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CORVETTE TODAY #217 - Corvette News & Headlines, Early June 2024
It's News & Headlines time this week with your CORVETTE TODAY host, Steve Garrett and Keith Cornett from CorvetteBlogger.com. CORVETTE TODAY remains one of the best ways to stay current and up-to-date on what's happening in the world of Corvette.
Here are a few of the topics that Steve and Keith cover on this week's show....
1. Bowling Green Assembly Plant sets a new record with E-Ray production
2. The E-Ray arrives in Japan
3. Chevrolet releases another teaser about the upcoming ZR1
4. The National Corvette Museum has the Corvette Racing #3 C8/R on display
Stay on the cutting edge of America's Sports Car every other week with the CORVETTE TODAY News & Headlines show!
Listen to the podcast, watch the YouTube video, join the Facebook group, sign up for weekly email notifications, follow the show on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, X (Twitter) and Threads. Plus shop in the CORVETTE TODAY Merchandise Store at:
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0:00
[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 at the number one radio station in Kansas
0:20
City for over 45 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? Visit
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wheelcraft.com and learn about their advanced PVD chrome finishing. They can refinish your wheels or offer a wheel
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And a shout out to Canadian Corvette Forum and Corvette Forum, welcoming Corvette enthusiasts from around the
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world. All right, my friend, it's time to bring you the latest Corvette news and headlines with my pal Keith Cornet
3:51
from corvette blogger.com. Keith is here every other week and together we keep you current and uptodate on what's
3:57
happening with America's sports car. Keith, welcome back to the show. How's everything going, buddy? Glad to be
4:02
back, Steve. You know, we're in the throws of summer right now. Not quite the dog days yet, but everybody's pretty excited. We got shows coming up. I know
4:08
you've got a big show last weekend. Just really excited to get out there and do stuff. Yep. Things are pretty exciting right now.
4:13
Summer officially starts on June 20th, but it already feels like summer for sure. Oh, yeah. Especially here in Florida.
4:20
Absolutely. Well, buddy, let's start off as we always do. Let's get a production update on the Bowling Green assembly
4:25
plant. Thanks, Steve. You know, production's getting interesting. We're heading into kind of the last couple months of this
4:30
model year. We'll have a little bit more on that later. One of the things that we did was we did a snapshot of what we saw in May. And during May, we had 4,087
4:39
Corvettes completed during the month. I mean, just again, a huge number. 4,000 cars in one month. Yeah.
4:44
The Stingray saw production of 2,785 units. Chevy also produced 1,187 Z06s
4:52
and a grand total of 115 - last week. We're looking at a total of 24,120
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Stingrays produced plus 7,220 Z06s and 419 E-rays.
5:05
Wow. So, you add up all those numbers together, we're looking at 31,759
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Corvettes for the 2024 model year. The plant will be producing cars into September, I'm thinking that we're going
5:16
to end up seeing probably 40,000 Corvettes or more produced for 2024 when it's all said and done. That's great.
5:21
Huge number. Yeah. You know, we've always looked at kind of like that July to July as the model year, but it does
5:26
seem like it shifted into September. We started in September last year. We've seen September previously and
5:32
historically. So, maybe this is kind of the new normal, you know, going September to September. I'm actually quite all right with that.
5:37
Yeah, we do have a new date for starting 2025 production then, don't we? Exactly. So, a memo was sent out to
5:43
Chevrolet dealers by General Motors last week, and it gave us some additional details on the end of the 24s as well as
5:48
the starting of the 25. So, in the memo, General Motors is stating that the start of regular production for the 2025
5:54
Corvette model year will now happen Monday, September 9th. The first allocations for 2025 model year will
6:00
come out during the July cycle 1 ordering. And we believe that's going to fall on July 11th. The Thursday before
6:05
that, it's the 4th of July weekend. So, we're pretty confident that dealers will get their first allocations July 11th.
6:10
And then we'll probably see ordering open up on July 18th. By the time you've listened to this podcast, the 2025
6:16
Corvette order guide is supposed to have been released. Check out Corvette Blogger for all the new updates and anything that hasn't yet been addressed
6:22
by the team. We go through that with a fine tooth comb and that's actually one of my funnest things to do each year. It's like Christmas. You unwrap it. We
6:28
know a lot of what's all there. You tend to find some things or something interesting comes up. So, we're looking forward to that. As for the 2024s, they
6:35
will most likely end Friday, September 6th. It looks like there's just going to be one more order cycle happening. That's coming this Thursday. dealers
6:42
received their final allocations last week and Chevy even shared a list of projected constraints that include any
6:47
of the seven discontinued colors. We're not sure how that's going to handle some of these colors, you know, hypersonic
6:52
gray. We had some buildout dates that showed like the last time the order that would be the eth or maybe it's the last
6:57
time it would be built is the 8th of August. Like I said, there's some stuff that's up in the air for us. We just don't have the ability to pull back the
7:04
curtain to see what GM's going to do there. But as for the other constraints, Stingray, we still have one LT limited
7:09
to 20%. Z-51s limited to 55% and then the Q9i 20 spoke glass black wheels are
7:16
quote TBD to be determined. Unfortunately, the news for Z06 suddenly turned bad. On the last constraint
7:22
report, we had the carbon fiber arrow was now on constraint and it was zero. There's nothing available. Wow.
7:28
And we're seeing now that Z07 is 0% for the rest of the 2024s.
7:33
And then the S SOA Black Spider wheels are to be terminated. Now Z07, we've been seeing that about 19% of buyers
7:40
have been ordering the Z07 package. It's not quite as huge as what it was last year when we still had all their first
7:46
people in that always tend to spec heavy their cars, right? But they told us that at the bash that
7:51
oh, we got through most of our issues with carbon fiber and availabilities, but all that seems to be gone right now.
7:57
Wow. Not sure why that is. Hopefully they'll get their ducks in a row so that when they do start the 2025s, you know,
8:02
everything will kind of be back to normal again. That's right. And adding to that, Amplify Orange and Accelerate Yellow are
8:08
already not available anymore. Yeah. And this is what we were talking about how General Motors will kind of put out something and then the very next
8:14
day or the next week it all changes. They put out these dates of Accelerate Yellow and Amplify Orange. I think
8:20
Amplify Orange was supposed to go away at the end of June and here it is gone now. It was gone at the end of May. We
8:26
still have silver flare, cacti, carbon flash, ceramic matrix gray, and hypersonic gray as still quote
8:32
available. But I'm thinking that when ordering does happen on Thursday that we see none of those colors are going to be
8:37
available. It's just going to be the colors that are returning back for 2025 or give me the order ones. Uh there
8:43
might be a few here and there. Maybe some dealers will get counts like you can order this many, you can order that many, but it's not going to be a free
8:49
flow order I think on any of those colors. So again, very fluid situation. Just kind of stick with us and we'll get
8:55
through it together. Steve, absolutely right buddy. Also, going back to production, Keith, we saw the Bowling Green assembly plant had a record day
9:01
for production for -ace. Actually, a record week. Yeah, actually, I'm happy to say that they've actually surpassed that record
9:08
already. So, on May 22nd, the Corvette assembly plant built 16-rays during the two shifts. That's the highest daily
9:14
counts they've done with the E-Rays. They've only done that twice now. That same week, they built 35 - also a weekly
9:20
record for production for the new car. And then last week, during one of the days, they built 18- Rays. So, the new
9:25
record is 18 for the day. Nice. We also learned in the last order cycle in May was specifically for E-rays with
9:31
some dealers getting multiple allocations for the performance hybrid sports car. So, it looks like they're filling in gaps. They're giving dealers
9:37
orders. You know, we now know that the end date is going to be September 6 for 2024. So, this should get them through
9:43
the summer months until we start ordering July, you know, the 2025 models. Pretty interesting stuff there.
9:48
We're keeping an eye on eBay production. I'm still thinking that we'll end up the model year probably around a thousand or
9:53
so cars produced. They've got 600 in house as of April 1st and then whatever they're adding now with these other
9:59
allocation rounds will just add to that number. So I'm thinking at least a good solid thousand and maybe we could see
10:04
additional ramp up even more, but that's what we're sticking with so far. A thousand is a good number. Not bad at all, buddy.
10:10
Yeah. Speaking of -ay, we saw that the -ray is finally arrived in Japan. Yeah. We like to call this the C8
10:16
Corvette world domination tour. Right. Each time we see these cars going to new markets, it just is exciting for us. I'm
10:22
sure it's exciting for people there. So, Chevrolet Japan officials, they revealed the right-hand drive during their
10:28
Corvette fan days last weekend at the Fuji International Speedway. We haven't seen any pricing yet or build info.
10:34
Chevy has previously offered the limited edition launch editions that kind of helped standardize the car for the new
10:39
market and they could just build a batch all the same and then send them over. In 2023, Chevy exported 567 Stingrays and
10:46
only eight Z06s. Now, those numbers should continue to grow as some people now can custom order their Stingrays and
10:52
Z06s. And then we'll have the E-Rays. Again, nice to see five or six hundred cars. That's much more than what they
10:57
were doing back in the day when they only had the lefthand drive configurations. Now that they're driving on the righthand side of the roads in a
11:03
Corvette that was built that way, adoption has been much higher. Oh, I'm sure it has. And also, Keith, through May 31st, we saw the top 10
11:10
dealers. Do we have any change from the previous time? Yeah, a little bit. The first half is all the same. We're halfway through the
11:15
year. McMullen Corvette has nearly a 300 car lead. They have 791 deliveries
11:21
versus Sioka Corvette of Atlantic City. and they have 507 deliveries. So nearly 300 there. The top five is the same.
11:27
Round it up. Mike Ferman in three. Bomb day in Miami is fourth. And then less Stanford in Dearborn, Michigan is fifth.
11:33
But the real action on this list is kind of happening at the bottom four dealers. And there's two dealers specifically in Texas that are moving up the list. Since
11:40
our last update at the end of first quarter, Classic Chevrolet and Grapevine has Leaprogged into seventh place,
11:46
followed by Rick Ki and Cogland Chevrolet in Ohio. Stone Brier is ninth. They're also in Texas. And then bombed
11:52
in West Kendall is 10th. They're out of Miami. A little bit of movement down there in that bottom part of the list.
11:57
And I think now that as dealers are actually having to work and sell these Stingrays as opposed to just working off their customer list, right,
12:03
we might still see some changes there. Our friend Rick, he's got a little bit of a platform with his YouTube. He's now focusing on cars that are coming into
12:10
his dealership and has them in stock. I think we're going to see other dealers do that, showing off their MSRP
12:15
discounts and things like that. That'd be cool. All right, buddy. That sounds good. Let's take our first break.
12:20
When we come back, Corvette racing and Corvette rumors are on deck next here on Corvette Today. We all know that wheels
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And now back to Corvette Today with your host and my husband, Steve Garrett.
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Hey, thanks for checking out Corvette Today on podcast and YouTube. It's the only current podcast dedicated to
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I'm your host Steve Garrett. With me is my buddy Keith Cornet from corvette blogger.com. Every other week, we keep
16:24
you current and up to date on what's going on in the world of Corvette. In segment number two, we always go into
16:30
Corvette racing and Corvette rumors. Keith, let's start with Corvette racing. And how did they do at Detroit? You
16:36
know, this was supposed to be a really sweet homecoming for the Corvette racing team. They haven't raced in their hometown since 2019, but Lady Luck
16:42
raised her hand again and it didn't quite go as planned. The number three Corvette, which won the poll, ran exactly one lap before having to come
16:49
into the pits with an alternator issue. So frustrating to see that. The number four Corvette was second and they were
16:55
just kicking butt through the first half of the race. They got in a little situation. Mickey Catsburg does take the blame for it. He says that he break a
17:02
little bit early, went a little bit wide and that allowed the Lexus to kind of dive bomb him in one of the corners.
17:07
Unfortunately, when Nick moved back over, they made contact, it spun the number four Corvette basically out of
17:12
contention for the race. Nikki did take the blame for that. Nexus did do a risky move and the damage they sustained kept
17:19
them from winning the race as well. So, not all that good. You know, this course is very tough and it's even tighter than
17:24
Long Beach, which is typically one of the gunfights, the knife fights on the calendar every year. Very hard to pass.
17:30
Only one real long straightaway on the race. There's one corner that was a full 180 turn. A hard race there. Plenty of
17:36
people showed up to watch it. We enjoyed watching social media and seeing all the Corvette clubs and dealerships and the
17:42
fan clubs out there all participating in it. Our next race for IMSA Corvette Racing Team is coming up June 20 through
17:48
the 23rd with the six hours of the Glenn at Watkins Glenn in New York. Cool. And we also need to do a preview of Corvette
17:54
racing at Lama this year. It's coming up too. It's coming up this weekend, Steve. Believe it or not. Wow.
17:59
The next race TF Sport in the World Endurance Championship is the 24 hours lemons. Tell you the truth, Steve, I'm a
18:05
little bit nervous about this one. TF Sport is a mixed team. Some drivers have experienced that. The number 81 Corvette
18:11
has three drivers with some Lemons experience. The number 82 Corvette, they're all rookies. We've also had some
18:16
reliability issues that TS Sport has experienced at the beginning of the wet season. And then the thing is that
18:21
there's 23 cars in the class, which is a huge change from the entry list we've seen previously where there'd be seven
18:27
of us or 10 of us or maybe even 12 of us, right? We're talking 23 cars. The GT3 class is
18:33
unified now in the World Endurance Championship. There's no pro class or amateur class. It's just one class. So,
18:38
it's really going to be an interesting race for sure. Again, anything can happen. TF Sport, I believe, has won Le
18:44
Man several times. I believe their last time they won it was in an Aston Martin. So, they've got the experience. Corvette
18:49
Racing is going to be there as a technical partner with them. They've got the best in the business helping them out. We just need a little bit of luck
18:56
and some really reliable cars to get us over that finish line. Yeah, that's right, Keith. And speaking of reliability, we're making some
19:02
strides though with this GT3R on the reliability side, aren't we? Again, Steve, you know, you write an
19:07
article and then the very next race, you're proved wrong. Again, that's what we saw with the number three Corvette at
19:12
Detroit, you know, with an alternator problem. you think they'd have the alternator problems worked out by now. But in fact, looking back at some of
19:18
these issues with the different cars in the different series, it does appear to be mostly electrical issues that are
19:23
plaguing the car. So, really need to get that knocked down. Now, the exciting thing though is that for a team like
19:29
DXDT Racing that races in the GT America series, they came out of the box right
19:34
away and won their very first two races. They benefited from the other teams going through some growing pains early
19:39
on in the series. they were able to take any changes, get them updated on the car, and then of course you had Tommy
19:44
Milner, who's probably the most experienced driver in the GT3 car, right? Be able to get the win for them there.
19:50
So, I think we are making strides. It's just so frustrating to see a number three car with an alternator problem on
19:56
the first lap at Detroit was a gut punch. Right. Absolutely. Keith, let's switch over to rumors. We had a new ZR1 teaser
20:03
that came out with some Easter eggs and then we had another one with the sound of the twin turbo engine. Yeah. You know, it's all smoke and
20:09
mirror, Steve. Well, it's mostly mostly smoke. Deb teaser has that silhouette of the car with all the smoke in the
20:15
background. The smoke kind of moves around and reveals the logo, reveals the cross flags. But this one, they gave us
20:21
something different. You know, the very first reveal, they always said unthinkable is coming. And now with this teaser, they changed it to unthinkable
20:28
speed is coming. And then in the background, we got to hear the engine of the ZR1 kind of winding up and and doing
20:34
its thing. So, an interesting teaser. But after a day to digest this, our friend Mike at Brick Speed found an
20:39
Easter egg in the video. You know, if you look at these are in the 10-second mark, you literally see the LT6 rocket
20:45
that's on all the six motors kind of as a reference to it being the Gemini project. You see that rocket in there?
20:51
It's blasting off and then on each side of it, you see what looks to be represented as as two turbos. Pretty
20:57
interesting. Chevy said in the YouTube description that quote, "If you blink, you'll miss it." And it's literally only
21:02
on the screen for just a couple seconds, but it sure looks like that LT6 rocket has two turbos on it. You know, after
21:08
thinking about this, I said sometimes we have a habit to overthink everything in terms of the engineering and what Corvette might be up to, the engineers.
21:15
But if we keep it simple, the rocket is clearly a reference to the LT6. And the unthinkable is that Chevy is
21:20
turbocharging the Corvette's engine for the first time in it 71-year history, right? I think if you look at those two things and keep it simple, that's what
21:26
we're looking at. There's other people saying, "No, no, no. This engine's going to be a supercharged turbo engine, which
21:31
I don't know how you do that. No, I don't either. Are you turbocharging the supercharger? Are you supercharging the turbochargers?
21:38
Exactly. I got another friend saying that. Oh, no. See those twin streams of smoke coming out? That means it's going to
21:44
have meth injection. I'm like, oo, no, that's not going to happen. I don't see that happening either for a
21:50
standard production car. Yeah, but I think again keeping it simple LT6 motor. It's going to have the flat plane
21:56
crank in it and the two twin turbochargers. It's going to make about 850 horsepower, so maybe even a little
22:01
bit more. Some rumors are closer to 9, but I'm going to stick with the 850 right now. I think 850 is probably pretty right and
22:08
pretty reasonable. Also, we still saw ZR1 prototypes filmed out in traffic, didn't we?
22:13
Man, it's so exciting. You get teasers, you get engine noise, and then you see one out in public. So, this was a
22:18
Corvette ZR1 convertible prototype in Metro Detroit. As the car takes off, it speeds away and we even hear some
22:24
exhaust burble in the ride. There's a guy following him. He's got a Demon 170. He's following him along in traffic. He
22:30
does say that some of those burbles might be from the Demon, not from the Corvette, but it's a really good video.
22:36
It's actually one of these videos I say drop whatever you're doing and go find it right now to watch because it really
22:41
does give us multiple vantage points of the car. There's some differences on this compared to what we've seen some of
22:46
the spy shots. Really interesting stuff going on there. We don't know everything that's happening with these cars. Could
22:52
that be a ZR1? Maybe it's something else. Maybe it's a Ram Sport. Yeah, you never know.
22:57
Maybe it's a Zora. We'll get to the Zoras next, but there's just no telling what Chevy's doing underneath those engine compartments and things like
23:04
that. I think this is going to be a standard ZR1 convertible that's running around, but you got to go see the video.
23:09
Yeah, absolutely right. And speaking of Zora, buddy, I thought this was the biggest rumor in the last two weeks. We
23:14
saw that GM is now benchmarking the Ferrari SF90 Stradali. Now, are they benchmarking that against Zora? You
23:21
know, we talked about GM benchmarking previously cuz one of the most interesting aspects for me at least is to see what Corvette engineers are
23:27
testing their new prototypes in public against. So, when they were testing the Z06es, they had a Stingray with them. As they're testing the ZR1, sometimes
23:33
they'll have a Z06 with them. The benchmark car kind of gives us an idea of what they're looking at in the competition. So, previously we've seen
23:39
GM driving a Porsche 911 GT2 RS. We've seen the Ferrari 458, which makes a
23:44
whole lot of sense with the Z06. And of course, the 488. The joke was they were driving the 488. They didn't like the
23:49
sound of it as much as the 458. So, they switch back to that car. And then we even had the engineers
23:55
driving the Acura NSX when they were doing some testing with the pre-productions. I saw that
24:00
because engineers want to compare apples to apples. We kind of can look at the benchmark cars and say, "Well, if the benchmark car is this, then are they
24:07
looking at that on the Corvette?" Right? That's why the Ferrari SF90 is so interesting. It's a V8 powered plug-in
24:13
hybrid, three electric motors, and it makes nearly,000 horsepower combined. And that's essentially what the Corvette
24:18
Zor is, a twin turbo V8 powered supercar with E-Ray E all-wheel drive setup to combine for a,000 horsepower. The
24:25
Corvette prototypes that are with the Ferrari, they're all covered up at a lunch stop in Ohio. And then we got them
24:30
again with some pictures. They're covered up again in Pittsburgh. They've got that huge ZR1 wing on the back of
24:36
them. They could be ZR1's. Maybe just one of the cars in that group of prototypes is Azora and the others are
24:41
just prototype ZR1's. We just don't know. But again, you can't deny the fact that somebody on the Corvette team's
24:47
driving around in a Ferrari SF90. Yeah, that's pretty cool, too, isn't it? That's a good thought to have. You'd have to wonder, oh, I always want to
24:53
drive the Corvette. Well, I'll take the Ferrari. That's good. And Steve, I have a secret
24:58
theory that most Corvette owners would be Ferrari owners if they could afford it. Right. The SF90 has a stealth mode as well.
25:04
While the stealth mode on the -ay is 4 miles, their stealth mode will take them up to 25 km, I believe. Some pretty
25:10
interesting stuff they're doing there. And I don't know if they have a speed limit either on that. So, that should be interesting as well.
25:15
That's cool. If I could be a Ferrari owner, I'd probably take Lamborghini instead.
25:21
Well, that's one way to go. Yeah, absolutely. Well, buddy, let's take our final break. When we come back, it's the lighter side of Corvette on
25:27
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And now back to the only current podcast on Corvettes, Corvette Today with your host, Steve Garrett. Thanks for
27:24
listening and watching Corvette Today, the show that talks about everything Corvette. Corvette Today is brought to
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you by Wheelcraft. You want your Corvette looking its best? We'll dress it up with bright chrome or black chrome
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wheels. Visit wheelcraft.com and learn about their advanced PVD chrome finishing. They can refinish your wheels
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or do a wheel exchange. And you get a 5-year warranty, too. Visit wheelcraft.com today or just give them a
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call 833-639-4231. I'm your host, Steve Garrett. With me is
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my buddy Keith Cornet from Corvette Blogger. If you want a deeper dive into any of the stories that we cover on this
27:59
show, you can always go to corvette blogger.com. In this final segment, we always talk about the lighter side of
28:04
Corvette. First, Keith, you can do a hot lap in a Corvette pace car in the Indy500. That was so cool to see. Yeah,
28:12
you know, we kind of caught this video a day late. It was after the Indianapolis 500 already run. And again, congratulations to Joseph New Garden for
28:18
his win. Did you know that New Garden is a Corvette owner? No, I didn't know that. Yeah, he actually bought an Arctic White
28:24
Stingray. I think he took delivery like in May or June of 2020. So, he's one of the very first Corvette owners. He
28:30
toured the factory in February. So, just before COVID shut down the factory, he did a tour with cameras. That was one of
28:36
the very first videos we saw of the C8s being produced. Again, congratulations Joseph's New Garden, a fellow Corvette owner, for winning the Indie 500. This
28:43
hot lap that we got came from team Chevy, and it shows the Corvette pace car making its way from the pits and
28:48
then it does a full lap around the 2.5 mile oval at Indie. And the other thing, too, is we also got another hot lap in
28:54
an E-Ray pace car. This was at the Detroit Street Circuit. We talked about how tight that course was. Very little
28:59
areas to pass, one really long straightway. I would definitely take a lap in both of those just to see how they're different. They're so different
29:06
from each other. wide open throttle on the banks at Indie, but here at Detroit, you're barely getting out of third gear,
29:11
it looks like. Right. We have the hot laps of the E-Ray at corvette blogger.com. That's really cool. That was a fun thing
29:16
to watch because open lapping at Indie. You're right. It's just wide open throttling. It's just moving. It's
29:21
awesome. Also, Keith, let's talk about Mikum Indianapolis because that's a big show and we have the top 11 Corvette
29:28
sales from Mikum Indie, don't we? Yeah. You know, we've always done the top 11 because what would happen is invariably the last two or three cars in
29:35
the list would always be tied. So we'd always end up going over and sometimes we'd have top 12, but now we just as kind of a internal thing amongst
29:42
ourselves. Steve a lot of times does this for me. Steve Burns, our Detroit bureau guy, he'll come up with these. So the top 11, what is interesting about
29:49
Indianapolis, 335 Corvettes were on the Indie docket. Again, a huge number. I think that's only second to what we see
29:55
in CMI every year. You know, I think there's close to 400 down at CMI this year, right? We did a top 11 and all of
30:01
these were C2s except for one car. Huh. So led by a 1963 fuly split window Z06
30:07
sold for $687,000. The one car that wasn't a C2 was a 2019
30:12
Corvette ZR1. It had the low wig. I believe it was a manual transmission car and it sold for $220,000.
30:18
And then on the flip side, you know, the cheapest Corvette that sold at Indie was a red 1976 Corvette.
30:24
Changed hands for $7,700. Wow. Pretty interesting stuff. You can see the full list of results at corvette
30:29
blogger.com. Ton of cars going through. Some interesting stuff. You know, some things not quite going for prices as we
30:35
thought, but those C2s just seem to be gold right now. Yeah, definitely. And this story is near and dear to my heart because carbon
30:42
fiber door sills are now available for 3LT and 3LZ Corvettes. Yeah, you know, we kind of talked about
30:47
this in the first section. We are seeing some carbon fiber issues creep up on us once again. And we're thinking maybe GM
30:52
has kind of been aware of this for a little bit. Last month, they moved some of the popular visible carbon fiber like the mirror caps. Before you can order
30:59
those on any car, now they're restricting them just to 3LT or 3LZ, meaning that you have to order the top trim group to get that visible carbon
31:06
fiber accessories. Right. These visible carbon fiber door sills, they were just restricted to 3LT and 3LZ
31:12
orders, but you can still order them all a cart at the Chevrolet accessories page at Chevrolet.com. They're selling for
31:17
$21.95 through the catalog, but if you order with the car, they're $19.95. Nice. They're pretty strong price. They got
31:23
the Corvette silhouette on them. You know, they're nice looking. I don't know if they're like, "Oh my god, I got to have them." Of course, I don't have that
31:29
addiction like you do, Steve. Unfortunately, they do look nice. And for the people that want them out there, there you go.
31:36
There you go. Indeed. Also, it's cool to see the National Corvette Museum. We've got a couple stories for you. The C8R
31:43
number three car is now on display at the National Corvette Museum. Yeah, they just made this announcement. Of course, we've got some really top
31:49
guys going through the Corvette Museum's Hall of Fame later this year. Yan Magnus and Oliver Gavin being the drivers. And
31:57
then we also have Richard Prince who's serving as like the Corvette enthusiast. He's getting into the Corvette Hall of Fame. Of course, he's been the official
32:03
photographer since the beginning of Corvette racing. We're betting that the C8R will be there through the
32:08
anniversary show so anybody can see it. This is interesting car. This car won 10 times out of 27 starts and had 13 poles
32:15
and it only raced for two years before it kind of went out of style. That's when IMSA switched over to GT3 and so we
32:21
had to modify the car for GT3. So this was a GTLM car. So for two years it was
32:26
an IMSA and then it served as the final GTLM car in the World Endurance Championship where it was driven by Nick
32:33
Tandy and Tommy Milner back in 2022. Interesting life. Glad to have the car on display at the Corvette Museum. has
32:40
finally found a home it deserves. Hopefully, it'll be a long-term placement as well. I'm not sure how long it's going to be there, but great to see
32:45
it. A great addition to the museum. That would be cool to keep it there for a long time. And also, speaking of the
32:50
museum, the museum is now a Kentucky top tourist destination, too. Bowling Green's just seeing the number
32:56
of visitors rise each year. I think they were up 9% last year. They're up over their CO numbers already. The top
33:02
destination in Warren County, which is where Bowling Green is located, is the National Corvette Museum. It is really
33:07
the Corvette capital of the world. Not only do you have the Corvette Museum, but you got the racetrack across the street. You've got the plant now. We're
33:14
not doing tours currently, but there'll be some tours over the anniversary show, but they'll start the tours up again at some point. And then all the other stuff
33:20
you have Beach Bend, you have Holly's there doing their LS Fest every year. All kinds of stuff going on. And then
33:26
some local attractions. Lost River Cave. I've never done that. I'd still want to do that at some point. Pretty cool to
33:31
see that. I love Bowling Green. It's a fun town to go. So, I'm actually to the point now where I can go to Bowling Green and usually get around town
33:36
without having to use my GPS and address finders. Love Bowling Green. Glad to see the success they're having. And again,
33:42
without Bowling Green, there'd be no Corvette Museum there at the plant. Absolutely right. Well, buddy, thanks for being back on Corvette today. I will
33:49
see you in two weeks. Sounds great, Steve. We see you out there. Throw up those hands. Keep waving. Wave to all your Corvette friends and family. And we will catch
33:55
you next time. Thanks again for listening and watching Corvette Today. And be sure to tell your family, friends, and other Corvette
34:01
enthusiasts about the Corvette Today Show. And thanks to our sponsors, Wheelcraft. Want to dress up your
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Thanks for checking out Corvette today on podcast and YouTube. If you'd like to contact Steve with ideas for Corvette
34:59
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