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CORVETTE TODAY #179 - Corvette News & Headlines, Mid September 2023
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Jul 11, 2025
Car Show Season is winding down and Fall is right around the corner. The days are getting shorter and the nights are getting longer. However, as we get closer and closer to the new season, there is no shortage of Corvette news! Your CORVETTE TODAY host, Steve Garrett, teams up with Keith Cornett from CorvetteBlogger once again to keep you up to date on what's happening in the world of Corvette. Here are a few of the topics Steve and Keith bring you next week: 1. 2023 Corvette production hits a new milestone 2. The C8 Z06 hits Japan 3. Corvette ranks highest in JD Power's Multi Media Study 4. Is the C8's "Great Wall of Buttons" really going away in 2025?
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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
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in the country, Corvette Funfest, 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 and watching Corvette Today, the show that talks about everything Corvette and the only
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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? Learn
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about their advanced PVD chrome finishing. They can refinish your wheels or offer a wheel exchange for most
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Corvette Forum.com. Welcoming Corvette enthusiasts from around the world. It's time to bring you the latest Corvette
2:47
news and headlines with my buddy Keith Cornet from corvette blogger.com. As you know, Keith is here twice per month.
2:53
He's here every other week. We both keep you up to date and current on what's happening with America's sports car.
2:58
Keith, welcome back to the show. Buddy, I didn't realize this. This episode of Corvette Today marks the beginning of
3:05
year number four for our news and headline shows. How about that? I just find that stat amazing, Steve.
3:10
Part of it is, you know, you think, "Wow, this has been that long." And then I'm like, "Yeah, I've been working with Steve. It has been that long."
3:17
I'm just kidding. I really do enjoy this. For me, a lot of times, you know, we write a story and then it hits the
3:22
archives and we move on. It's always a good way to kind of look back at the last two weeks and say, you know, what's
3:27
really been impacting sometimes stories stick around for a few days and they grow and change. It's just a good way to
3:33
really look back at the news and say, you know, how is this impacting the Corvette Nation? What do enthusiasts think about this? And it helps us
3:39
actually, you know, as we're looking at stories in the future. I know all people will like to hear about that on the Corvette Today podcast. And it's just
3:46
been a great thing for us, a great experience for us. and very happy to be part of it, Steve. Likewise, buddy. It's been a great
3:51
experience for me, too. It's an honor and a pleasure to have you on the show every other week. Well, thank you very much.
3:57
Let's start our news segment, Keith, like we always do with an update of production at the Bowling Green assembly plant.
4:03
Well, Steve, you know, that's an interesting question because we're at the very, very end of a model year and it's very hard to exactly say where we
4:09
are right now. We're recording this on Friday morning and it's our belief and I say belief because we just don't know if the Corvette assembly plant is building
4:15
2023 Corvettes today or did they end the 2023s on Thursday evening as we thought they might with this whole strike thing
4:22
going on too. There's just this question that we just don't know yet. As we've mentioned though, we get our latest counts from Roger Keel on Facebook and
4:29
his spreadsheet actually had the 2023s being produced through Thursday second shift. Now, Friday morning, we just
4:34
haven't been able to confirm yet that the plan has switched over to the 2024s this morning or will they run the 2023s
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to the end of the week. Everybody's kind of been koi about it. We know we didn't get any official numbers from Harland
4:45
Charles at the NCM anniversary. As far as those totals, he did tell us that they have 53,448
4:52
Corvettes made during the 2023 model year, but it doesn't sound like that's a final number yet. So, we don't know if
4:58
there's some play there, but that is a record for Bowling Green production, and it's just a few hundred numbers off of
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the 1979 production record of 53,87. The question again goes back to when
5:09
exactly does the 2023 model year end, and if there are any additional production counts that can be added to that number, I mean, it'd be fantastic
5:15
to pick up that record overall, even if it does, you know, involve, you know, you're you're adding a couple dates here
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and there, and, you know, this model year started just a little bit earlier than usual, but it's still a record. you're responding to market demands.
5:27
You're making that many cars. It'd be nice to go out on top. But again, I think we're going to have to do a cleanup on is 2 for this news and
5:34
headlines podcast in two weeks just to kind of wrap up and say this is exactly where we ended up for the 2023 model
5:40
year. I mean, it's been an exciting year for sure with all the numbers coming out and some great cars and of course the introduction of the Z06. So, we
5:46
definitely want to pay attention and find out exactly what that is. It's going to be an exciting final finish. That's for sure, Keith. Now,
5:52
like Keith said, we were recording this on Friday, September 15th. What is going on with the UAW strike, which started
5:59
technically last night at midnight? Yeah. So, you know, we've been anticipating that the United Auto Workers would be striking against the
6:05
Big D. And again, they didn't disappoint, did they? We didn't really know exactly how they were going to do it. GM had made, we understand, four
6:12
different offers with their final one being around a 20% wage hike over four years, 10% of that happening within the
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first year, and then there's up to 5 weeks of paid vacations. other considerations including payments to
6:22
retirees and then exactly how many years does it take to become a fully invested member of the workforce. What we didn't
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know is exactly how the UAW would plan to strike. Were they going to do all three at once? We heard about a targeted
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strike and it turns out that UAW Sea Feain is called what he calls a standup strike against one major facility from
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each of the three automakers. It's really unprecedented for them to go after all three automakers at once. By
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targeting just these three plants, it looks like they have around 9% of the UAW workers on strike. The GM plant
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that's being striked against first is the Wentzville assembly plant near St. Louis, which builds the Colorado and the
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GMC Canyon pickup trucks, as well as the Chevrolet Express and the Savannah vans. Kind of interesting. It wasn't one of
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those that was on our target. We thought for sure that they were going to go after the Romulus plant, which builds
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the Sierra and the Silverado, you know, the two major vehicles in the GM lineup.
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How long is this strike going to last? Will the Corvette assembly plant see any kinds of slowdowns or part supply issues? Kind of remains to be seen. We
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did write a story about how if there was a strike at the Bowling Green assembly plant, there would be no further
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deliveries of Corvettes from the plant to the dealers until that was all wrapped up and settled. Right now, with
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this targeted strike against one facility, and we don't know how the ripple effects were going to go with
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that, it's just kind of like we'll have to wait and see. Yeah. And a lot of people have asked me about this too. People have TPWS of
7:48
September 25th and how does that affect my TPW? We just don't know yet and we
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don't know how it's going to affect the Bowling Green assembly plant. So in our next news and headline show, we'll have
7:58
a much clearer picture probably of what's going on. On some positive news, Keith, the 2024 Corvette is a
8:06
semi-finalist for the North American Car of the Year award. I like that. Yeah, this is exciting. Last time North
8:12
American Career, last time Corvette was up was in 2020. And of course, we won that award. The E-Ray was first
8:17
announced last month that it was in consideration for this prestigious award. And one of the reasons why we like this award is because it's actually
8:23
voted on by 50 automotive journalists that make up the North American Car Truck of the Year jury. What these guys
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do is they check out the cars, they drive them, they review them themselves, you know, and then they turn in their findings and they're all tabulated. At
8:36
the opening of the Detroit Auto Show last week, the best of the 2024 was announced. These are all the semi-finalists. So, the Corvettes going
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up against nine other vehicles including the BMW 5 Series, the BMW i5, a Ford
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Mustang, the Honda Accord, the Hyundai Iconic 6, the Subaru Impreza, Toyota
8:53
Crown, the Toyota GR Corolla, and the Toyota Prius and Prime Prius. The next
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step in this voting will come on November 16th at the LA Auto Show, and then that'll narrow it down to the top
9:04
three finalists in each category. So that the cars, the trucks, and then the sport utility vehicles will all have the
9:09
final three. And then the winning vehicle from each segment will be announced on January 4th of 2024. We won
9:15
this award in 2020. It'd be fantastic to win it again in 2024 with the Corvette. That'd be cool. Fingers crossed, buddy.
9:22
Fingers crossed. Also, the C8 Z06 now is in Japan. Yeah. So the Chevrolet Japan released a
9:28
promo video for the upcoming Corvette Z06 that will be offered in the country. We've written about this before. It's of
9:34
course a right-hand drive model. It's going to export exhaust with the quartermounted exhaust. And if you
9:39
remember, all the Z06es offered in Japan would all be black with the adrenaline red interior. It's our belief that
9:45
they're getting about 15 cars or so in that first batch. And we're certain that they sold out of that pretty quickly.
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Japan also is offering a limited edition Stingray that's preconfigured as well. I think they've sold out one or two of
9:56
those different configurations already. Seeing that what happens when you offer a right-hand drive model in in these
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countries was definitely a winning strategy. We're not talking about a lot of cars over there. Obviously, pricing is a lot higher there than it is here.
10:08
But like we like to say, you know, it's part of that world domination tour that Corvette's on right now. And anytime you
10:13
can get any impact into these markets that previously didn't do well. It's just another feather in the cap. Not
10:18
exactly sure exactly when the Z06s are hitting the market because they do build them in batches. And of course, building
10:24
15 of these cars, you could do that over the course of a morning shift. obviously at Bowling Green. So, it's not taking up
10:30
too many resources. Be interesting to find out exactly when these cars get in country, but it looks like they're previewing it because they got a really
10:35
cool video of this black car driving around the countryside and some of the different areas in Japan. It's very
10:41
picturesque. Nice. I like that. I still think this world domination thing is awesome. Also, Keith Corvette is ranking highest in
10:48
segment in the JD Power multimedia study. And this is for the navigation screen stuff, isn't it?
10:54
Yeah, this is a customer response survey, too. So these are satisfaction by the owners that are saying that they
11:00
like what they see here and I guess they like what they hear as well because we are talking multimedia. The Corvette ranked at the top of the midsize large
11:07
premium segment and JD Power says about the study that quote consumers are looking for intuitive systems that are
11:12
simple and not too distracting from the road. The challenge to OEMs and suppliers is translating those customers
11:18
experiences into design and functionality by meeting customer needs. Both quality and satisfaction will increase. You kind of talk about they
11:24
want it simple and easy, but the irony is that there's all this talk about Chevrolet and General Motors taking away
11:30
like Apple CarPlay and the Android Auto. We are getting a new Googlebased system. And one of the reasons why people like
11:36
the CarPlay and Android Auto is just because they're simple to use and it's kind of seamless with their phones, so
11:41
they're not being distracted from the road. Right. The other point about this study, too, is that when you put 14 premium Bose
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speakers in a small space like the Corvette's cabin, you're going to be happy with the sound. And I think that goes a long way to being satisfied with
11:53
the multimedia setup in the Corvette. You like how it sounds. It's loud. It's crisp. It's clear. Yeah, you're
11:58
satisfied. Yeah, absolutely right. And we have one sad note, Keith. Corvette Central's founder, Jerry Con passed away at 79
12:06
years old. Yeah, this is another loss in the Corvette community. Obviously, we had Reeves Callaway passed away earlier this
12:11
year. We're losing some of these old guard enthusiasts. You know, these are the guys that turned their passion for the Corvette into successful businesses.
12:18
Jerry Con got his start because the 1958 Corvette that he owned needed new grill teeth and it was easier for him to make
12:25
reproduction versions better than he could find quality used versions at swap markets. That idea actually turned into
12:31
Corvette Central which he ran with his son Scott and daughter Sarah for over 40 years. In 2012, Jerry was inducted into
12:37
the Bloomington Gold's Great Hall as one of the 50 Corvette enthusiast, innovators, and pioneers. And listen to
12:43
this, he held membership number 11 at the National Corvette Museum. Wow. and Scott Con is number 12. And I
12:49
think they got those in 1991, which if you know, the Corvette Museum didn't officially open till 1994. So, they were
12:56
in on that ground floor of planning and building the community year round, putting together a National Corvette
13:01
Museum. Sad news, you know, Corvette Central was just sold to Legendary Companies last year. I always feel bad
13:06
for these people that just retired. They're looking forward to retirement and then they pass away right afterwards. So, our condolences go out
13:12
to the family and friends of Jerry Con. Anybody that's ever shopped at Corvette Central, you can thank Jerry for that because it's a great company to work
13:19
with and we're going to miss them. Absolutely right. Well, buddy, it's time for our first break. When we come back,
13:24
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And now back to the only current podcast on Corvettes, Corvette Today with your host, Steve Garrett. Hey, thanks for
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call them 833-639-4231. I'm your host Steve Garrett. With me is
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Keith Cornet from corvette blogger.com. In this second segment, we always cover Corvette racing and Corvette rumors.
16:48
First of all, Keith, talk to me about Corvette racing at Fuji. Wow, that was a fun race there, but it happened like
16:54
overnight because of the time change, right? To be honest with you, I missed it. You know, I couldn't do it. So, the number
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33 Corvette C8R with drivers Nikki Katsburg, Ben Keading, and Nico Veron, they finished on the podium once again.
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They were originally in third place, but then they actually moved up to second place after a 10-second time penalty was
17:11
assessed to the number 57 Ferrari after the race for some post-RA infraction. So, they actually were able to move up a
17:17
little bit. Again, there's a little bit of controversy here in the race. Ben Keading was involved in a little side to
17:22
side contact with that winning Ferrari. The crew had to replace the door on the C8 R, but Keading, unfortunately, was
17:28
blamed by Racing Stos for causing the crash. And then he had to do a 30 second stopand go penalty as well. So that
17:34
knocked us back just far enough that we couldn't make a run back for the lead before the end of the race. So amazing
17:39
that we finished at third and then second overall for the GTD class there. But pretty exciting stuff. Of course,
17:45
Fuji's a neat speedway to watch. You can catch a replay on the Motor Trend channel if you did want to watch that.
17:50
The WC Corvette racing team will be back in action. They got one more race. The final race happens November 4th at the
17:55
eight hours of Bahrain. So, one more race there for the WC's and then they'll be all wrapped up. That sounds good. And speaking of Ben
18:02
Keading, this is a class move. Ben bought Rolex watches for his co-drivers to celebrate their win at Lama earlier
18:09
this year. Yeah, this was a great story we caught on social media. Apparently, only the winning overall drivers receive a Rolex
18:15
watch for winning the 24 hours of Lemons. Ben Keading describes that as unacceptable. So he took matters into
18:21
his own hands. He's from Texas. So he went to a Texas based jewelry store, bought three matching watches, Rolexes.
18:26
I don't know what style of Rolexes, but he bought three of them. On the back of the watches, he had inscribed the 100th
18:32
Lemon's logo. And then it says winner 2023 GTE class. Man, talk about a class
18:38
act there. That's a pretty cool gift, and it just shows the kind of class this team has. It' been fun to have them together for another year or two just to
18:44
see what they could really do because they've seem to have gelled extremely well. It's kind of a shame to see them going different ways here at the end of
18:50
the season. Yeah. And Ben Keing has been on Corvette today. Look up that episode. Ben's a cool guy. He owns a lot of dealerships
18:56
in Texas. It's a fun listen or a fun watch for sure. Also in racing, Keith
19:02
Corvette Racing visited Indianapolis. Yeah. The number three Corvette C8 from IMSA. They were in action over the
19:07
weekend at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the Battle of the Bricks. That was on Saturday. We're recording this on Friday, so we don't have those results
19:13
here yet, but we know the team needs to win to keep their hopes of the GT Pro Championship alive. They were, as of
19:19
before the race, they were 140 points behind the leader with two final races to go. So, we're keeping our fingers
19:24
crossed. We'll have that discussion for you on the next news and headlines. But, you know what I like about this? This is at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. They
19:30
race in reverse. So, if you always think, they always go, I guess, to the left. In this race, they run the road
19:35
course, but they start by going to the right. So, it's always opposite. So, it's a little bit neat there. Again, it's a road course at Historic IMS, so
19:42
it's one that we're definitely going to be watching. That'll be fun. Let's get to rumors, Keith. And this is a big rumor. This is
19:47
a huge rumor. Are we going to lose the C8 Great Wall of Buttons starting in 2025?
19:53
Man, this has been one of those rumors that just doesn't appear to be going away. And it turns out that really a lot
19:59
of owners took offense to this story. They love their great wallet buttons and how dare you talk about changing it. But we've been hearing this rumor since at
20:05
least 2021. kind of didn't make sense that early in Corvette production, but we're headed towards 2025. Next year
20:12
will be the sixth year of production. A small change like that could actually breathe a little bit of new life. You do a little midcycle update on the car. You
20:20
might have some of those earlier adopters, the 2020 2021 Corvette owners trading in their cars for new one and
20:26
some of the other options that might be there. It's pretty interesting concept. And you know what we did was we teamed
20:31
up. I called John over at the Biden Corvette forum or maybe he called me. I don't really remember how that went down, but we started throwing around
20:37
these ideas and so we got one of the guys that does some renderings for us and he put together a C8 interior that
20:44
had a revised great wall of buttons. It was actually flattened a little bit and then it included the same kind of style
20:50
of a C7 grab bar that a lot of people miss. I think that that's one of the things that as I've been a passenger in
20:55
the C8 Corvette, there's really nowhere to grab on for any kind of highspired driving or anything like that,
21:00
right? It'd be neat to see that grab bar back from the C7 Corvette, but the rest of it looks pretty good, the rendering.
21:05
So, check it out. Again, I'm thinking that this one might actually start to have legs to it. 2025 is a great year
21:12
for this to occur. Like I said, six years into production. There have already been some other rumors coming out, maybe a return of the Grand Sport,
21:18
obviously ZR1 in 2025 as well. So, there's some big things happening and we're just going to, again, we always
21:23
say stay tuned, but that's all we can do when it comes to rumors like this. I did like the renderings. They looked really good. I do like my great wall of
21:31
buttons. I don't think there's a problem with it. I do miss the grab handle. We'll just have to wait and see what
21:36
happens, buddy. Also, Keith, in the rumor section, the automotive media is in Colorado this week driving the E-Ray,
21:42
aren't they? Yes, we got some new pics and video started popping up on social media, and it turned out these automotive
21:48
journalists were driving a 2024 Corvette in Colorado. It looks like the drive included both a stop at the Pikes Peak
21:54
International Speedway for some track accelerations. We saw a picture of a black car making a lovely drive through
21:59
the mountains. They were also at like a municipal airport with some airplanes in the background that people could shoot
22:04
up against. So, pretty cool there. We don't know how many people we heard it was going to be somewhat limited. Probably the same size as the Z06 ride
22:11
and drive. Yeah, the embargo for these stories are going to end on Friday, October 13th.
22:17
So, that should be a really fun day for -ay buyers to be able to wake up that morning and check out all these new reviews and driving opinions of the new
22:24
Corvette - and all the other stuff that comes out with the launch of this new sports car. And then, of course, ordering is supposedly, we don't know
22:29
what the strike, but it's supposedly going to happen just a couple weeks after that. People will be all primed and ready after reading all those
22:35
reviews to go order that car. And it's going to be an exciting time period. I can't wait, buddy. Well, let's take our final break. When we come back,
22:41
Keith, it's the lighter side of Corvette on deck at Corvette today.
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You're listening to the Corvette Today podcast with Steve Garrett.
25:16
Hey, thanks again for listening and watching Corvette Today, the show that talks about everything Corvette.
25:21
Corvette Today is brought to you by Wheelcraft. You want your Corvette looking its best? Well, dress it up with
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bright chrome or black chrome wheels. Visit wheelcraft.com and learn about their advanced PVD chrome finishing.
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They can refinish your wheels or do a wheel exchange and you get a 5-year warranty. Visit wheelcraft.com or call
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them at 833-639-4231. I'm your host, Steve Garrett. With me
25:45
every other week is Keith Cornet from corvette blogger.com. If you want a deeper dive into any of the stories that
25:50
Keith and I cover, you can always go to corvette blogger.com. In our final segment, we always talk about the
25:56
lighter side of Corvette. Keith, I love this story because this was the car I grew up with. There is a Corvette
26:02
Batmobile from 1992 that was on sale from Bring a Trailer and this was the
26:08
original Batmobile which I thought was awesome. So, we know that the original Batmobile was built by George Bareris
26:14
and he used a Lincoln Futura as the basis for the car and you know that car had the wings on the back and
26:19
exaggerated front. Those cars are kind of demand and they didn't make a whole lot of them from what I understand but there are some builders out there that
26:25
are using the C4 Corvette to build these replicas of the original 1960s Batmobile and it works out really well. I mean,
26:30
it's a longer car. The one that we saw on Bring a Trailer had the whole interior done correctly. There was even
26:36
some bat symbols on the engine compartment. I mean, it looked really well. So, I'm going to put Steve on the
26:41
spot here. Steve, how much do you think this Batmobile sold for? Oh gosh. I meant to go back and look at that, buddy. I bet it sold for six
26:47
figures. Yeah, you were correct. If you would have guessed, $269,999.
26:53
Wow. Yeah. Almost $270,000. You'd be correct. I mean, this Batmobile had a working flamethrower out the rear. It had the
26:59
bat phone and the imaginal bat turns and some of the other gadgets inside there. It was really well done. So,
27:04
congratulations to the builder of this. You know, they build C4s, too. There's another comic book car. The Mach 5 from
27:10
Speed Racer also is a great car on the C4 platform. We're keeping these dreams alive for little kids like you, Steve.
27:16
That's awesome, buddy. You know what? I'm a kid at heart and like I said, that was my original Batmobile when I was
27:21
growing up in the 60s. I was so excited to see that. I can't believe it sold for $270,000.
27:27
Yeah, that was well done. For sure. Wow. Amazing. Keith, let's talk about the inductees for the Corvette Hall of Fame
27:33
this year at the National Corvette Museum's anniversary celebration. Absolutely. Well, National Corvette Museum now has three new members to the
27:39
Corvette Hall of Fame. Two weekends ago in downtown Bowling Green, the NCM held their induction ceremony for the class
27:44
of 2023, which includes John Mgort, Dan Binks, and David Wickham. These
27:50
inductees are nominated and voted on by a slate of 100 jurors in the Corvette hobby. And they're generally from three
27:55
different categories. They're from GM Chevrolet Corvette Racing and then Corvette Enthusiast. John Amwart. He was
28:01
a founding member of the National Corvette Restore Society and he ran the Corvette Restore magazine for the organization for 25 years. Again, one of
28:08
these old guard guys that we're talking about. We have Dan Binks, retired crew chief for Corvette Racing. Over 100
28:13
victories were earned with Dan Binks at the helm there. Just an amazing man. Now today, he's retired and he's restoring
28:19
old race cars. He's building engines for people. I guess he's got a C7R in his garage. Nice. The final inductee was David
28:26
Wickman. He was the retired GM vehicle performance manager out at the Milford proving grounds. He was like the lead
28:31
development engineer for Corvettes on the C5 Z06, the C6 and the C7. Was just
28:36
responsible for, you know, some of the stuff that Jim Marrow does and what we see some of the new guys do today of the
28:41
driving dynamics of the car, how it reacts on the track and then how they can make it better for the street. Glad to see all three of these individuals
28:47
now being the newest members in the Corvette Hall of Fame. There's only 82, I think, in the Corvette Hall of Fame. So, it's a really big deal. And again,
28:53
congratulations. It's an exclusive club and Dan Banks has been on Corvette today. Go back and check out that episode for sure. Also,
29:00
Keith, we now have a new top 10 on Corvette dealerships through August of this year, don't we?
29:05
Yeah, another update from our source at Chevrolet provided us with the calendar year to date sales for the top 10. No
29:11
real changes. McMullen Chevrolet continues to lead the pack there. They've got a 29.7 market share of the
29:16
top 10s. They're dominating. They have,56 deliveries compared to second place with just 744 deliveries. Third on
29:24
the list is our friend Mike Fermanwell Chevrolet with 375. And again, the list didn't change all that much, so it's
29:29
probably fairly solid through the end of the year. You can see the entire list at corvette blogger.com. That sounds good. Also, we had a 2019
29:37
C7ZR1 hit 161 miles an hour. Now, you think, okay, I can do that in my regular
29:42
Corvette, but this was on a half mile runway, not a full mile, right? Yeah. You think of like two/4 miles back
29:48
to back. This video comes from the Johnny Bomber proving grounds and they run on the threemile space shuttle
29:54
runway at Kennedy Space Center. They're basically at sea level. They do have to contend with some offshore breezes, but
30:00
they always list what kind of conditions they had. This was a 2019 Corvette ZR1. It had the low wing on it and an
30:06
automatic transmission. From a standing stop, it ran up to 161 miles an hour and it was still pulling really hard when it
30:12
crossed that finish line. In the article that we wrote, we know that there's a video of the same ZR1 that ran the full
30:18
2.7 miles on the runway to get a top speed of 207 miles an hour. So, that car
30:24
is really moving. Of course, at the end of there, you know, the speed is just incremental. It's moving, but not as fast as it was in those 130s to 160s.
30:31
The fastest time we've seen from a Corvette ZR1 on the space shuttle runway was actually one that hit 214 milesPH,
30:37
which is part of the average speed, I think, of the top speed of the 2019 Corvette ZR1. I think the overall speed
30:43
is 212, but they always do a mile one way and a mile back way to determine that speed. Really cool stuff. Again,
30:50
Johnny Bomber Proving Grounds on YouTube. You can see all kinds of cars racing there. But of course, we love seeing the Corvettes push to their
30:56
limits. That sounds good. And Keith, for our final story, I have to give you a little bit of a background. In a former life, I
31:01
used to work for a company called Intertech Publishing. Being a radio disc jockey, I was the publisher of a
31:07
publication that was worldwide called Radio Magazine. Intertech Publishing owned a company also called Wards Auto
31:14
World. And Wards is still around. They have named the C8 Z06, the LT6 engine,
31:19
as one of the top 10 engines for 2023. Yeah, that's correct. So, every year they put together their list of the top
31:26
10 engines. Now, they have to include propulsion systems because it's not just ice engines and internal combustion
31:32
engines. And the last time we highlighted this list was in 2020 cuz of the introduction of the C8 Corvette Stingray and the 6.2 2 LT2 V8 engine. It
31:40
was also selected that year as one of the top 10 engines. So, kind of exciting this year to see the introduction of the
31:46
2023 Corvette Z06. Of course, we know it's got the brand new 5.5 LT6 V8. And
31:52
once again, Chevrolet cracked the Wards Auto Top 10 as being a ice engine and also being a V8 engine. Again, very
31:58
rare. There's only two total V8s on there. It was the Corvette and then the Darkhorse Mustang, I think. Maybe the
32:04
rest are all hybrids or battery electric. So, it's a big win there for a Corvette to be included on this list.
32:10
Absolutely right. Well, that's very cool, buddy. Well, thanks for being on Corvette today. Congratulations on year
32:16
number four for our news and headline show. Here's to many, many more, buddy. Absolutely, Steve. We got some busy
32:21
stuff happening in the next two weeks. So, this is a great time to tune in to the blog and find out what's going on there. And we'll have an update in two
32:27
weeks. And hopefully we, like I said, we can do that cleanup on aisle 2 with all the stuff that's kind of outstanding because this is all stuff that impacts
32:33
the Corvette experience. And you know, with especially the people expecting to get their new cars and waiting for the TPWs and how that's all going to shake
32:40
out with the strike, you know, again, we'll just be staying tuned. We'll be watching those stories and posting away on Corvette Blogger every day. So, come
32:46
back, see us, and then we'll be here in two weeks to talk about it again. Thanks for listening to Corvette Today, and please be sure to tell your family,
32:52
friends, and other Corvette enthusiasts about the Corvette Today podcast. And thanks to our sponsors, Wheelcraft. Want
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to dress up your Corvette with bright chrome or black chrome wheels? Visit wheelcraft.com to learn about their
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advanced PVD chrome finishing. They can refinish your wheels or offer a wheel exchange for most models and it comes
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with a 5-year warranty. Visit wheelcraft.com today or call 833840-5334.
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Soul Performance Products at soulppp.com. The official exhaust of Corvette today.
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purchase with the new promo code CT111 at aerolari.com and Hendrickk Chevrolet
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in Kansas City at chevyusa.com. [Music] You've been listening to Corvette Today
33:40
with Steve Garrett. If you'd like to contact Steve with any thoughts on the podcast or ideas for guests on Corvette
33:46
Today, you can email him at stevegared djgmail.com.
33:51
That's Steve Garrett DJgmail.com. Garrett has two Rs and two T's. Or
33:58
connect with Steve on social media on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram using Steve Garrett DJ. Thanks again for
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listening to Corvette today.
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