in one day and
32:03
say like uh it's good enough we sweat so much to make sure folks like yourself and your listeners are just Overjoyed
32:10
with what they bought and they are they absolutely are buddy thank you so much for taking the time to be on Corvette
32:16
today I've got to have you back this has been so much fun it was my pleasure Steve yeah great talking to you and I
32:22
look forward to it again thanks for listening to Corvette today and please be sure to tell your family friends and other Corvette enthusiasts about the
32:28
Corvette Today podcast and thanks to our sponsors wheelcraft want to dress up your Corvette with bright Chrome or
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black chrome wheels visit wheelcraft.com to learn about their Advanced PVD chrome finishing they can refinish your wheels
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at Seoul PP dot com the official exhaust of Corvette today true wealth and Company at retirewithtrue.com also
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aerolari.com and Hedrick Chevrolet in Kansas City at chevyusa.com
33:11
you've been listening to Corvette today with Steve Garrett if you'd like to contact Steve with any thoughts on the
33:17
podcast or ideas for guests on Corvette today you can email him at Steve Garrett
33:22
DJ gmail.com that's Steve Garrett DJ gmail.com
33:28
Garrett has two r's and two T's or connect with Steve on social media on
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Facebook Twitter or Instagram using at Steve Garrett DJ thanks again for listening to Corvette
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today [Music]
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