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CORVETTE TODAY #245 - Corvette News & Headlines, Late December 2024
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Jul 12, 2025
CORVETTE TODAY #245 - CORVETTE NEWS & HEADLINES, LATE DECEMBER 2024 Next week is Christmas and Hanukkah - one would think that news about Corvette would be a little slower than normal...nope, we have a full slate of Corvette news for you! Keith Cornett from CorvetteBlogger is back with your CORVETTE TODAY host, Steve Garrett, to cover these headlines and much more... 1. There is a new Technical Service Bulletin for front view camera malfunctions on 2024 Corvettes 2. Chevy's live inventory shows more than 6,600 Corvettes "on the ground" as of December 14th
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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 at 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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And a shout out to Canadian Corvette Forum and Corvette Forum, welcoming Corvette enthusiasts from around the
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world. All right, everybody. It's time to bring you the latest Corvette news and headlines with my pal Keith Cornet
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from corvette blogger.com. Keith is always here every other week. Together, we keep you current and up to date on
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what's happening with America Sports Car. Keith, happy holidays. It's the week of Christmas and Hanukkah, buddy.
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Happy holidays. Happy Christmas. Merry Christmas to all the people out there. And of course, happy Hanukkah as well. Very exciting time. You know, lots of
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things going on. Even though when there's not a lot of news expected over the holidays, guess what? There's always news coming out about Corvettes. Good
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thing that we do these every two weeks. Yeah. You know, I said in my email, you'd be surprised. You'd think around the holidays news would slow down a
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little bit. Uh-uh. Nope. Not for the Corvette. We've got lots to cover, buddy. Let's
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start off like we always do. Let's get a production update from the Bowling Green assembly plant. Sure, Steve. So, just as a reminder for
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everyone out there that the Corvette assembly plant will be closed for these three weeks. They closed after the final shift on Friday, December 13th, and then
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the regular production operations will return again on Monday, January 6th. So, I'm not going to really give any new
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updates going on here, but the nice thing is I got a last count from that final shift. And it shows that 7,63
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Stingrays, 2,944 Z06s, and a total of 889 - produced so
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far. That total is 10,896 Corvettes produced for the 2025 model year.
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Nice. And we also found out that there's over 6,600 Corvettes on the ground as of December 14th, too.
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Yeah, this is pretty interesting. So, we have a friend named Jeff Thomas who occasionally will send me some interesting data, and he likes to go
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into the Chevrolet live inventory tracker at Chevrolet.com, and that's where he found a total of 6,646 new
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Corvettes available at dealers nationwide. Not all these cars are available. Some of them are dealer stock
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orders, some of them are customer sold orders. And actually, some of that count is cars transported. But the way
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Stingrays are today, there's a lot of cars available. It allows people to go in and actually find that inventory to
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see if they can find a car that matches them. What's interesting to us though is Jeff also provided a previous look at
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the live inventory tracker from August 1st. So in August 1st, there was only 3,888
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Corvettes on the ground. Now we've got 6,646. So you can see how the supply has definitely grown. Yeah,
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definitely significantly more vehicles on the ground now than we had earlier this summer. In that breakout, it shows
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that 4,974 of those cars are Stingrays. 1,213 are
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Z06s and then there's 437 E-rays that were showing up on dealers by doing a nationwide search. Now Jeff, what he
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does is he uses a zip code in Kansas which provides a 2,000mi radius. So it effectively covers the entire United
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States. Wow. It's a great way to find cars. So there are definitely dealers out there offering significant deals on new
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Stingrays. So if you want to buy off the lot as opposed to ordering new, you can save a boatload of cash. The Chevy Live
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inventory tracker is actually a great place to find those Corvettes that match your parameters. And you can also filter
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and search and look by distance or prices high to low. You know, if you're considering a new Corvette purchase and
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you're kind of looking for something particular, the Chevrolet Live Tracker might be just the tool for you. And this is the time of year to buy
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because we're in the quote unquote off season. So, you might find even some better deals during the early winter
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time frame. Yeah, we're at the end of the month. We're at the end of the year. We got a couple dealers we talked about previously that are hopefully going to
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move up in the ranking. So, they're actually blowing out cars left and right. Definitely something to consider. Nice. Also, if you have a 2024 C8, we
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have a new technical service bulletin that addresses the front view cameras and their malfunctions. What's going on
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with that, Keith? Yeah, this is a service bulletin. So this is when service personnel, they see stuff over and over again and it gets
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reported back to GM and then GM puts out a service bulletin so everybody can see that, hey, if you find this, it might be
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related to this problem. This latest service bulletin addresses a malfunction with the front view camera modules on
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certain 2024 Corvette Stingray, Z06s, and E-rays. Apparently, what happens is that front camera modules may not work
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after sitting in the cold for a while. You don't want to find that out when you're creeping up to a parking spot and
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you got that front splitter on there. You don't want to damage that. Yep. What they actually have to do to correct this problem is actually replace that
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camera module with one that's not sensitive to cold temperatures. It only takes about 25 minutes or so. It's a
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free service call for those that are under warranty. As you can imagine though, Steve, these front camera modules are limited in supplies. Dealers
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aren't allowed to have them, you know, in stock and ready to go. So, it might take a little bit once they've identified the problem to once they get
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that part in to fix it. So, if you're finding your front camera modules aren't working, your parking cams and such, that could be the issue. There's always
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a hitch, buddy. You know, these cars are complicated these days. That's right. That's right. Also, we
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have another accolade. KOD's 2024 made in America index ranks the C8 Z06 as
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number 12. I guess if we were number two, we could say we try harder. Yeah. You know, this is actually kind of
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interesting. There's two of these surveys that go out. The way that Kog School works is they do an annual index
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based on the information from the window sticker. Under the American Automotive Labeling Act of 1994, all vehicles sold
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in the US must report and display on the window sticker the source of exclusive US/Canadian content, where it's
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assembled, where the engine and transmission are sourced, and then they use that window sticker info, plus a few more variables to generate this list of
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these cars that are made in America with the most Americanmade or most US, Canada based content. The Corvette Z06 finished
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12th in the survey, while the Stingray was tied at 14th with the Tesla Model 3. That's actually a drop for the Stingray,
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which is third in 2022 and tied for seventh in 2023. These figures are always changing. It's not so much that
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our content is changing, it's but competitors are also upping their American content. In the meantime, when you look at the amount of content, it's
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still really an Americanmade car. It's just others are also sourcing that, and there's some differences there that that
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cause the rankings to change. It's always interesting exercise and of course it is America's favorite sports
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car so we like a good ranking there. Yeah, we're number one on the sports car list but we're 12th on the overall list
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I guess, right? Exactly. Yes. Got it. And finally, Keith, this is really cool. Thursday of last week, we
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had a new video that showed the C8 ZR1 setting a new record time from 0 to 60.
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I'll let you tell everybody what it was. Yeah, absolutely. Actually, some early Christmas tidings here. Release of the
9:54
official performance stats for the 2025 Corvette ZR1. What they did was they actually offered times and stats for
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both the standard ZR1 and the ZR1 with the ZTK performance package. So, the ZR1
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has an official 0 to 60 sprint time of 2.3 seconds when it's equipped with the optional ZTK performance package, while
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the standard ZR1 without the ZTK sprints 0 to 60 in 2.5 seconds. Again, very
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quick there. As for the quarter mile, the ZTK equipped ZR1 runs the 1/4 mile in 9.6 seconds with a trap speed of 150
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mph. And a standard ZR1 finishes the 1/4 mile in 9.7 seconds at 152 miles per
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hour. Chevrolet says all these tests are done on 93 octane pump gas. They were tested at a non-repped dragstrip
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surface. So Steve, you can imagine some new ZR1 owner is going to get this car going to put on a set of racing slicks
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and then go to a prep track. We might actually see some faster times. Actually something really to look forward to.
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Chevy also gave us a comparison of all four models now. So, the Stingray with Z-51 that does it in 2.9 seconds, 0 to
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60. The Z06 with the Z07 package is 2.6 seconds. The E-Ray is 2.5 seconds and
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now ZR1 with ZTK is 2.3 seconds. You know, we've got another car that might be coming out there called the Zora, are
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we looking at 1.9 there or 2.0? Exciting times at the Corvette Engineering Place up there. They got some good stuff going
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on. That's for sure. Boy, if we could break two seconds, that would be incredible, buddy. And again, you know, they test it
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on the non-prep track with just the regular tires and pump gas. Yeah, you started tweaking a few things here and there and definitely you've got
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a car that might be a lot quicker. That's amazing. Well, buddy, let's take our first break. When we come back, it's
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mikum.com. [Music] Happy holidays from Corvette Today. Now
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back to the show with your host Steve Garrett. Thanks for checking out Corvette Today on podcast and YouTube. It's the only
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I'm your host Steve Garrett. With me is my pal Keith Cornet from Corvette Blogger. It's the holiday edition of
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Corvette Today. In segment number two, we always cover Corvette racing and Corvette rumors. Keith, we got three
16:37
stories from Corvette racing. First of all, Prattton Miller announced their driver lineup next year for the IMSA GTD
16:43
Pro category. Who's racing next year? Absolutely. Yeah, Rolex 24 Daytona is just a month away. Corvette teams have
16:49
been getting ready for action. So, yeah, we've got the driver lineups for the number three and the number four Corvette Z06 GT3RS. In the number three
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Corvette, we have Antonio Garcia and Alexander Sims as the regular drivers with Daniel Juncandella coming in for
17:02
the endurance race. And then for number four Corvette Z06 GT3R, we have Tommy Milner and Nikki Katsburg as the
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full-time drivers and young hot shoe Niko Veron coming in for the endurance races there. Really exciting team. Most
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of these guys have been with us for a while. Nico was part of the championship winning World Endurance Championship
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team a couple years back, pairing up again with Nikki Katsburg there as well. Good stuff happening for Corvette
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Racing. Season starts on Saturday, January 25th, and the green flag drops at 1:40 p.m. at the Rolex 24 Daytona.
17:31
Man, that's great to hear some of those veterans back in Corvette Racing. That's great. Also, we've got Track House
17:36
Racing. I'm not familiar with them. They're joining TF Sport in the GT3R in Daytona, aren't they?
17:41
Yeah, exactly. So, Track House Racing has teamed up with the British team TF Sport. They run the World Endurance
17:47
Championship team over in Europe. What they're going to do is they have a single entry for the Rolex 24 at Daytona
17:52
in the Z06 GT3R. What they're going to do is they're going to have Ben Keading, again part of that championship winning
17:58
team just a couple years ago. He'll be one of the drivers and then he's paired up with three others. Shane Van
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Gizberen, Scott Mclofflin, and Connor Zillich are all participating there. What's interesting is they're actually
18:09
going to be running in the same class as Corvette Racing, the GTD Pro class. So, a little bit of competition for our
18:15
factory racers, but uh again, as long as the Z06 GT3R comes out on top, who can complain about that?
18:21
Exactly. And it was good to hear Ben Keading is back at Corvette Racing. We had him on Corvette today, and I'm glad
18:26
that he's still on the team in some way, shape, or form. Exactly. Yeah. Anytime he can get behind the wheel of a Corvette is means that
18:32
good things are going to happen. Absolutely right. Also, this is really cool. Tommy Milner visited the Corvette
18:38
team's allperson meeting in Detroit. Were they planning on him being there? Yeah, what they did was they invited him
18:44
in to talk about the Z06 GT3R. I think these allperson meetings at the end of the year are just kind of a way to pull
18:49
the team together and kind of talk about the goals and achievements that you were working on throughout the year and a little bit of a celebration. You know, a
18:56
lot of times these guys don't probably see each other all that often. You got some people here at this location, some at the other location. So, it's a nice
19:02
way to get everybody together. They brought in Tommy to talk about that first year of the Z06 GT3R. He shared a
19:08
picture of the GT3R show car as well as that 2025 Corvette ZR1 that was used to
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test at the Nurburg Ring and then ran the 233 mph top speed run at Papenburg
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in Germany. What he says in his Instagram post was the race car is certainly cool, but getting to listen to
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many of the team members talk about the process of going 233 mph, the fastest ever by an American car manufacturer,
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was incredibly impressive. Tommy continues. He says, "The Corvette production team has a very similar
19:35
feeling of the races I've been part of. short deadlines, fast thinking, and using all available people and tools to
19:41
squeeze every last bit of performance out of the car. I think it would have been very cool to be a fly on the wall for that meeting. Obviously, Corvette
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team has had some pretty exciting achievements in 2024, and already 2025 is looking even more brighter. You've
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got the Corvette ZR1 finally entering production, so good things are going to happen. But again, I think this is a great meeting where they could all kind
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of get together and talk about everything they accomplished. I'd love to go to one of those meetings. That'd be awesome. Yes, it would. Buddy, let's take our
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Thanks once again for listening and watching Corvette Today, the show that talks about everything Corvette.
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I'm your host Steve Garrett. With me is Keith Cornet from Corvette Blogger, my partner in crime every other week. If
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you want a deeper dive into any of the stories that we cover, you can always go to corvette blogger.com. In this final
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segment, we cover the fun side, the lighter side of Corvette. Keith, a 1978 Corvette is being donated to an
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automotive program at the College of Southern Nevada. Man, how cool is that? And who's donating the car? Yeah, this
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is actually even a little bit of a cooler story. You know, we've gotten to the point where cars, you know, like the new Corvettes are so different than the
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classics. So much so that it kind of takes somebody with a different skill set to fix those problems that an owner
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might have. There's a guy named Ken Goodrich. He works for an air conditioning and plumbing company out in Las Vegas. He purchased a 1978 Corvette
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at Barrett Jackson and then donated it to the College of Southern Nevada's automotive program which will allow
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students to learn how about fixing some of these classic cars as well. The really cool part is once the students are finished with the car, it'll be
25:03
given back to Goodrich, they'll sell it at another Bear Jackson auction and then the proceeds of that car will go back to
25:08
the school. So really cool little program there. and they've got a picture of, you know, all these students gathered around the older car. And
25:14
sometimes, despite we see the new cars as the end all be all and something great. You know, those classics are a
25:19
lot of fun to work on. And you go from a lot of computerized equipment to just knowing basics about carbburation or
25:26
points and plugs and things like that. Good to see these students getting another look at a different way to do a
25:31
career in automotive repair. Ah, the good old days. Points, plugs, and condensers. Keith, there you go. Also, buddy, let's compare
25:40
the brand new ZR1, the C8 ZR1 that's coming out next year. We've already got some comparisons going on. Like, there's
25:46
a new Aston Martin called the Valhalla. It's going to be a million dollar car and it's,64 horsepower, too.
25:54
Yeah. Where did we hear that figure from, Steve? 64. It really sounds familiar. Yes.
25:59
It's interesting because we've had a couple of new hypercars come out. We had the McLaren and the Ferrari. Both are
26:05
million-dollar cars. Now we have Aston Martin coming out with their own. This is a mid-engine sports car called the Vajala and it's a hybrid. So it features
26:12
the AMG base twin turbo flat plane 4 liter V8 which makes 817 on its own. But
26:18
then it's got three electric motors to give it a total of 1,64 horsepower. And again, like you said, the biggest
26:25
difference between our car and the Vajala is obviously the price. We don't have a figure yet for the ZR1, but if
26:30
you're going to be spending about a million dollars large on the Vajala, quite the comparison there. Again, we
26:36
got to see how these cars do on the track and that's one of the reasons why we're excited to see some of those stats come out for the ZR1 last week as well.
26:42
Good stuff happening there. We just need the pricing and then be able to get on to ordering in February. I hope we get pricing in like February
26:48
or March for the ZR1. I can't wait for that stuff. I'm betting it comes in January. I think they got to give us a little bit of lead
26:55
time to freak everybody out. I'm sure. That'd be awesome. Either good or bad, we don't know yet. Exactly. Right. This is also a cool
27:02
story, Keith. The National Corvette Museum is going to have a Richard Prince photography exhibit next year.
27:07
Exactly. Author, historian, and Corvette Racing photographer Richard Prince was just inducted into the Corvette Hall of Fame last September. And now the NCM is
27:14
going to be doing a new exhibit based on his photographs. They'll have more than 40 of his images on display in 2025.
27:20
They're going to be on different surfaces and backgrounds and they're all going to be framed. The exhibit is called Speed Captured: The Photographic
27:26
Works of Richard Prince. And that's going to open on Friday, March 7th, 2025. So, we'll get to actually see it
27:31
when we're up there for the NCM Bash in April. I'm looking forward to that. As a matter of fact, a little bit of a preview for
27:36
next week's show. Ryan Ikler, the director of marketing and communications for the National Corvette Museum will be
27:42
on Corvette today next week to talk about everything that's going on next year at the National Corvette Museum. He
27:48
talks about the Richard Prince exhibit. So, make sure you check that out, put it on your calendar, and Keith and I will
27:54
both see you at the NCM Bash. Also, Keith, US News and World Report says the
27:59
2025 Corvette wins a head-to-head battle with none other than the 2025 Porsche
28:04
911. How about that? Yeah, not only was it just the overall winner, but it kind of trounced the
28:10
Porsche in all these different categories. Here's just some of the words or phrase that we've taken from this article. Well, they call it the
28:15
Corvette a luxury sports car bargain with its accessible pricing, fantastic performance, comfortable interior, and
28:21
generous storage and added that its extreme personality might not be for everyone, but it's undoubtedly a solid
28:27
choice in this segment. We've been going head-to-head with Porsche for years and we've kind of been the stepchild a
28:33
little bit in those comparisons, but the way the C8 has come on and the different models now, Stingray, Z06, Ray, and
28:39
coming up the ZR1, we've got a real story to tell and I think places like US News and World Report are seeing it.
28:44
Take that, Porsche. That's right. That's right. Also, this is your story here. This is really cool.
28:51
Keith just got on his brand new Hysteria Purple E-Ray some Wheelcraft wheels that
28:56
are chrome. They look fantastic. You know, I started thinking about these bright chrome wheels. Obviously, we have
29:01
Wheelcraft as a sponsor as well on Corvette Blogger. I just have always love chrome wheels. I think sometimes
29:06
black wheels, they work well on certain cars, but then also I see a lot of photography and they're just kind of
29:12
lost or black circles on a car that you doesn't really stand out. So, I really like the shininess of the chrome. Call
29:17
me an old man, I guess I am, but I like chrome. So, I actually ordered these wheels just like any other person would
29:23
do. Wheelcraft sent them to me. Actually, you know, you could send them all over the place. You can send them to your dealership. You can send them to a
29:29
tire dealer. You can have them done at the Corvette Museum at the Motorsports Park after you do an R8C delivery. And
29:35
even your dealership can do them during PDI. With these wheels, I had to have them down here. So, they sent them down to me. I took them to Stingray
29:41
Chevrolet. Took about a couple hours and $400 later. I walked out with some beautiful chrome wheels on my other day.
29:48
I took it out to one of the parks that I do a lot of photography with my cars and the sun was bright on them and they just
29:54
shine and bling like no tomorrow. So very excited to see these wheels. I I I feel like the E-Ray is my own now. You
29:59
know, I had the standard pearl nickels as I was waiting to do the wheel exchange. And I was really starting to like those wheels, but now when I see
30:06
the chrome, it's just like night and day. The difference, you know, I told you, Steve, I like to go out to the
30:11
garage at night and say good night to my baby before going to bed. And when I turn on that light, I can see the chrome
30:16
shining just under the LED lights in the garage. That was always something that I really like to see. There's nothing, I
30:22
think, as beautiful as chrome. And then against the purple hysteria, it shows up really well. There's no mistaking it.
30:27
The -ray wheels again, I love because the stim spokes allows you to really see the brake calipers and those really
30:34
large ceramic brakes from Brembo. It's a great look. We got a bunch of pictures up on corvette blogger.com. I'm going to
30:39
be sending these out on some social media sites as well. But yeah, Wheelcraft came through. I love those guys. Ed, thank you so much. Really made
30:45
my car my own. I can't talk enough about them. You know, and if chrome's not your thing, they actually do a black chrome
30:50
as well, which kind of alleviates that problem of your wheels just kind of looking really dark. Picks up all the different angles and stuff. It's still
30:57
dark, but yet you get that light reflecting off of them. So, the PVD black chrome might be an option for people that like that black wheel as
31:03
well. Yeah, the black chrome wheels are simply gorgeous. And then you can say, "Hi, I'm Keith Cornet and I like chrome wheels."
31:10
I was doing a little some mixing like I like chrome wheels and I cannot lie. That's right.
31:16
And our final story, we want to remind everybody at Mikum CMI coming up on Friday, January 10th, it's Corvette Day.
31:23
Keith and I will be there. We'll do a meet and greet, walk around and look at some of the Corvettes that'll be on sale at Mikum CM.
31:29
Exactly. And we actually have a special promo code for tickets. Even if you can't make it for Corvette Day, if you
31:34
use the vet day, Ve T- A, Vet Day, as the promo code, regular tickets are $30.
31:41
You can get them for $20. Actually, right now I was on the Mikum CMI website for tickets. And if you buy them right
31:47
now, I think they're even 25% off. So, they're like at $22 or something like that. But use our promo code, you'll save a little money there. And we'd love
31:53
to have you on Quadet Day. We got some people joining us. Some other organizations will be out there as well. We can't wait to see you at Mikham
31:58
Cassini 2025. That's right. Looking forward to it. Keith, happy holidays. Happy New Year,
32:04
buddy. We will talk again in 2025 and we'll do a best of from 2024 on our next
32:09
news and headlines. Sounds great, Steve. We see you guys out there. Make sure you keep waving to your fellow Corvette owners. If you see my
32:15
car, you're going to need sunglasses cuz those chrome wheels are pretty bright. Thanks again for listening and watching
32:21
Corvette Today. And be sure to tell your family, friends, and other Corvette enthusiasts about the Corvette Today
32:26
Show. And thanks to our sponsors, Wheelcraft. Want to dress up your Corvette with bright chrome or black
32:31
chrome wheels? Visit wheelcraft.com to learn about their advanced PVD chrome finishing. They can refinish your wheels
32:37
or offer a wheel exchange for most models and it comes with a 5-year warranty. Visit wheelcraft.com today or
32:43
call 833639-4231. Soul Performance Products at sulp.com.
32:50
The official performance exhaust of Corvette today. Seioa Corvette at ciocorvette.com.
32:57
E5 wheels at e5wheels.com. Intellisense at intellisense.com.
33:03
Also, Aerolari wheels. Get $100 off your purchase with the new promo code CT111
33:09
at aerolari.com. Racing sport concepts at racingsports.com
33:14
and Hendrickk Chevrolet in Kansas City at cheviusa.com. Thanks for checking out Corvette Today
33:21
on podcast and YouTube. If you'd like to contact Steve with ideas for Corvette today, you can email him at stevegared
33:28
djgmail.com. Garrett has two Rs and two T's. That's Steve Garrett DJ@gmail.com.
33:36
Also, sign up for email notifications at corvettetoday. CK.page.
33:42
Follow Steve and the show on social media on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and threads at Steve Garrett
33:49
DJ. Thanks again for listening and watching Corvette today. [Music]