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CORVETTE TODAY #218 - Meet The Man Who Invented The Corvette Head-Up Display, Steve Stringfellow
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Jul 12, 2025
I don't know about you, but I love having a Head-Up Display in my Corvette! But did you know that the HUD's didn't come into existence for Corvette until the C5 era? On this episode of CORVETTE TODAY, you'll meet Steve Stringfellow, the inventor of the Corvette Head-Up Display! Steve joins your CORVETTE TODAY host, Steve Garrett, to talk about the origins of the Head-Up Display and what it took to actually get it into Corvette and the trials and tribulations thereof. It's a fascinating story...get up close and personal with the inventor of the Corvette HUD, Steve Stringfellow!
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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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corvette.com and find out more. Chevrolet together, let's drive. And a shout out to Canadian Corvette Forum and
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Corvette Forum welcoming Corvette enthusiasts from around the world. My guest on Corvette today created and
3:22
invented the head-up display for Corvette. Now, head-up displays have been very popular safety features in
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modern cars, but it wasn't always that way. As a matter of fact, HUDs were introduced by GM 11 years before
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becoming enormously successful on the Corvette. And we're going to talk about that today. My guest is Steve
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Stringfellow. Steve, welcome to Corvette today. Thank you for having me, Steve. You bet. You're here in studio. This is
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great. Steve lives in the Kansas City area. I don't get a chance to have people in studio that much, so it's
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great to have you here. First of all, Steve, let's talk about your childhood. Tell me where you grew up, and did you
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come from a car family? Well, I was originally born in Santa Monica, California in 1956 and I grew up in
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Paliseries, California. Back then, it was kind of a rancho and farmland. It's not really that way anymore,
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right? I guess my mother's first car was a beautiful white 1962 Chevrolet Corv.
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Oh, so close. Almost. But at least we were in the Chevy family there.
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And I remember there were lots of Elden and Mattel engineers who had families and own homes in the area. So, I grew up
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with lots of influence of Hot Wheels and slot cars and anything with a Cox Nitro 49 engine.
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That's pretty cool. Yeah. So, was Corvette the car for you when you were growing up? Oh gosh. Yeah. Corvettes were always a
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childhood dream growing up. And I think it was the same dream for every kid who followed the space race back during the
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Mercury and Gemini and Apollo programs. Oh yeah. My Cub Scout scrapbook was full of pictures of astronauts driving
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Corvettes. And I don't remember seeing any in the neighborhood, unfortunately. I would definitely have remembered that.
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Yeah. And oh, by the way, Augusta, I did own a Schwin Stingray bike, though. That's close. You know, for a kid,
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that's as close as you're going to get to a Corvette, right? You betcha. What did you want to be when you grew up? Were Corvettes part of your
5:08
childhood? I was kind of a tinkerer as a kid, and I guess I still am. I built lots of models. We had a workbench and tools in
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our garage, and somehow I just kind of had this knack for taking things apart and learning how to fix them and just
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kind of seeing how they worked. But I think the biggest influence automotive-wise was my childhood friend,
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Bill. His grandfather had a family-owned auto parts store in Lama, California. As we got older and began to learn how to
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drive, we kind of got jobs delivering parts to garages and repair shops throughout the Southern Los Angeles
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area. Sometimes I'd drive across town to deliver just a small set of ignition points, or sometimes I'd have to deliver
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a big orange painted 180lb Chevy short block. Yeah. So we unloaded the trucks
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and stocked everything. We worked the catalogs at the counter, helping customers find obscure parts and
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fasteners. And sometimes we worked in the machine shop, you know, sand blasting the surfacing heads, grinding
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and installing valves and springs or turning brake drums. There was always work to do and lots to learn about cars.
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And even though we were teenagers, we were never bored. We always got our hands really dirty and came home
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exhausted. Well, that's a good thing, I think. Right. Oh, yeah. So, where did you go to college? What did you study in school?
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Well, the Vietnam War was raging at the time and I signed up for the draft at 16 and my father really didn't save for my
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college at all and I guess he was a bit uncertain about what my future would be. After the war ended, to be honest, at 18
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years old, I didn't know what I wanted to do. After a while, my father decided to use part of his retirement savings to
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send me to college. I was accepted at the University of California at Santa Cruz where I took my GE classes and
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dabbled a little bit in physics and architecture and environmental design related subjects. Although I like designing structures and it was
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beautiful up there up in the trees. Oh yeah. I could tell it just wasn't the right place for me to be. I was more kind of
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geared towards product and transportation things like cars and airplanes. Yeah, that makes sense. So what were
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your degrees in Steve? So after moving I took a big student loan. I moved to California State
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University at Long Beach and after four years and working part-time, I got my Bachelor of Science degree in product
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design engineering. I'd really finally found my calling. That's really cool. Well, I tell you what, buddy. Let's take our break right
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now. When we come back, we're going to talk about your career in the business world, which included Hughes Aircraft
7:25
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And now back to Corvette Today with your host and my husband, Steve Garrett.
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Thanks for checking out Corvette Today on podcast and YouTube. It's the only current podcast dedicated to Corvette.
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I'm your host Steve Garrett. With me is Steve Stringfellow. Steve created invented the head-up display for
11:11
Corvette. In this second segment, we're going to talk about Steve's career in the business world. Steve, where did you
11:17
work right after you graduated college? Back in 1979, I was working part-time
11:22
with a small startup called Robinson Helicopter Company. It's not that way anymore. Yeah, they're huge now.
11:27
They're huge. and I was a technical illustrator while in college. By the time I was out of college and doing the
11:32
R22 helicopter illustrated parts catalog, I knew every part, nut, bolt, and washer on that helicopter. I knew
11:39
how it went together, and I knew who made it. I became a member of the then very small engineering staff. When I
11:45
graduated in 1981, at Robinson helicopter, one of the first things that they had me do was do landing skid
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extensions on the R22 helicopter so it could land in snow and mud. Cool. Then I designed big floats so it could land on
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water. I redesigned the instrument console for the beta model, adding more gauges, which is now there's an example
12:03
of it displayed in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Wow. I just found that out. I built an even bigger, more complex instrument panel so
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the helicopter could be used for IFR training. That's of course flying in clouds, right? I redesigned the seats to create more
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headroom and improve crashworthiness. I also designed an auxiliary fuel system, increase the fuel capacity by almost 11
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gallons. Wow. I did the exhibits for trade shows. I even did the paint schemes for all the
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Robinson R22 models. That's cool. And oh, I also paid off my student loan.
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In about 1984, I began working directly with Frank Robinson on the exterior aerodynamics and interior layout for the
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R44 model, which basically was the R22 multiplied by 1.3.
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And remember, at this time, this is all on paper. Robinson didn't have computers for design back then. So, so it was a
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lot of work, a lot of erasers and starting over again and redrawing lines. Very complex work and very hard to do.
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As a side note, Robinsons are now the highest selling civilian helicopters in the world. They are. They really are. Now, after
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Robinson helicopter, tell me about your transition to Hughes Aircraft. Yeah, being a helicopter company, it had
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its proverbial ups and downs. No pun intended, right? We had layoffs and FAA work stoppages
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and sometimes us engineers were cut back to 3 days a week at a 40% cut pay. Ouch.
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Yeah, I know. I they needed to find something better. Joe Deso, who is a Robinson engineer I work with closely,
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departed Hughes aircraft a few years earlier. He contacted me about some side contracting work that Hughes was
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designing a head-up display night vision helmet for an advanced helicopter program. So while I was still at
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Robinson, I started moonlighting at Hughes while learning about optics and head-up displays. Yeah.
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After several months, I finished the helmet project, which also allowed me to get to know the Hugh staff and them to
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get to know me a little bit. That's cool. So talk about the time when GM bought Hughes Aircraft and how that
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affected you and your job. That was a key turning point where I really decided to make the jump. In the summer of 1985, GM bought Hughes
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aircraft for the purpose of transferring technologies from Hughes to GM vehicles.
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Cool. GM wanted to acquire things like the Hugh satellites for vehicle emergency communication, which
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eventually became OnStar. Oh, no kidding. Oh, yeah. And then satellite video streaming, which became Direct TV, and
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radar for use in a new technology called adaptive cruise control, which is almost ubiquitous nowadays.
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Right. to an important degree acquisition of head-up displays for cars, I guess. Then his radar systems in
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Elsa Gundo, which was about 5 miles from my apartment in Herosa Beach, called and
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asked me if I was interested in becoming the project engineer for the automotive side of this new program. So, with a
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little bit of hesitation, you know, then came to Carrot. They said GM had just provided them a new red 1986 Corvette
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for use as a project development car and asked if I was interested. I think I put in my twoe notice at Robinson the
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following day. Yeah, that makes sense. No question. I can imagine. Well, buddy, let's take our final break. When we come back,
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You're enjoying the only current podcast on Corvettes. Corvette today. Thanks
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once again for listening and watching Corvette Today, the show that talks about everything Corvette. Corvette
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Today is brought to you by Wheelcraft. You want your Corvette looking its best. We'll dress it up with bright chrome or
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black chrome wheels. Visit wheelcraft.com and learn about their advanced PVD chrome finishing. They can
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refinish your wheels or do a wheel exchange and you get a 5-year warranty. So visit wheelcraft.com today or give
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them a call 833-639-4231. I'm your host, Steve Garrett. With me is
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the man that created and designed the head-up display for Corvette. His name is Steve Stringfellow. In this final
17:49
segment, we're going to get into the nuts and bolts. Now, Steve, you were tasked with the job of adapting the
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Hughes technology into the C4 Corvette. Talk about some of those hurdles that you encountered during that adaptation.
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Well, at first I just joined Hughes Aircraft and I had a lot to learn. I had a great mentor named John Ferrer who was
18:06
a guru with optics and he loved to build models like me. John had some ideas on how we might do this, but we needed to
18:13
use the Corvette to see if the concept worked. I needed to get drawings from GM, get the windshield angles and
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driver's eye position and any information I could about what the space was underneath the dash. The HUD had to
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fit. I must admit that I had to do a little bit of automotive product evaluation drives while I waited for the
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drawings to arrive. That was a lot of fun. And I guess the the rush of adrenaline really proved to me that the
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Corvette really needed to have a HUD in it. Yeah. So that kind of enthused me to go along with the job and kept me going. Of
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course, this was super exciting. But I guess when the drawings arrived, I started drafting the design on my board.
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This was getting great. I actually had a Corvette on my drawing board and I was designing a HUD for it. Wow, this was so
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cool. I couldn't think of a better job. I put together a list of specifications from our human factors folks and drew a
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box around the optics that could provide the right size of image and the right position. Yeah. John showed me the sight lines and
19:06
we calculated the reflection angles and put where the HUD needed to reside to fit properly. But from the drawings, I
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could see that the space was being occupied by defrost ducts and structural brackets and wire harnesses. Too many
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things in the way, which concerned me a little bit. We moved the C4 up to the top floor of the radar systems parking
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structure where facilities had fenced off a secure area for us to use as an automotive development area. And we had
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a glass company come out and remove the windshield for us. and we ordered several spares just in case. Out came
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the tool boxes and it was time to remove the dash and get started. Really had starting to dig into it. Besides cutting
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a hole in the dash pad, you know, it's pretty obvious that there was a few ducks and steel brackets that needed to
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be sacrificed to really get the hut in, but that was my job. Yeah, it was funny because I was working late one night and
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security saw sparks flying in the upper floor of the parking structure and they rushed up to see real quick
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what was happening and there he was wearing a lab coat and goggles holding a die grinder cutting into a Corvette. You
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should have seen the questions and looks on their face were just priceless. Anyway, I kept them going after that, but I had to come down and tell
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management what happened in the night before. Sure. But they were glad I was putting in the extra hours and working late night. In
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the following days, we got the coated glass mirrors and we mounted them into the box. An electrical engineer had
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wired up a bright blue green vacuum fluorescent alarm clock display to accept a vehicle speed signal.
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Okay. Kind of put all this together and then I snuggly mounted the HUD model into the car, which really consisted of only two
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mirrors and a display. Got that into the front of dash and I made all the necessary power and signal connections.
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Turned it on and it worked amazingly. That night I drove up and down the sixstory parking structure doing 180
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degree turns at each ramp level and I think there were like two turns at each level. So there was about 12 turns over
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this whole thing. I was using the HUD to see how fast I could go between the next turn. I'd start out at 25 and maybe get
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up to 28 or 30 and pretty soon I found myself stomping on the brake and hurry up and making that turn. But I could see
21:05
what that speed was when I hit the turn going around that area of the parking structure. Luckily it was night and there were no cars in there.
21:11
Yeah. One time I looked down, big mistake. I looked down at the speedometer really
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to see what the speed was that way and I scared myself to death. I realized never look down in critical situations.
21:23
Huh. And it really told me that I learned the safety benefits of the head-up display. You know, this is the coolest thing. And
21:29
he goes, "One thing I did notice on the HUD at that time, it's one of the first times that we really kind of thought
21:34
about this was there was a second ghost reflection behind the first one that had kind of come and go whenever I moved my
21:40
head around. We really had to find a picture of this. It wasn't right to have that two ghosts in there. Sure. So the next day I showed Ron Smith, who
21:47
was one of our holographic scientists, what was going on with this. And he calculated that there was a very small
21:52
set of waves in the windshield glass. And the ghost would appear and disappear on one side of the wave and pop out on
21:58
the other side and go up and down depending which side of the wave you were on. Huh. Then he calculated the angle of the wave
22:04
which is a very small number kind of intens of miller radians. A miller radian is about 5,000 of a degree.
22:10
Wow. So these are very small numbers and the calculations were very dependent on the windshield angle and the thickness
22:16
and the curvature. Yeah. And it really required the anti-acerative layer that's between the two layers of glass to be thickened at
22:23
the top about the thickness of a garbage bag. And so that's about all it took. Wow. So he eventually applied for a patent on
22:29
the wedge windshield which is found in all the HUD cars nowadays. It was kind of fun because we organized management
22:34
reviews after that. We had test drives. My management confidently reported to GM that we now had a HUD to show them. The
22:41
CEO of General Motors, Roger Smith, who was key in the purchase of Hughes aircraft, arrived and witnessed it for
22:46
himself. He gave it the thumbs up for a production program. Wow. That's pretty cool to have Roger Smith there and give you the thumbs up.
22:53
I mean, that's the big guy, right? You betcha. He was very important. Wow. Now, since it didn't fit in the C4,
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what other GM cars got the HUD? At that time, Roger saw how simple it was compared to other HUDs that he'd seen
23:05
that were more expensive than the whole car. And I think he saw that this design was within reach and could be affordable. Since the Corvette was GM's
23:13
leading technology platform, it was really a shame that there had to be too many changes that were necessary to make
23:18
it fit. Sure. But the next cars in the GM pipeline were the W platform, 1988 Olds Cutless
23:23
Supreme, and Pontiac Grand Prix. Yep. So, myself and several other Hughes managers traveled to Detroit to see the
23:30
new car. We wanted to see what this W car was all about. We gathered some information. We talked to the platform
23:35
engineers and we even had our HUD Corvette shipped to GM for them to see what all the excitement was all about.
23:41
While we were at the GM tech center, I had the opportunity to show the car to Pete Collegian who is the interior
23:46
designer for the Corvette. Okay. We drove around the lake and I could tell that he was thrilled. The best part
23:52
was parking in the design staff garage. Pete said that the biggest complaint that he had about the CO4 Corvette was
23:58
parking. He could never see the front of the car. When I told him that the HUD was calibrated to the front bumper and
24:04
he could use it as a parking aid, he was thrilled. So, I told him to park the car 4 in from the wall. He stopped, got out,
24:11
and looked. Sure enough, 4 in from the wall. He was literally in tears. That's so cool.
24:16
You can see the influence of the HUD on Peter's 1991 Corvette interior redesign. That lowered notch that you see in the
24:23
middle of the instrument panel up on the top, that's where he visualized the future HUD being. He was a true visionary. He was amazing.
24:29
That's a cool story. Talk about how Delko works into this HUD story. Wow. Well, in about 1986, we learned
24:36
that GM had merged us Hughes with Delo Electronics. We really created an independent subsidiary called GM Hughes
24:42
Electronics or GM Hughes A. And I guess the thinking was that Hughes didn't really do high volume automotive
24:49
productions like Delko, right? The merger might help bring Hughes Technologies like the HUD to market quicker. So now we had two really
24:56
large companies and one HUD for the W car that became a key project. Suddenly
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my little HUD project now became huge conference rooms full of suits and ties
25:07
and I know there was a lot of negotiation and organization that needed to take place and I could tell there's a
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lot of dollar signs flying around in there. Sure. But eventually Delko Electronics I mean Cooko assigned a great team of really
25:19
talented production engineers to work with us. Everyone understood that the world had never seen a real HUD in a
25:26
production car before. Now the race was on to make this the first. When I say real HUD, I mean optically projected to
25:33
the front of the car, not just a reflection off the inside of the windshield like Nissan tried. Gotcha. Much of the Gen 1 HUD work was
25:40
done at the Advanced Vehicle Engineering Center in Pontiac and in Cooko with Hughes surprisingly kind of taking more
25:47
of a technical advisory role. Interesting. The world's first production automotive HUD was introduced
25:53
in the 1988 Oldmobile Cutless Supreme Indie Pace car, which was driven by
25:58
famous test pilot Chuck Jagger, who of course was the first to break the sound barrier. Yeah, that's pretty cool.
26:03
Oh yeah. This HUD was soon to be followed by the W Platform 1989 Pontiac
26:09
Grand Prix. Following all that excitement, I began working with the windshield suppliers and was also tasked
26:14
with designing a small HUD based on the automotive design for the Hughes Corporate Jet. Oh wow.
26:19
It's a Cessna Citation. Beautiful jet. They had me designing various advanced HUDs. Did several one-of-a-kind HUDs for
26:26
different cars. I did the first Bonavville HUD prototype. And I even did a HUD for a Land Speed Record S truck.
26:31
Wow. The biggest issue with the Gen One HUDs when they first came out was the bump that it created. Apparently, the
26:37
negotiations that were made later on with the HUD space and the IP with the W engineers wasn't very successful. Huh.
26:44
And the HUD became a large styled box on top of the IP. The images were not
26:49
exactly shaped and positioned as planned because the windshields didn't really match the drawings that Hughes was
26:55
provided to do the optics. There was also a considerable hiccup between Oldmobile and Pontiac twin windshields
27:01
basically from the same platform they were supposed to be. But since they were made at two different glass plants, the
27:06
shapes were entirely different. One glass plant was an electric oven and the other one was a gas oven, something like that. But as it turned out, they were
27:13
completely different. That kind of created further misalignment between the two cars. Wow. So the Gen One HUD became the first
27:20
ever automotive HUD, but it had growing pains. So what happened after that? In 1989, I was sent back to Detroit and
27:27
to the glass plant several times to assist with a lot of the problems. Then eventually with the carrot of the HUD
27:33
and the future Corvette, I was asked if I wanted to move from the beaches of California to Detroit as a resident
27:39
engineer for Hughes Technology Transfer. Oh. I kept thinking Corvette, Corvette.
27:45
Yeah. And my fiance's parents lived in Pennsylvania, which is close by. So, she
27:50
agreed to making that move to Michigan. Might be a good thing for us. Sure. We got married and we made the move. And
27:56
I guess after several years, I had spent a lot of time with the design studios, you know, doing high-tech looking
28:01
optical displays for show cars, which was a lot of fun. But my attention was grabbed by rumors of the C5 Corvette
28:07
that was being conceptualized at the advanced stages. About then the GM Advanced Electrical Group asked me if I
28:14
would consider becoming a Michigander and wanted to know if I wanted to join GM full-time. They'd give me a company
28:19
car and everything. And wow, this was great. And so my wife and newborn daughter, they both agreed we would stay.
28:24
Nice. So now was my chance. You know, I guess the Corvette being my goal, I knew we had to plan ahead. No bumps on the dash,
28:31
no brackets or ducks in the way, no vibration, and a windshield that was a really good optical match. You know, now
28:37
is the chance that we could do it and do it right. Nice. So, ironically, GM had other cars with a HUD already. Let's talk about
28:43
them and how they fared with the HUD. Well, by now, several years had gone by and Delo had done a smaller bump Gen 2
28:51
for the Grand Prix, Bonavville, and the Park Avenue by cutting the glass mirrors down to about 60% of their original
28:56
size. So, this thing got a lot smaller, but had a compromise of eyebox and image size.
29:01
Sure. Also, they were doing a larger Gen 3 HUD that was underway for the 1994 Grand
29:08
Prix. Besides vibration, the problem was all the optics, the main mirror, the
29:13
full mirror, the cover lens, they were all made of injection molded plastic. Oh, the design was good, but the tools
29:19
and the molding processes introduced lots of additive distortion between all the parts. So, HUDs were not getting the
29:25
praise and the sales that I would have expected. I was watching all this really closely. I attended many meetings
29:31
involving the future cars only to see the HUD scratched from the content list due to high price and perceived low
29:37
demand. Huh. So to keep the HUD technology alive then you needed to do a HUD in the next Corvette and it had to
29:43
be the best optical quality possible. I'm sure. You bet, Steve. The world was going to see this car and this seemed to be like
29:49
the last chance to get it right. HUS are generational. If it didn't get into one generation of vehicle architecture, it
29:55
might be 5 to 10 years before there'd be another chance to get one in. Sure. Luckily, in 1992, the Advanced
30:02
Vehicle Group heard I was the HUD guy and asked me to work with a designer to try and package a HUD into the future
30:09
Corvette architecture. Now, was it This is really getting exciting. Yeah. I was told that they had been given a
30:14
CAD model of the HUD from Del Electronics, and that's what they were required to use, but it didn't fit.
30:20
Oh. They were told the Corvette couldn't afford to tool a new HUD because the sales volumes were going to be too low.
30:26
Huh. I didn't think that was really the case because 25% or so of 32,000 cars is
30:32
8,000 HUDs, which seems like a lot, but back in those days, you had to have a good business case and had to be able to
30:37
make a lot of parts to make the business case work. Sure, a Grand Prix HUD wasn't going to work in the next Corvette. So, I started a new
30:45
design just for the C5. No more HUDs on drawing boards. We were now using high-end computers with accuracy and
30:51
speed. And the designer that they gave me was really talented on the computer and was able to follow my directions
30:56
really closely. The design was looking really good and there was a big crosscar beam originally in the way of the
31:01
perfect position where I wanted to put the HUD which got kind of frustrating. I didn't know what to do then. But then I
31:07
found the structural engineer and his name was Roger Johnson. Fantastic guy. And he told me that his wife had a HUD
31:13
in her car and she loved it. And so he offered to change the beam shape and create a pocket for me in the front of
31:19
dash for the HUD to fit. Nice. His main reason was that someday he could take a Corvette home to his wife and show her
31:25
the HUD. Yeah. Yeah. So, thank you, Mr. Mrs. Johnson. If you're out there,
31:30
if you're listening to Corvette today, thank you very much. They were very helpful. Anyway, I had
31:35
successfully designed a low and flush HUD package for the C5 with no big bumps or interferences and presented my effort
31:42
to the vehicle integration team. Following that meeting, Fred Galash from the Chevrolet central office sent a
31:47
voicemail to chief engineer Dave Hill encouraging that I be maintained in the Y platform, saying that when others had
31:54
said the HUD couldn't be packaged, I had found a way to do it. Thank you again, Fred, if you're listening. That HUD
32:00
design became the critical placeholder while I was brought into the Corvette Electrical Group in 1993. I took over
32:07
the C4 cluster responsibilities and then we transitioned to the design of the new instrument cluster for the C5 and I knew
32:15
very well that the HUD was literally right behind it. There was a lot of debate over digital versus analog
32:21
speedometer and at the launch center there was a big decision made to have the cluster be analog and the HUD would
32:27
be provided to provide the digital speed. Okay. Then I needed to bear my soul to the team about the windshield shapes and
32:33
timing. I was concerned if we introduced the HUD the first year that we wouldn't really understand the new windshield
32:39
shape and in time to design and tool a new HUD optic to be able to match it. We'd bring the HUD optics to Bowling
32:45
Green and design to match the computer surface and the glass would come to the Bowling Green plant having its own kind
32:51
of unique shape. Sure, they wouldn't match each other and the optical quality would probably suffer from that point on. And I guess the
32:57
analogy to that was kind of like you're investing a lifetime's worth of prescription glasses for a baby that's
33:03
not even born yet. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone in the meetings understanding that I got the nod and it was decided
33:09
that the second year being the convertible, the HUD would be offered in 1999 as a new feature that would give
33:15
the glass plan in Elizabeth Town plenty of time for the glass shape to settle down.
33:20
Okay. I could then laser scan the actual production glass surface to design the optics for a perfect match. Plus, I had
33:27
accurately know the radius of curvature, the angle, and the thickness to be able to calculate the wedge and the glass to
33:32
eliminate that ghost I was concerned about right out of the gate. This was fantastic. Wow. Next was the sourcing.
33:38
What supplier was I going to trust and select for the HUD? This was really important to me. For me, it was the
33:44
optical quality, delivery, timing, and cooperation to do whatever it takes to make this HUD the best. For purchasing,
33:51
of course, it was price. I think we had about a half a dozen qualified biders. I work with Delko and Nipponi who were the
33:58
chosen suppliers to work for the C5 Blacklight instrument cluster. Okay. And we had a lot of others from Germany
34:04
and Japan who were all very qualified. But I guess during the technical interviews, we had each supplier bring
34:10
an example of their best quality main mirror for all of us to review to see who was really going to be able to do
34:16
the best parts. Delco and Saki brought actual HUD-like examples, but the Delco part was still the injection molded part
34:22
from the Gen 3. Huh. The Saki part was like nothing I'd ever seen before. It was a perfect surface
34:28
with no distortion at all. Nice. It was very impressive, I think, to everybody. We did everything we could to
34:33
lower the price of this HUD. You know, we had to make this whole thing work. And if it was too expensive, it may not fly. Sure. You know, we even removed the need
34:40
for a processor and we ended up plugging the HUD into the back of the instrument cluster since they share the same
34:46
information. The cluster could run the HUD and the data would always match. That makes sense. I guess in the end, Nipponi came in with
34:52
the lowest price and they agreed to match all the purchasing targets and they were very intent on learning and
34:58
following my directions really closely. Coincidentally, I think they're now the world's largest producer of HUDs.
35:03
Wow. And the C5 HUD started production in 1999 and grew from really a predicted
35:08
volume of 25% to over 90% when we offered it as a free flow option. This
35:14
is before the HUD was packaged into a lot of the higher trim levels. Right? HUD was not offered originally on the C5
35:20
Z06, but became standard equipment due to the popular demand. I recall Dave Hill being asked during a meeting one
35:27
time, "How come the HUD was not there for the first year of the Z06? We were concerned about weight." The second
35:32
year, Dave, I know you were concerned about weight. Why did you put the HUD back into the Z06? And he said, "How
35:38
much does the HUD weigh?" About as much as a hot dog and a beer. That's funny. So, we forgo the hot dog and the beer
35:44
and you you'll have your weight savings. There you go. As far as a most requested option, C5
35:50
HUD became second only to the manual transmission. Wow, that's really cool. What was the
35:56
display on the final version of the head-up display for the C5? We tried to add all the important content into the
36:02
C5 HUD and made sure we had a good way of being able to display it all. So, of course, we started out with speed and
36:07
because the speedometer went up to 200 mph, we had to be sure we had an extra two digit in there. So, the speedometer
36:14
actually when it goes into kilometers per hour, we put in the speedometer that would go all the way up to 299 km/h. We
36:21
also have of course turn signals, high beam, tachometer and shift light, check gauges, warning, fuel gauge, oil
36:27
pressure gauge, coolant gauge. All these are reconfigurable. You can add and subtract content as you need. I bet there was a lot of great content
36:33
from some of the Corvette websites about the HUD as well, weren't there? Oh, yeah. That was really fun. I'll read some of these for you that I have
36:39
written down here. I get a kick out of reading these things. I guess the first one here, it says, "At first, I figured it was just gadgetry, but really is nice
36:46
from a use standpoint." Here's another one. This one's great. My HUD saved me from a bunch of tickets.
36:51
I can see that. Yeah. Yeah, I can too. Here's another one here. It's possible the best option offered on Corvette. Without a doubt, it
36:58
is not only a convenience to the driver, but promotes safety every moment you're behind the wheel of the car.
37:04
That's a great statement. I agree with that 100%. A Corvette keeps one eyes where they're supposed to be on
37:09
the road. Yeah. Here's another one. Once you've driven a car with a HUD option, cars without it seem to be missing something.
37:16
Definitely. And everybody has told me that, gosh, I got into my other car and it didn't have it and I missed it. Yeah.
37:21
Here's another one here. The HUD is great. It takes a week or so to get used to, but after that, you won't want to
37:27
drive without it. As others have said, it makes driving safer since you do not have to take your eyes off the road to
37:33
see the speedometer in the other gauges. Yeah, that all makes sense. Now, at the last count, head-up displays are found
37:38
in how many vehicles? Well, last I heard, there were over 130 different models, and now have head-up
37:44
displays from over 30 different car manufacturers. That's pretty amazing, buddy. That's really cool. Steve, thank you so much
37:51
for taking the time to be on Corvette Today. This has been so much fun and so cool. Thank you for having me, Steve. It's
37:57
been a pleasure. Thanks again for listening and watching Corvette Today. And be sure to tell your family, friends, and other Corvette
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