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CORVETTE TODAY #261 - We Begin Year #6 Of The Show With News & Headlines, Mid April 2025
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Jul 12, 2025
CORVETTE TODAY #261 - We Begin Year #6 of CORVETTE TODAY with Corvette News & Headlines, Mid April 2025 This CORVETTE TODAY show marks the beginning of year #6 for the show! Your CORVETTE TODAY host, Steve Garrett and Keith Cornett from CorvetteBlogger bring you the latest Corvette news & headlines from the past two weeks! Here are some of the topics that Steve and Keith cover...
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0:00
[Music] Welcome to Corvette Today, the show that
0:06
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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is brought to you by Wheelcraft. Want to dress up your Corvette with bright chrome or black chrome wheels? Visit
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833-84-5334. You can listen to Corvette today on all
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Call corvette today and you're connected." And be sure to visit the Corvette Today website. It's corvette.com.
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Corvette Forum, welcoming Corvette enthusiasts from around the world. All right, my friend, this is the big one.
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This news and headline show begins season number six for Corvette today. And as always, my friend Keith Cornet
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from corvette blogger.com is with me every other week. Keith and I keep you current and uptodate on what's happening
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with America Sports Car. Keith, welcome back to the show. Six years of Corvette today, buddy. Wow.
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Glad to be here. And that's amazing stat, Steve. And you know your numbers of the episodes, they just keep getting up there. First it was 50, then 100,
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then 150. Now we're like 250 something, aren't we? Yeah, it's like 260 plus episodes, including the Corvette Today extras that
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are out there and available on corvette.com. That's amazing. Congratulations again. I'm I'm just glad to be part of it.
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Thank you, buddy. And thank you for being part of it as well. Couldn't do it without you. Let's start the show,
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Keith, like we always do. Let's get a production update from the Bowling Green assembly plant. All right, here we go. So, it's actually
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been an interesting couple of weeks at the Corvette assembly plant. They just wrapped up two weeks of downtime during the second half of March for what they
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called project improvements, but following that reopening, we've been watching the number of Corvettes produced, and it's been very, very low.
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Now, these are reported as publicly finished. So, it could be that there's cars that aren't ready to be publicly
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finished yet or signed off as finished. It could be something going on behind the scenes. Our friend John at the
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Mid-Engine Corvette Forum is actually reporting that the reason for the slowdown could be a lot of new training that's going on, which we also find
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interesting as well. Mhm. Since the plant reopened at the week of March 31st, we've seen just 80 new
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Stingrays, 58 Z06s, and 33 E-Rays completed, there's definitely something going on there, but it's actually okay
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with us because the less cars they produce right now are less cars out on dealer lots. We'll talk about inventories coming up here. Our total
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counts right now, the VIN count stands at 10,763 for Stingrays, 5,192 Z06s, and 1,887
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E-rays for a total of 17,842 Corvettes produced for the 2025 model year. That sounds good. And to expand on that
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topic, Corvette inventory fell by 21% over the twoe shutdown. Yeah, you know, it's a simple formula.
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With no new Corvettes being built for those last two weeks, the cars pretty much shipped out of the plant, so dealers weren't receiving any new
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inventory as a replacement. What we were showing about a week before that shutdown was there were around 5,700 new
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Corvettes available. This is according to the Chevrolet live inventory tracker. Of those 5,700, there was a,000 that
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were 2024s that were still remaining. So then after the twoe pause, that number has now dropped. We have 4,532 Corvettes
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available and just 753 of those cars are remaining 2024s. Dealers are definitely
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moving through their inventories, which is great. You know, obviously they've been discounting them pretty aggressively. And then we've had that
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Costco incentive. I've talked to a bunch of people that said they've been able to take advantage of it. That's $27.50 or
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$3,000 and you can even use that on new Corvettes ordered as long as you just take delivery. That incentive ends
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before the end of this month. So, make sure that you take care of that. That's really good. We also have some good news about ZR1's. Their orders move
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to 3000 status and we're looking at production maybe around May, aren't we? Yeah, that was the rumor. I'm still
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waiting to see some TPWs, but I feel pretty strongly it's got to happen actually in May is what I'm thinking. We
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talked to multiple dealers last week. We were actually out at Spring Mountain when this was all going down. Found out that dealers did have their orders go
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back to 3000 status as well as some dealers were able to secure some highwing that carbon fiber arrow for
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their customers. We don't really know how many of those were available. They did it backwards accordingly from what
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we knew before where before the dealers would just get the number and then work off of that. This time it appears like
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they were asked how many they wanted, how many they could live with, and then Chevy's tried to accommodate them that
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way. It's really kind of a crazy order cycle. It lasted over a month to get this done.
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Just to give you a little bit more backstory on it, dealers got this letter from GM saying this is how it's going to be done and then it was done completely
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different from that letter. Not only is communication bad, but a lot of times it's incorrect as well. We
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realize that was a special thing that they were trying to do, but it just wasn't handled correctly. kind of leaves a bad taste in people's mouth about
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trying to order a car and having to jump through all these hoops. Yeah, definitely. The weird thing was this is a headscratcher. No allocation
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for the second month in a row, but we did have a big change in shipping cost though. Yeah, that's right. Again, first order
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cycle was supposed to occur last Thursday with allocations coming. Second month in a row, we didn't get any allocations in March and now no
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allocations this time around. Talking to again to our dealer friends, it's almost unprecedented for them to go two months
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without being able to place any new orders. Yeah, the dealers we talked to believe that the production that's going to be happening are existing orders that
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were accepted previously. We had one dealer that had a Z06 with a Highwing that was accepted back in October at
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3000 status. He's been sitting there. He just got his TPW maybe a week ago. Oh my gosh. They have these cars in the hopper. Not
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sure why it's taken them so long to build other than maybe it was a delay with that carbon fiber arrow. But for
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customers who want to custom order a car, the wait continues. The other little sliver of news we got last week though was that Chevy is now raising
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their delivery freight charges once again for new Corvettes. These are the mandatory fee that is charged for the
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car to be shipped either to your dealership or to the NCM for R8C deliveries. It was $16.95. Now they're
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charging $18.95. We believe that this is due to the new shippers that have come on. You know, they're using a consortium
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this time as opposed to just one shipping company, right? So, there could be some additional costs there. We're not sure yet, but I think
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this is the second increase in the last year and a half. I think the 2024s got raised. They were $9.95, then went to
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$12.95, and then they're 1695, now they're 1895. Well, if we haven't confused everybody
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with enough numbers yet, here's another number. Yeah, here it comes. Yeah. Chevrolet delivered over 6,700
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Corvettes in the first quarter of this year. Yeah, that number was actually down 20% over the time frame before. In 2024, the
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first quarter sales were 8,576. Okay, that's a huge number. That's a big
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decrease. In first quarter, we've seen it before where plays a role and things like that. The last time we saw sales
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this low in first quarter was 2021. There were 6600 Corvettes delivered, but that was because they couldn't make
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enough of them. Yeah. What we're seeing now is obviously there's dealers that have plenty of stock available. There's
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plenty of discounting available. So, it's really set up to be a buyer market. So, if buyers aren't taking advantage of
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it, kind of shows you that there's some other concerns available. Again, it could be weather. It could be financing costs, financial markets in turmoil, but
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it also could be, you know, we had the leak of the 2026 interior, so maybe more people are staying. You know, I'm gonna
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wait for the 2026 because I like the new interior. Yeah. Again, it could just be something that's going on. We'll have to keep a watch on
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it. Of course, second quarter results will come out in July. Hopefully, by then, we'll have all the news about what's 2026, start and end, that stuff.
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We're watching it. This was not a good sales report at all. No, we'll keep an eye on it, though, and we'll report back to everybody. Our
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final story in the news section, Keith, and I'm so so excited about this. Acting CEO of the National Corvette Museum,
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Bryce Burkelo, has been named the CEO. We found a CEO named David Hill, but he
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resigned. And Bryce has now moved from interimm CEO to full-time CEO of the
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National Corvette Museum. Yeah, this is great news. So, what happened was maybe it was a week ago over the weekend, we started getting
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reports. So, David Hill was named as the new CEO and president of the NCM. And I think he started the second week of
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March, maybe the third week of March. So, he'd been on the job for a little bit. He comes from a company called Mark, which is M-K,
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and they are a classic trucks restoration parts company. They do like the wood for classic truck beds. You know, think of old Chevy trucks. They
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also do Ford trucks and all that stuff. Apparently, he closed his business late March abruptly. Just came in and told
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the employees, "It's done. We're closing it down." And it came out that there's all these customers still out there that
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had back orders for parts. they paid $2,000 $3,000 for and now they're wondering if they're ever going to get them. Those customers actually started
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getting very vocal. We started seeing messages left on posts at the NCM's Facebook page. We started getting some
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emails ourselves from a couple people. So, we looked into a little bit further and found out that the NCM was aware of
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these allegations as well. It only took a couple days, but he actually submitted his resignation and the NCM moved very
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fast and approved Bryce as their new president, which frankly he should have been named a year ago. They did this head hunter contract once again to find
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this guy and it took almost a year to do so. I can't imagine the money that was spent to hire him and bring him in. In
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his defense, they kind of went south after he was hired. I'm so glad they moved fast to get rid of him. Bryce is
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going to do a fantastic job. Bryce has been with the museum for 15 years. Came up, I believe, through the delivery program, but knows that museum 100% in
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and out. We have great faith in the work that he's going to do in the future. Yeah, Bryce is good people. He is a
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friend of the show. He is the obvious choice and was my first choice all along. Congratulations, Bryce. We are
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so, so excited to have you as president and CEO of the National Corvette Museum. All right, buddy. Let's take our first
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break. When we come back, it's Corvette Racing and Corvette Rumors on the beginning of the sixth season of
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or just give them a call 833-639-4231. I'm your host Steve Garrett. With me is
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my partner in crime Keith Cornet from Corvette Blogger. We are marking the beginning of season number six of
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Corvette today with this show. In the second segment, we always cover Corvette racing and Corvette rumors. In the
16:50
racing department, Keith, it looks like Alex Sims and Jordan Love are added as drivers for Joe Motorsports for the GTWC
16:57
Asia schedule. Tell me more about that. Yeah, so JMR announced earlier last month that they are switching from the
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Mercedes AMG platform to the Corvette Z06 GT3RS. They're going to do two cars in the GT World Challenge Asia series.
17:11
Think about it. Now we've got the GT America. We've got the GT series in Europe. And now we're covering Asia.
17:17
This is just part of that global domination tour with the C8 and of course now with the Z06 GT3R where
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they're just spreading out these cars and now they're getting into multiple series that we've never raced in before. So that's really great news. And then
17:29
the other part of that strategy is with these teams will have access not only to the whole Pratt Miller Motorsports setup
17:34
and all the information, the tech support and all that, but they also have access to the drivers. Alexander Sims, a
17:40
Corvette factory driver. He's going to be partnering up with them. He's driving the number 99 Corvette Z06 with team
17:46
president Jeffrey Ibraham. And then Jordan Love is an Australian. He returns to the team for the number 66 Corvette
17:52
with Prince Abu Baker Ibram. So, Love previously raced with JMR in multiple series, including the GT World Challenge
17:59
Asia, Intercontinental GT Challenge, and the Asian Lemon Series. And both Sims and Love have driven together for JMR
18:06
last year's 24 hours of spa. They've got a very well constructed team here. Their roll out of this car was pretty awesome.
18:12
They did a couple videos they put out there. So, now with these factory drivers now joining them, they're going to be a contender in this Asian series.
18:19
We're excited to see obviously Corvettes continue to spread out by utilizing Prattton Miller Motorsports and factory
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drivers. They should definitely have a leg up on the competition. That's good news. That's really good news. Let's also talk about the Corvette
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racing at Long Beach. Yeah. So, we have two Corvettes racing over the weekend at the Long Beach Grand Prix. We're recording this before then.
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It's exciting race though. We're pretty fired up. DXDT is the return of Robert Wickens and he's paired up with Tommy
18:43
Milner. And then also AWA racing, the number 13 car with Matt Bell and Oay Fedani. Long Beach is always a fun one
18:50
to watch. Hopefully we have some really good headlines to come out of it. But regardless, that 100minute sprint is
18:55
just one of the best moments of motorsports, I think. Yeah, it's a lot of fun to watch. I love that. But that's kind of like what the
19:01
top of my list for every racing season. It's always fun to watch Long Beach shows. It is. And you know, coming off of
19:06
24-hour race at Daytona, 12-h hour race at Sebring, it's very digestible. Yeah. You know, you can watch it in an
19:13
afternoon and not feel worn out. Yeah, exactly. That's well put, buddy. Well put indeed. In the rumors category,
19:19
this was a big one. GM's UK advanced studio design showcased a new Corvette
19:24
inspired concept car. Maybe it's the C9. You know, I was trying to think back of when the last time we saw a concept car.
19:31
I want to say it was that Stingray that was used in the Transformers movies. You know, the sideswipe.
19:36
You're right. I couldn't think of anything else. There's obviously cars that have come out and show cars, but as a purely concept car, this one is pretty cool.
19:43
People definitely talking about C9. GM will tell us that this was just a design study. It will not be produced, but the
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photos, man, are really awesome. There's a video they put out as well that showcas some of the advanced design features like active arrow and then
19:56
using airflow through the car as opposed to running over the surfaces. It actually runs through channels in the
20:02
surface. Right. Really good stuff there. Now, like you said, this comes from GM's new UK advanced design studio. They've
20:08
already got locations in Detroit, Los Angeles, Shanghai, and Seoul. And so, this new studio will actually focus on
20:14
Europe and the European market. They do work for Cadillac, too, which is trying to regain some presence there on the
20:19
continent as well. Good to see this. We were a little skeptical when we first heard of a concept car, but boy, this
20:25
one, I think, has a little bit of legs to it in terms of just being able to dream about what might be. Yeah, it looks really, really good. I
20:31
love the concept car. That's awesome looking. Yes, it is. Our final rumor, Keith, our buddy Ken Lingfelter over at Lingfelter
20:37
Performance Engineering, they're already working on a twin turbo for the Corvette, I think. Yeah. So, they've done some
20:43
supercharging and then their recent project was taking the LT2 from the Stingray and -ay and then growing that
20:49
out. So, it's a 7 L 427 cubic in. In that capacity, it makes 700 horsepower.
20:56
Now, what those engine building geniuses are doing next is now they're going to put twin turbos on that. They're
21:01
thinking that the package will deliver between 1,100 and 1300 horsepower total. So maybe ZR1 killer. Maybe too soon to
21:07
say that, but Lincolnfelder really knows their stuff. So I'll be able to see what they come up with. It won't be cheap because just the 7 L 427 for the LT2
21:16
that can run as high as $35,000. So adding the twin screws to it and all the other stuff, it's going to be a monster
21:21
engine for sure. It's going to be a monster indeed. Well, buddy, let's take our final break. When we come back, it's the lighter side of
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I'm your host Steve Garrett. We are marking the beginning of year number six of Corvette today. My partner in crime,
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Keith Cornet, is with me. By the way, if you want a deeper dive into any of the stories that we cover, you can always go
25:05
to corvette blogger.com. In this final segment, we always cover the fun side of Corvette. Keith, our first story,
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Indianapolis Motor Speedway presented the 2025 Indy500 festival cars with a
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few Corvettes in there. Yeah, pretty cool stuff. This is always something we look forward to every year, the Indianapolis 500. Obviously, a
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recovering Hooser spending many years in that state. So, back in November, we actually learned that the Corvette ZR1
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would be the official pace car of the Indianapolis 500 for 2025 and a celebrity driver is going to be Hall of
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Famer Michael Strahan. The reason for the switch is because Fox Sports is now going to be carrying Indie Car racing,
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which means they also get the Indy500 as well. That's how we found out. Usually, it's May 1st before we find out what the
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pace car is or any kind of design. Now, like you said, we have the 2025 festival cars that were shown lined up on the
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famous Speedway, and we counted at least 12 Corvette Stingrays at the front of the pack. This is a unique design. The
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convertibles in arctic white with black roofs and the cells and black wheels with a unique green racing stripe. I
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haven't seen a green racing stripe before. Doors show off that familiar Indy500 race details with a green
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graphic. And then the iconic Indy500, the wheel and wings logo is displayed on the back quarter panel behind the
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wheels. Nice. These are all Z-51s. Each of them had a numbered Indiana license plate as well. The festival cars are actually used by
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like track personnel and VIPs along with some of the individual race car drivers who get a tool around town with these
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cars for the month of May. Also included not only just the 12 Corvettes, but a whole fleet of Silverados as well. Most
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of those were probably going to be used on the track or doing track duties in the month of May and then beyond that.
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So once the race is over, these Corvettes are generally sold to local Chevrolet dealers who then sell them as
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pre-owned, but they come with all the providence and documentation that shows they were officially used at the twin 25
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Indy500 event. A lot of times collectors will be looking for these cars, and it's pretty cool because you get all the documentation that shows what number it
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was or maybe who drove it. Pretty cool there. That's really cool. I wouldn't mind having one of those. Uh-huh. And we've seen collections of
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not just Indy500s, but IND500 pace cars and festival cars. Some people are able to go through the process to recreate
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their own based on the pictures. We see a lot of people doing custom stripes and things like that to match their pace
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cars and the festival cars. Yeah, that's really cool, too. Also, this is a headscratcher. Thieves reprogrammed a C8 Corvette and drove it
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away. How did they reprogram the car? Yeah, you know, it used to be to keep the Corvette safe, you just lock the
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doors. But now, thieves are using this high-tech weapon that not only unlocks the car, but allows them to start up and
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drive away. And the way they do it is most of the time we see this for cars parked outside. They're able to use a
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tool that reaches out to the owner's key fob, connects it to the car, and once
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they have that pairing, they can reprogram to another fob, and then they use that fob to unlock the car, get in
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and start it up, and drive away. I guess the best way to defeat this are what called Faraday bags. Faraday bag blocks
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RF singles from escaping or connecting to the key fob and they're just 10 or $15 on Amazon. So, it could just be for
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people that have to park their cars outdoors. And I'm not thinking like if you don't have a garage, but even if you're traveling, if you're at a hotel
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or something like that, right? Get a Faraday bag and keep your fobs in there overnight so that no one can connect to it and then do this
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reprogramming thing. We see this more and more, and this is where we've been also seeing some dealers being hit. It
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just seems to be a rash lately of Corvettes being stolen. Seems like a lot more than normal. And this is one of the
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tools and reasons why people are able to do this reprogramming in just 60 seconds flat. Gone in 60 seconds is not just a
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movie. It's real life. Yikes. This is not good. Faraday bags. Got to get some of those. Obviously,
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this is good news. The National Corvette Museum was nominated by USA Today on their 10 best awards.
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Yeah, this is for best attractions for car lovers. And this is something they do annually. And not only do they
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nominate these, but then people can go out and vote for their favorite establishment. You can vote early and often. I think you can vote several
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times a day. We have the link up on Corvette Blogger. Of course, you can see it also at the Corvette Museum or go to
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USA Today, the digital edition there. I think we got second last year, so it'd be good to reclaim that top spot again.
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I think this is like the sixth time that we've been nominated for it, so we definitely want to do a great showing for our beloved NCM museum.
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Absolutely right. Our final story, this is kind of monumental as well. Keith Cornet went to Spring Mountain for the
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very first class and had a blast with Mike Ferman. Yeah, had a blast. Of course, our friend
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Jeremy Wellbourne was there, Ken Berg, Bill Lucan, some great people. So, we are the very first class. There was five
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of us and they paired us up with a Stingray class for all the classroom stuff. Oh. But we had -ays for our cars and then
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when anything was specific, the Stingray people would go out and do course stuff outside and then we would be in the classroom for our -ay stuff.
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Okay. The stuff that we learned was fantastic, though. Of course, you do all the great exercises like the ABS braking
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and emergency stopping, going 40 mph, hitting the brakes on wet pavement, and then having to move over a lane or move
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over to the left or the right to avoid some sort of contact. And, you know, those kind of exercises really set you
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up for all the track events that you do. On the track, - fantastic. One of the things is we ran the 1.5 mile track. We
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ran in the charge plus setting always on. It robs a little bit of horsepower, but on a little or track like that, you
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get all the benefits of having a charged battery and the way the -ray just pulls you out of the corners and gets you going. It's amazing. And the stability
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of the car is also amazing. One of my very favorite events was the wet figure 8. Oh, yeah.
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You turn off everything and then we basically were just skidding around, you know, doing this figure eight pattern on
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wet pavement. But with the all-wheel drive, I was channeling Cody Buckley with having that wheel turned one way.
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The car is going another way, but yet it's going the way that I want it to because of the all-wheel drive. Yeah. But then they do the fun thing or they
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do the non-f fun thing. They put it in the weather mode and you can't spin that car out for nothing. The stability controls, weather mode, and they said
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actually they call it the no fun mode. They said if you got like a teen driver or something like that, just put it into
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weather mode and it'll keep them out of trouble and keeps the car as stable as possible. That's cool. Well, then one of the other
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things that we did was obviously the autocross. I was very excited about that. I actually won my class there.
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Mike Ferman does not participate. He might have been faster because he's just been doing this quite a bit, but I was able to take down Jeremy, which felt
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pretty good because Jeremy and Mike on the track on the big tracks. Those guys were fast. And Mike Ferman's very fast. He said his best time was 120 around the
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north track was where we were on. Wow. Meanwhile, I think Jeremy's was 121. My best time, I think, was like 132 or
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something like that. I was pretty slow, but having only done it a few times, I was just working at my level and not
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those guys that had been there half a dozen times. Mike, I think, was there 45 times now. Wow. He's got great experience. But the
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autocross is where the really shined as well. Understanding the assignment, you floor it, you use the gas to get you out
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of corners as opposed to the brakes just because that all-wheel drive. Again, I think my time was 28.3 something. That
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actually beat the record for the Stingray time. So, the -ray obviously was faster than that. I don't know what the record for the Z06 time was, but I'd
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like to find that out as well. Yeah. All in all, the -ray is a great car. While we were there, they just got
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another shipment. I think four or five more cars just came in. Wow. So, expect to see the -ray classes
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growing. And if you're an owner, you've got to get out there and do Spring Mountain. Not only just for the classes, but the whole atmosphere, the clubhouse.
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They've got all these amenities coming online. They've got these little mini houses being set up out there. They've got a go-kart track. They've got a lake.
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So much stuff to do out there. And when we were out there, the temperatures were like only in the 60s. It was very mild and just an enjoyable week to spend out
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there at Scream Mountain. So, highly recommend it. Fantastic, buddy. Congratulations. That's awesome. Well, Keith, thanks for
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being back on Corvette Today, year number six. Here we come, buddy. Absolutely. And we see you out on the streets. Keep waving. And
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congratulations again, Steve. Well done. Thanks again for listening and watching Corvette Today. And be sure to tell your
32:50
family, friends, and other Corvette enthusiasts about the Corvette Today Show. And thanks to our sponsors,
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DJ. Thanks again for listening and watching Corvette today. [Music]