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CORVETTE TODAY #199 - Corvette News & Headlines, Early February 2024
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Jul 11, 2025
CORVETTE TODAY #199 - Corvette News & Headlines, Early February 2024 As we close in on a huge milestone for CORVETTE TODAY, episode #200, Keith Cornett from CorvetteBlogger. (http://corvetteblogger.com/) is back with your CORVETTE TODAY host, Steve Garrett to bring you the latest news & headlines. Here are some of the topics the Steve and Keith talk about…. 1. Robert Maxhimer joins the National Corvette Museum as Director of Collections and Exhibits 2. The Bowling Green Assembly Plant set a new record for most Corvette built in a day 3. Corvette Racing starts the 2024 season at the 24 Hours of Daytona 4. Two C2 Corvettes sell for huge money at auction The best way to stay on top of what’s going on in the world of Corvette is to listen or watch CORVETTE TODAY’s News & Headlines shows every other week! Listen to the podcast, watch the YouTube video, join the Facebook group, sign up for weekly email notifications and shop in the Merchandise Store at: www.CorvetteToday.com (http://www.corvettetoday.com/)
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[Music] Welcome to Corvette Today, the show that
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talks about everything Corvette with your host Steve Garrett, lifetime member of the National Corvette Museum,
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president of the Corvette Club of Kansas City, Missouri, and radio disc jockey of the number one radio station in Kansas
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City for over 45 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
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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? Visit
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from around the world. All right, here we go. It's time to bring you the latest Corvette news and headlines with my pal
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Keith Cornet from corvette blogger.com. Keith is here every other week. We keep you current and uptodate on what's
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happening with America's sports car. Keith, welcome back to the show. How's everything in the world at Corvette Blogger?
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Yeah, everything's good. We've got some decent weather down here in Florida. A little cool, but sometimes fun. We've had all kinds of events down here with
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the racing. We've had the auctions. Everything's gearing up for a great 2024. So, let's get at it.
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Let's get at it, buddy. Let's start off as we always do with Corvette production updates from the Bowling Green assembly plant.
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Well, Steve, it's like they added nitrous to the Corvette assembly line over the last few weeks just based on
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the number of cars that have been built. I mean, it's been kind of crazy. We've seen some record days of production. Not
3:59
all rosy. We didn't seem to have any -ays built last week, although we don't know exactly how Thursday and Friday
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went, but currently we've got some totals here we'll share for the 2024 model year. We're showing that 11,825
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Stingrays have been completed. 3,38 Z06s and then 48 -ay. So, our total for
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2024 so far is 15,181 cars. We had a couple years where we
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only did 15,000 the entire run, right? the fact that we're sitting after one quarter of production. We started
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September 15th or 18th, I think, and now we're looking at 15,000 cars. So, yeah, if you can keep that up over the course
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of the rest of the year, we should end up with another good number. Although, I don't think it'll be anywhere near what we saw for 2023,
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right? Our prediction last time we talked, we were talking about the doubling of the -ray production over that 3-week span.
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And and that's what it actually did. The week of January 8th, they built seven cars. And then they came back the following week, built 15 cars. came back
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the third week, January 22nd, built 23 cars and then like you said, they just essentially have dropped off as
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production started booming with all these Stingrays and Z06's coming off the line. We're still waiting for a little bit more insight into that. Of course,
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we know that the last allocation round there were no allocations, although we've heard of a dealer that had one
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picked up by surprise. Occasionally, they'll do that to fill in a hole somewhere. But that's where we are right now for 2024.
5:18
Okay, that sounds good. Keith, you know, we had a record. 222 Corvettes were built on Tuesday, January 23rd, which
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was a record then, wasn't it? Well, here's what we got. Corvette Assembly Plant built 222 cars on January
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23rd and they did that because they were able to move to overtime. The previous record that we had was, we believe it
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was 225, and that was done in September just after the 2024s had started. It was
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all stingrays, too, by the way. They did that. Okay. They are running overtime right now. We reached out to our media contact at the
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assembly plant that says they're running extra overtime for an undetermined amount of days and that we even heard that there was a Saturday that was going
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to be picked up the last two weeks of January. A substantial uptick in daily quantities. They've just been cranking
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them out. Regarding the 261 units completed on January 29th, we get our
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numbers always done on a delayed basis. So, it was on that Wednesday that we got Monday's numbers and it showed 261.
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Again, mind-blowing numbers, but some of those numbers came from that Saturday shift. They ran a rare 4-hour shift on
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Saturday, two Saturdays ago. They actually built 232 cars on that Monday, but then they did come back on that
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following Tuesday, built 242 Corvettes. Again, 521 cars completed over the
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course of 3 days or four and a half shifts. It's an amazing amount of cars that are coming off the line. I know some people are freaking out about, oh,
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there goes the appreciation and all this, but this was always the plan from the beginning. We like to say that a lot
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of it's part of GM's worldwide domination tour where a lot of these cars will end up being exported. We've
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heard of dealers that now have reached the end of any list that they've had. So, they're ordering dealer stock cars
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right now, which again is a good thing. It'd be nice to walk into a dealership and see four or five Corvettes available
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immediately to buy right off the lot. Yeah, we're headed there. As far as the Z06 goes, that car is still way in demand.
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And then the people that are waiting on their E-Rays, we know that there no E-rays been delivered yet. Not even Mr. Hendrick has his brand new black.
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Okay. You know, and I was going to say, we did 222 Corvettes on the 23rd of January. Then we just broke that record
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and did 261 on January 29th. Like you said, there's something in the water. Yeah.
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We don't know if they're speeding up the line at all. I I doubt that's the case. I think they're just working a lot more hours. And the good news is that it
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seems like they've got the parts in the production. We talked about the last constraint report. There was nothing on
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Z06 constraints other than an LPO item, which is the cross brace carbon fiber add-on. All is good news on that front.
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again. If they can just keep up this pace for a little bit, we'll see some really good cars coming out. Yeah, that's awesome. And also at the
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National Corvette Museum, we've got a new director of collections and exhibits named Robert Maxtimer.
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Yeah, he's director of collections and exhibits. He comes from Bowling Green from the San Diego History Center and he
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actually put in nearly a decade at Walt Disney Company. He's going to be in charge of NCM's collections of historically significant Corvettes and
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more than 50,000 Corvette artifacts. and then he works with the team and they'll develop any new exhibits for the NCM in
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the coming years. Brings a wealth of experience and moving from San Diego to central Kentucky. Great organization
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he's coming to. Looking forward to meeting him at the bash this spring. Absolutely right. Well, buddy, it's time for our first break. When we come back,
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I'm your host Steve Garrett. With me is Keith Cornet from corvette blogger.com. Every other week we keep you current and
11:00
uptodate on what's happening in the world of Corvette. In segment number two, we always cover Corvette racing and
11:06
Corvette rumors. Keith, let's start with racing first. 2024 marks a new era for Corvette racing and we started at
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Daytona with the Rolex 24 Challenge. How did everything turn out for Corvette racing?
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You know, it was a big buildup, but it was a weekend of mixed results for the four new Z06 GT3RS. They all obviously
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made their racing debuts at the Rolex 24. You know, on the positive side, there was some really good stuff that was happening. The number three in the
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four Corvettes. They led a combined 188 laps of the 773 run in GTD Pro during
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the race. Anytime you can significantly run that many laps in front is a good thing. It seemed like sometimes the pace
11:42
wasn't good during the practices and then all of a sudden it would be really good. So, there is still a lot of issues
11:47
in terms of really sorting out these cars and figuring out where we are. The good news, both the cars finished the
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24-hour race, but some of the not good things, we had the two customer cars raced by AWA Racing. They had
11:58
significant issues throughout the race. So, one of the cars wasn't even able to start the race. Wow.
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With the rest of the grid, it was having some issues there. They had to take it back behind the wall and ended up starting from pit lane. Both of those
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cars would end up retiring early from the race. And then we also had our issues with the ProClass cars during the
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race. Number three car had a cracked oil tank while the number four car had to replace a power steering pump inside the
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final 6 hours. That really caused us to drop down in the standings. I think we dropped down five or six laps before the
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end there. We ended up finishing fifth out of 13 cars in the class while the number four car finished in eighth
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place. And it was the number 62 Ferrari that would win the class. There were some growing pains. That's what Pratt
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Miller Motorsports writes it off. And it was painful to watch the Corvettes quite not living up to the expectations. You
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know, we've been building this car up for about a year and a half now. But on the positive side, that's what racing
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does. Racing makes the cars better. You know, a lot of these production parts in the cars are like 80% production. So,
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they might not be up to spec for grueling 24 hours of racing that we see at Rolex. So, maybe the benefit of this
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is that some of these parts are fixed for racing, but they benefit the production car. So, we'll just have to
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see how that all sorts out. We do know that the next race for the Z06 GT3RS are in Cutter for the opening of the FIA
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World Endurance Championship. That's on Saturday, March 2nd. TF Sport will have two Z06 racers there and they're going
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to race for the full season. And then in IMSA, we'll see Corvettes racing again for the Mobile One, 12 hours of Sebring
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on Saturday, March 16th. And of course, Corvette Racing and AWA will both be there with their four Corvettes.
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Well, I'm looking forward to that. I mean, it's the first race. You do have growing pains. It's the first time out of the box. It'll get better, that's for
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sure. Yeah, there's a lot going on. Of course, Sebring, they spent a lot of time practicing there, so maybe they've got
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the car a little bit dialed in better for that track. Of course, that track is fairly unique because it features a lot of the old runways from the bombers that
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were there in World War II, right? Very bumpy. So, if anything's going to break, it's going to break at CER,
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that's for sure. They've really worked out some of that stuff and like I said, maybe do some more real world testing as
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opposed to some of the simulator stuff and get that stuff to break in and practice so it doesn't break during the race. Right. You know, one of the things I
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loved about the GT3R, we got a behindthescenes look at the build process of these cars. That video is
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really cool. Yeah. And leading up to the race, there was all kinds of information that was coming out. We know about these cars, but we really don't know about these
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cars, you know. And like I said, kind of the shocking points was they said that 80% of the car uses production parts.
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That's quite a bit. And then the other content is building the car to the GT3 specifications and all the safety
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equipment and all that stuff. The car actually starts out as a frame on the line at Bowling Green and then the chassis taken up to Pratt Miller's
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facility in Michigan where it all comes together. And they said it takes about 16 weeks from start to finish to fully
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assemble a complete Z06 GT3R Corvette. When designing and racing the new car, they did a ton of simulations to set
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their targets. And they said that when they got out that first time, there was really really close to a lot of those targets they had set. The simulation
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does do a good job in doing that, but like we said, you need to get out there, really race these cars and get them to
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do their thing so we know exactly what will break and what needs to be structurally fixed and all the other stuff that goes along with it. But
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really fascinating stuff how closely related the GT3R is to the Z06.
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Definitely in the rumor section, Keith, this was really interesting. You know, there are some new 2025 CT5V Blackwing
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colors and that's Cadillac. We're wondering, are any of those colors coming to Corvette? One of the things we
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always look at and especially around this time of year is we'll start to get some hints and some ideas about what colors might be going away for 2024 and
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what's going to be new in 2025. And with the expanded paint lineup now at Bowling Green, we've seen between two and three
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colors change every year so far. With Cadillac coming out with three colors, we don't say all all three of those will move over to Corvette, but there might
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be one of them, right? So, we actually found the colors. We put them up there on the site. We did a poll and we asked
15:46
readers if they like the new colors, what they like. So, the three colors are one of them's called drift metallic, and
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it's like a sky blue color. They say it reminds them of the smoke that comes when you do a burnout on your tires,
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like kind of like that light blue smoke. Okay, it's a very pretty color. The second color is this multi-dimensional typhoon.
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It's a dark green metallic. It's really kind of bonkers how much travel it has as you see it in different views. It's a
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really pretty color, but because we already have the cacti, I'm not really feeling that one's going to make it over the Corvette. Then the third one is this
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deep space metallic. That's what it's called. Deep space metallic. And it's a dark blue metallic. Kind of reminds us
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of night race blue, but I think it's got a little bit more blue in it. Not so much black as like the night race seem
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to have. Okay. So, we ran a poll on this and overwhelmingly nearly 70% of voters
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said they like the deep space metallic dark blue. The typhoon, the green color came in second with 23% of the vote and
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then the sky blue came in third at 9%. Not bad. We'd still like to see some additional colors there. I know people
16:45
are still clamoring. They want to see a real Corvette racing yellow as opposed to the Accelerate yellow. We have
16:51
caffeine. They only sold 500 and some cars last year in caffeine. We expect that color to be different. And then one
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of the colors that's been a mainstay now, a ceramic matrix gray. That's been on cars since 2018. We think that
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someone on the Corvette team absolutely loves that color. Haron, we don't know
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if it's going to stick around another year. It does decent numbers every year. Yeah. Now the fun season where we start
17:14
to speculate what we have. So with these colors we don't know if it's going to happen or not and there's always that dark horse that comes out of nowhere.
17:20
It's like wow, you know, really surprises people. Yeah. Hopefully we'll have all that in place by the time we're at the bash. Last year
17:25
we were able to actually see the new colors on the cars at the bash. We'd like to do that again this year if possible. I'd like that. That would be a lot of
17:31
fun. Well buddy, let's take our final break. When we come back, it's the lighter side of Corvette on deck here on
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And now back to Corvette Today with your host and my husband, Steve Garrett.
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Thanks once again for listening and watching Corvette Today, the show that talks about everything Corvette.
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Corvette Today is brought to you by Wheelcraft. You want your Corvette looking its best? We'll 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. So, visit wheelcraft.com or
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call them 8336394231. I'm your host Steve Garrett. With me is
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Keith Cornet from corvette blogger.com. We keep you current and uptodate on what's happening with America's sports
20:45
car every other week. In this final segment, we always talk about the lighter side of Corvette. Keith, this is
20:51
the age-old conversation and discussion. Is Corvette a supercar or not?
20:56
Well, I was gonna joke and say yes. Next question. Let me get your opinion on this thing. Do you think the Corvette is
21:01
a supercar? Absolutely. Yeah, I think a lot of Corvette people think like that. Our friend Lyall from the CNF Corvettes YouTube channel asked
21:08
this question and then dived into the subject. We ran the video and actually got some surprising results there. While
21:14
not every Corvette could be considered a supercar, I think the short answer is yes. Corvette has definitely had
21:19
supercar models in its lineup. Both previously you can go back to C4 ZR1 that was a Lotus designed engine built
21:25
by Mercury Marine cost double the price of a regular Corvette. Of course the C7 ZR1 we've seen the prices explode with
21:32
that car at 755 horsepower. The last harrah of the front engine rear wheel drive Corvettes. And then currently we
21:39
have the C8 Z06 with that bespoke LT6 V8 and that sound. So, I'd say that the
21:45
future of C8s like the ZR1 and Zoro will most also likely fall into that supercar category as well. But what's interesting
21:50
is after we have this whole conversation, car and driver magazine comes out and on the cover it shows a
21:55
Corvette Z06 and it says America's $100,000 hypercar, right? So, it's not just a supercar, Steve,
22:02
it's a hypercar. Well, I don't know if it's a hyper car, Keith, but when you consider that the Corvette is under
22:07
$100,000, anything that's comparable to that in Ferrari is going to be $235 $250,000
22:15
or in a McLaren, it's still going to be $335,000 to match the spec of a C8 Corvette.
22:21
Yeah, I think you got to really kind of look at the models and I don't want to call the Stingray the budget model of the lineup, but it's the starter of
22:27
that. Would you call a Porsche Boxster supercar? Not really. But there are other Porsches that you would call. So I
22:34
think you really look more at the models and then what they offer as opposed to just overall saying all Corvettes are
22:39
supercars. You look back in the history and some of them were just dogs. Some of them didn't do all that well. You know, a lot of it's just based on the fact
22:45
that we're a mass-production car and these others usually aren't mass-production. Correct. There's a lot to said about that.
22:51
Well, and we'll get into the hypercar category, I think, when we see the ZR1 and the Zora. That will probably make us
22:57
into that hypercar category. It's something to look forward to. Absolutely right, buddy. We also had a
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couple C2s that really brought some big money at auctions. First, a 67 Restood
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sold to Barer Jackson for $1.1 million. This was again just an amazing sale. I
23:14
was watching this when it came on the block. The car was built by Jeff Hayes, who's just become the master builder of
23:19
Corvette mods over the years. His creations just keep breaking records. You know, a few years ago, we'd see his cars go across Barrett Jackson. They'd
23:26
sell for $250, $300,000, $350,000. 2021 and 22 all that jumped like 700,000. He
23:32
had a silver blue 67 Corvette with a cream interior that sold for 715,000 in
23:38
2022. And then last year he did this dirty martini green 67 that had this
23:43
buttercream interior. Again, just all this stuff's over the top. That sold for a record $777,000.
23:49
His latest creation was a 67 convertible. It was called champagne over linen. It had to be one of the most
23:56
beautiful restood interiors we've ever seen. Usually you see like a carbon fiber weave that's dark and black. He
24:01
did this carbon fiber all in this linen color, so it was all light. Of course, you had an LS3, you had an Art Morrison
24:06
chassis. There's two guys that really wanted this car. Otherwise, it probably would have sold for around $700,000, but
24:12
two guys wanted it. It hammered for a million and then with commission, it ended up being $1.1 million. It is the
24:18
highest pric custom 1967 Corvette I think we've ever seen. That's amazing. And then we had a 63
24:24
split window. So, this one was a Z06. It was also a big tank and it sold at Mikum
24:30
CMI for $935,000. Yeah. So, what's cool about this is, you
24:35
know, the first one we're talking about is a customized Corvette. Looked nothing like the car coming off the St. Louis line, but then we had the 63 Z06 split
24:43
window that was highly original. This was one of the cars that was offered by consigner Tom Hill that we met during
24:49
our Corvette day at Mikum. Right. What again really sets this car apart is the M03 big tank option. It's a 36.5
24:57
gallalon gas tank. Chevy only built 199 Z06s in 1963. The big tank was also
25:02
supposed to be part of that option, but it ended up being its own option separate. So, it ended up doing a lot
25:07
less. Only 63 were produced, and this was number 51. The catalog description also goes on to say it was the only
25:13
tuxedo black with red interior with Corvette people, they love that red interior with the N3 options. This was a
25:19
no reserve auction. It would hammer at $850,000 and then with commission 935,000. So, it was the number two
25:26
Corvette seller at Mikum's Cassini auction. A beautiful car and we know that we'll see that car again probably
25:31
in the future sometime. Absolutely. Yeah. And this was interesting as well. The gross margin
25:36
for a C8 Corvette, a Z06 at Barrett Jackson, the gross margin was $52,
25:42
almost $600. Yeah. So, people have really been interested in where Z06 prices are headed. You see some results, you say,
25:49
"Ah, they're coming down." And you see some results and you say, "Oh, look, they're still going up." It's really just a snapshot. It's not really a trend
25:55
that we're seeing, but a total of seven Corvette Z06s were offered during Bear Jackson and all were sold at no reserve.
26:01
One of those cars, the top selling car was the Chipmidosis Foundation Z06, right? So, it was a
26:06
charity car. Because it was a charity car, we look at it, but we throw it out. We don't count it with the others. So,
26:12
Barrett Jackson, when they do their catalog listings, they give us the VIN for each of the cars. So, we're able to look up the window stickers and see what
26:18
the original MSRP was. Of course, we don't know if the buyers paid commissions. We do know that Barrett
26:23
Jackson puts a commission on their sales price. So, it's not exactly what the buyer bought a car for and sold it for
26:29
and made that amount of money, but it's a good guide for us. We did see that the average, like you said, 52,597.
26:36
The smallest was 32,000 and the largest was 111,000. So, this is the head
26:41
scratcher, as Steve, our Detroit bureau, likes to say, the face palm face palm of the auction.
26:46
Yep. Was a 23 Corvette Z06. It was a 1LZ car. Its original MSRP was $114,000.
26:55
Okay. And it sold for $225,000 with commission. Oh my gosh,
27:00
Steve. There were Z07s with full carbon fiber arrow that sold less than this car. We don't know why. It's Elcart Lake
27:06
Blue. It had a couple of options on it. Had competition seats, seat belt color, things like that. Nothing really major.
27:13
Didn't even have front lift or anything like that. And sold for $225,000. So that's your head scratcher for the
27:19
auction. That price did inflate that 52,000 somewhat, but every car that was sold at Barrett Jackson sold for at
27:26
least $32,000 or more than the MSRP. That's amazing. I would say things are still pretty
27:31
good, especially when you go to a high-end auction like Barrett Jackson. Definitely. Also, buddy, Road and Track had their 2024 performance car of the
27:38
year, and the -ray was part of that group of cars. Did the -ay do pretty good in that thing?
27:43
You know, we had high hopes for it. Of course, the Z06 had swept the awards the year previously, and the E-Ray was already off to a good start for 2024,
27:51
but the competition in this road and track performance car of the year, it was literally stacked against the -ay.
27:57
They did two classes. They used $100,000 as your price point. They did a group of cars under $100,000 and then a group of
28:04
cars above $100,000. Of course, the -ray starts at 104 $106,000.
28:10
So yeah, competing against Porsches, a couple Italian exotics, and there was even this insane one-seater car. I think
28:16
it was a car. It was called the Back Bano. It was a $58,000 Ferrari V6 that
28:21
would win the award. I have this theory that a lot of Corvette owners would be Ferrari owners if they could just afford
28:27
it. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. I I can't really blame the judges for picking a $500,000 Ferrari over $100,000
28:33
Corvette when they basically do the same thing, but you just have some of that magic coming from the Ferrari. So, I
28:39
can't blame him. Well, buddy, let's put it this way. If you have the $500,000 Ferrari, a half a
28:44
million dollar Ferrari, it better win the performance car of the year. You know, that's a good point. I did not
28:50
think about that. Yeah, absolutely. Well, buddy, thanks for being back on Corvette Today. Coming up next week, it's going to be episode
28:57
number 200 of the weekly episodes for Corvette Today. Well, that's a great milestone, Steve. I know I'll be tuning in to listen to
29:03
that, and hopefully you guys will, too. Thanks again for listening and watching Corvette Today. And be sure to tell your
29:08
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