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CORVETTE TODAY #273 - Corvette News & Headlines, Early July 2025
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Jul 12, 2025
CORVETTE TODAY #273 - Corvette News & Headlines, Early July 2025 We just celebrated our country's Independence Day. And CORVETTE TODAY is ready with another huge News & Headlines Show! Keith Cornett from CorvetteBlogger joins your CORVETTE TODAY host, Steve Garrett, and there is no shortage of topics to discuss, even around our American Independence Day. Here are a few of the topics that Steve and Keith will discuss this week… 1. Chevy's live inventory shows that there are more Z06's on the ground than Stingrays 2. New Z06 combo packages for aero, brakes and wheels available next year 3. GM tells dealerships that they cannot build all the ZR1's submitted for 2025
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0:00
[Music] Welcome to Corvette Today, the show that
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talks about everything Corvette with your host Steve Garrett, lifetime member of the National Corvette Museum,
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president of the Corvette Club of Kansas City, Missouri, and radio disc jockey at the number one radio station in Kansas
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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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right, my friend. It's time for our postol Corvette news and headline show with my buddy Keith Cornet from corvette
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blogger.com. Keith is with me every other week and we keep you current and uptodate on what's happening with
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America's sports car. Keith, welcome back to the show. How is your Fourth of July, buddy? Hey, Steve. Great to be here. No, I had
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a great Fourth. A little bit soggy here in Florida, but all is good always when we're talking about freedom and independence. And of course, that always
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just rolls into our discussions about Corvette. So, let's get to it. Let's start it off like we always do with a Corvette production update from
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the Bowling Green assembly plant, buddy. Absolutely. Of course, the Corvette assembly plant was closed last week and
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will be closed again this week for the annual summer holiday. The plant is expected to open on Monday, July 14th
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again. So, no production for the next two weeks or so. This was expected. The current count of bins includes 13,144
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Stingrays, 7,825 Z06s, 2,886
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E-rays, and a whopping 65 ZR1. Steve, I went through this time and said, you
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know, I always give these numbers, but I said, you know what? I want to see the percentage now because we have changed a little bit of how production is working.
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So, the percentage right now is 55% of all 2025s are stingrays. The Z06 is 33%.
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The -ray is 12% and now the ZR1 is 0.2%.
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We have a total of 23,920 Corvettes built so far for the model year. And of course, it ends Friday, August 1st with
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the 2026 is starting up on Monday, August 4th. I think three more weeks once the plant returns and opens for
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2025 production. Also, I saw Oh my gosh. I saw GM is now telling dealerships
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they're not going to be able to build all the CR1s they committed to for 2025. What's up with that?
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Yeah, you know, we've been watching the production numbers and they've been very slow. You know, this is a ramp up and Chevy's always said ramp up is very slow
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and deliberate. Their problem was the calendar now. They had 310 orders to build. They just finished number 65. So,
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building two or three a day is not going to get to 310 in 15 days or so of production left. What happened is what
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we expected. They reached out and said to customers, "If your order is at 3,000 or less, you are not going to get a car
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for 2025 and your dealer will have to resubmit your order for a 2026." We had heard that some orders that advance past
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that 3,000, like 3100. Those seem to be okay. I haven't heard of anybody over 3,000. It's just 3,000 or people that
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didn't have TPWs yet. We have a new model year that we're going to be heading into. So, these people are going
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to get slightly different equipment than they thought they were going to get. And then also, there's a price increase. prices went up by $7,100 between the
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2025s and the 2026s. So, that's a big ouch for some of those customers that will have to resubmit those orders. The
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good news is I'm hearing that GM is going to prioritize these rollover orders, get them in right away, not
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going to have to compete for allocations or anything like that. It's going to be done first and then they'll go into the regular 2026 allocation process. The
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other issue though is the price increase. It doesn't look like there's any price protection because it is a new model year. So again, very unfortunate
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for those customers who thought they had an order placed only to get bumped next year. It just seems to be how C8
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production has gone with these new model rollouts and especially the high-end demand cars always seem to be causing
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consternation and heartburn for General Motors. Yeah, the good thing is is they're going to get the new interior. I know it goes
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up $7,100, but they're getting that brand new interior with the three screens. I've never subscribed to the
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fact that oh this is going to make the 25s more rare because you do have all that new equipment on the 2026s and
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maybe in 2530 years people look at those 100 ZR1s that are built and say wow very rare very exclusive but yet the 2026s
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have all the new equipment on them. So I think it's kind of a wash in the long run. Exactly. Also it showed that Chevy's
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online inventory we've got more Z06s on the ground than Stingrays. I think that's a good thing isn't it?
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Well again somebody has to buy those Z06s. We saw what happened was people stopped buying the Stingrays. Of course,
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there was a lot more of them out there than the Z06s, but we've been diving into these tracker numbers from Chevrolet.com and they really just gave
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us a great snapshot of what the market is. The numbers are a little bit over 4,000 new Corvettes on the ground last
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time we did this. And it's not completely accurate because some of those Corvettes on the ground are sold orders. The other thing that we look at,
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not only the 2025s that are out there, but the remaining 2024s. We're down to now just 218 or so remaining. Those cars
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are almost gone. We're getting ready to have leftover 2025s once the 2026s start. We did break down the inventory
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numbers. The number of Z06s on the ground was bigger. There was 1720 Z06s
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compared to the 1,523 Stingrays and actually 826 E-rays based on the
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percentages. Z06 is now making up 42% of available inventory. Stingray is at 37.4
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and the -ray is at 20.3%. The other thing I did, Steve, was I went to the websites of McMulan and Sioka Corvette,
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two largest Corvette dealers in the country, and to see what they had available. McMullin's got 189 new
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Corvettes in stock. Wow. With 131 of those being Z06s. They have 23 Stingrays
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and 35 E- Rays. Meanwhile, Sioka's inventory is a little bit more balanced. They had 29 Z06s, 32 Stingrays, and 29
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E-Rays for a total of 90 vehicles in stock and ready to go. Huh. There are a lot of cars that are out there and that
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Chevy live inventory tracker is a great way to find maybe a car that matches you. Then you just have to go dial in
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for dollars and see if that car is actually available in stock and ready to go. You could actually find the car that you're really looking for. And best of
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all is because it's already built and on a dealer's lot, you could actually save quite a bit of money. I think the McMullen had a lot of those Z06s at 13
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to $14,000 off. Nice. Some good deals out there. Yes, sir. That's awesome. Also, Keith, I saw that
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GM delivered over 5,800 Corvettes in Q2. How does that stack up with everything else,
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man? Steve, that's a 37.9% decline from the same time in 2024. Ouch. Think about that for a second. We
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haven't seen a quarter like this as low since second quarter 2020 when that was during CO. So, you can imagine what
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we've been seeing here. But again, these numbers were expected. We had the Corvette assembly plant closed for several weeks. We know that when they
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first started back up again, production was very low as they were prioritizing those wide bodies over the Stingrays.
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Another factor is that Chevy took no additional C8 Stingray orders since February. So, anybody that wanted to
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order a new Stingray was kind of forced to either go off the lot or, you know, just waiting. And I think the third factor is people are waiting and they're
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waiting for that 2026 maybe with the new interior. So, yeah, it's a decline. We're going to have to follow this to see how it goes because they've got
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production back up going again. I think the last chart I saw, they build 180 over the two shifts, which again is a
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very healthy number. But who's going to be buying these Z06s? Who's buying these E-rays? So, we got to pay attention to
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that. Maybe we'll get some new marketing efforts from Chevy. Gave them some incentives. That was one of the things that we actually had in second quarter
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was that Costco incentive, which seemed to do pretty good. Yeah, we need a little bit more of that, a little bit more excitement. But again, a
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new interior should go a long way. Hopefully for 2027s, we might see a new car. That's cool. Also, we saw new combo
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packages for the Z06. There's arrow, there's wheels, and brakes, aren't there? Yeah, they raised the prices on the
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Z06es. We're going to talk about that in a minute. But what they did was they came out with a way to actually help
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people save some money when bundling these required packages. What we found out, these three new combination
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packages, pretty much exclusive for the Z06. The first one combines the Z06's carbon fiber wheels and brakes. When you
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order a carbon fiber wheel, you have to go with the J57 carbon ceramic brakes. Those are required. This package
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actually offers an automatic discount based on having to order the two separately. Okay. The packages run between 16,000 to
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17,500 depending on which of the three carbon fiber wheels that you choose. But you're actually going to save anywhere
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from $5,000 to $7,000 by bundling those two together. The other two packages are
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basically arrow wheels and brakes. Pretty cool there. If you go with the carbon flash painted arrow, the three
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packages range from 24,995 to 26,495. They include the arrow, the carbon fiber
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wheels, and then the J57 ceramic brakes. And it just depends. You're kind of mixing and matching. You know, you can
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go the carbon flash wheels, the visible carbon fiber wheels, or the visible carbon fiber wheel with the red stripe. That's how the three of them are
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packaged. They just go up. Okay. The third package is for those with the visible carbon fiber arrow, and then you
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can add your wheels and brakes to that. So again, you're going to save anywhere from $5 to $7,500 or so. Nice to see
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Chevy do that because they did raise the price on the Z06, I think like $5,600. So it does help in the long run.
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Yeah, it's kind of a nice trade-off for sure. Also, Keith, carbon flash Stingray wheels are going away for 2026. We got
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the addition of the arrow and the combination and everything with the brakes and the wheels, but these wheels are going away, aren't they?
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Yeah, this is for the Stingray. You know, a couple weeks back, we talked about they were going to get a new base wheel for the Stingrays. These were the
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five split spoke design. Previously, they had the open spoke, which are kind of like the little bit of a twist on
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them. The split spokes are very nice. And the new base wheel is going to come in pearl nickel, no longer that painted silver.
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The other one that's going away now is the carbon flash wheel with the machined edge, okay, in the five open spoke
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design. Now, there's going to be no more of these five open spoke wheel designs, which if you look back at the 2024
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production, made up 47% of all Stingray wheels. So, this is a pretty big change to get rid of these two wheels. But
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looking at what they have offered, there's still three different wheel designs and nine different finishes for the Stingray that'll be offered for
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2026. So, plenty of choices there. And again, like I said, if you find something you don't like, get the space wheel and go see our friends at
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Wheelcraft. They'll gussy it up for you in a number of different finishes and colors. Yeah, absolutely right. And our final
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story, Keith, in the news department, a court descertifies the 8-speed transmission class action lawsuit. Tell
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me more about that. Yeah. So, for years and years and years, there's been these different lawsuits over General Motors
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8-speed automatic transmission. It was in the C7 Corvette. It was in the Camaro. It's in the Silverado. All kinds
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of GM products. Customers would say that it would shake and shutter at high speed. Sometimes it would lurch and be
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real jumpy at lower speeds. Even if they got them repaired, they would still come back with that issue. So, there's been
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all these different lawsuits going on. Last August, all these lawsuits were certified together as a class action
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lawsuit. And now with latest ruling from the court of appeals voted 9 to7 to break it up again. They said there's
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just too much complexity. They said 26 statewide subclasses, 59 separate state
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law claims across the country. Now they're going to have to look and seeing if they can reertify it as a different
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kind of class or if they're going to have to just break it up and do different ways. I don't know how they're going to do it, but it looks like GM is
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kind of dodging a bullet on this one. If you remember the other lawsuit that's been going, the class action lawsuit has been over the wheels, the Grand Sport
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and the Z06 wheels, right? They actually came out last year, remember, and said, "Oh, by the way, if you did actually have to put out some money to fix some
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cracked wheels, maybe we'll pay for it depending on who you got your service from." So, they did offer to do some
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money that way, but this transmission suit was still way up in the air, and people still very unhappy about it.
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Yeah, definitely. All right, buddy. Time for our first break. When we come back, it's Corvette racing and Corvette rumors
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my buddy Keith Cornet from corvette blogger.com. In this second segment, we always cover Corvette racing and
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Corvette rumors. Keith, let's start with racing and talk about racing at Watkins Glenn. Yeah, this is a big race for us.
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Corvette Racing's number three Z06 GT3R with Antonio Garcia and Alexander Sims. They actually finished second in class
19:24
at Watkins Glenn, but that finish moved them into first place in the GTD Pro Championship standings. That's really
19:30
great news for us there. They've had a couple podium finishes that have really started to rack up some points for them.
19:35
The number four Corvette actually had their best finish of the year as well. They finished in fourth place in class with Tommy Miller and Nikki Catsburg.
19:41
The next race for these teams in IMSA is actually this weekend. The Chevrolet Grand Prix is up at the Canadian Tire
19:46
Motorsports Park in Canada. That's July 11th through 13th. Looking forward to that. Yeah, me too. Let's get to rumors now.
19:52
Keith, are we going to finally see a Nurburg Ring time for the Corvette? I know that they're trying to beat the Mercedes AMG1 track record. I'd love to
20:00
see a time from the ring. Yeah, it looks like it. You know, because reason why we're talking about this is they actually put out a video
20:05
showing a car on the Nurburg Ring. They've never done that before. They always go over there, they always test. They never announce their testing. We
20:12
only find out because the spy photographers on the side of the track are capturing photos and putting them out. This time they actually are
20:18
promoting their visit there with the speculation of everybody believing that a time is coming. They had the three
20:23
cars there. They have the Z06, the ZR1, and the ZR1X. The video they actually showed was the yellow ZR1X that we've
20:30
seen at the track. The two ZR1s are black and red, and the two ZR1Xs are the yellow and the purple. That's how we're
20:36
keeping everything straight there. Hoping for times out of all three cars. We have to imagine that they'd have the ability to run all three cars on the
20:42
track. The interesting thing is with the ZR1 ZR1X now going for more than $200,000, we're really talking about a
20:49
different class of customer. A customer, you're not a $70,000 Stingray customer. And renting out a track for a $70,000
20:55
Stingray is a lot different than a $200,000 ZR1 or $250,000 ZR1X. It's a
21:01
different customer base. They want to see what their cars do against the competition. And face it, it is the ladder board. It's where people look and
21:08
see how cars do for us. I think we were talking about the AMG1 or as Harlon called it the AMG one less because it
21:14
has one less horsepower than the ZR1. That time is 6 minutes and 29 seconds.
21:21
Now, that is the top production car lap record. They are actually in a different class than the other cars that we race
21:26
against. So, we're in sports car class. They're in the super sport car class. So, the two times that I would like to
21:32
see are obviously the Mustang GTD. Their time is 6 minutes and 52 seconds. And then the Porsche 911 GT3 RS, their
21:39
Nurburging time is 6 minutes and 49 seconds. If we can beat that GT3 RS, get
21:44
us down into the low 640s, maybe the high 630s, that's a major win and be
21:49
very happy with that. A time of 6 minutes and 43 seconds or faster will actually get us that fastest production
21:55
sports car record. Again, AMG1 is in the super sports car record. Now, most people won't make that distinction, but
22:01
it is how it is on the Nurburg Rings website. So they have the different classes, that's the times, and that's what we're looking for. No ring record
22:07
yet, but we're hoping that hopefully one comes out really quickly because there's a whole lot of people that have a lot of
22:13
anticipation for this. Yeah, absolutely. Right. Fingers crossed for sure. And also, buddy, this is not a
22:18
rumor anymore, but the 2026 pricing is out, isn't it? We did get prices. We did see some
22:24
increases. And as we've been saying, you know, there is a new interior that has to be paid for, and that bill is coming
22:29
due starting with the 2026 Corvette. Chevrolet. Now, this is a number that kind of floored me, but they are now
22:34
offering 22 different configurable trim levels across its four Corvettes, the Stingray, E-Ray, Z06, and ZR1. And each
22:41
of those levels is getting a price increase. One of the other factors we saw is the delivery charge is going up another $100. It was $18.95. Now, it's
22:49
$19.95 simply to have your car shipped from Bowling Green to your dealership. And even if you do RHC delivery, still
22:56
got to pay for that $19.95 charge. Here's what we're seeing. Stingray prices are going up by $1,700.
23:03
-ray prices are going up by $1,700. Z06 prices are up by $5,600.
23:09
And the ZR1 prices are being increased by $7,100. Pretty big chunks across the
23:15
board there. Again, with the Z06 being the most produced car right now, that's going to be interesting to see how that carries through in 2026. We'll probably
23:21
see more Stingrays then coming up because of the new interior. We did actually get some other pricing as well.
23:26
Z-51 performance package and the ZER for those are staying the same, but the
23:32
Z06's uh Z07 ultimate performance package is going up from $89.95 to 9500.
23:38
And the ZTK performance package for ZR1 was 1,500. It's now $43.95. So big jump
23:44
there. But with the CTK package, you're going to get that new J59 outcome brakes, those big 10 piston rotors.
23:51
That's a great trade-off there because those J57s are 9000. You can imagine what they would be a standalone price
23:57
for the ZR1. They didn't give us that price as a standalone for ZR1 yet. We're actually waiting to see that. And again,
24:03
no prices yet for ZR1X either, so stay tuned as well. Gotcha. All right, buddy. Time for our final break. When we come back, it's the
24:10
fun side of Corvette that's on deck next here on Corvette today.
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The National Corvette Restore Society is a proud sponsor of Corvette today. Are you already an NCRS member? If not, you
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27:29
I'm Harlen Charles and you're listening and watching Corvette Today with Steve
27:34
Garrett. Hey, 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 my buddy Keith Cornet from Corvette Blogger. If you want a deeper dive into
28:10
any of the stories that Keith and I cover, you can always go to corvette blogger.com. In this final segment, we
28:16
always cover the fun side of Corvette. Keith, we had our first dino pull with our friends from Paragon Performance on
28:22
the new ZR1. That was exciting. It was. And you know, there's always this certain life cycle that a brand new
28:28
model goes through. It's like, oh, the first delivery, the first cross country drive, the first dyno. This dyno stuff
28:35
is really interesting because, of course, we're talking about 1,64 horsepower is what Chevy claims. So,
28:40
what does it really make? Paragon Performance got to be the first to put a 01 on the dyno. Their best run showed
28:46
1,028, but the difference there is that the dyno measures that power at the wheels. This was a really big deal in
28:53
terms of it looks like the ZR1 is overperforming. They're always cautious on their numbers. Even though they said we gave you everything, they're always
28:59
very conservative. So, we're certain that there's more power in this engine. And people are going to find it, especially people like Paragon
29:04
Performance. Again, the dyno was 1,028 horsepower at the rear wheels, and their torque rating was 839.
29:12
We saw another ZR1 on the dyno. This one was posted on the Corvette forum last week. They did 1,03 horsepower on the
29:18
dyno and 834 footlbs of torque. So again, better than what was expected. Perhaps there is some sandbagging. Maybe
29:25
we just need to see some additional dyno numbers. Maybe some different dinos and how they compare. It does look like the
29:30
ZR1's overperforming on its power. Thank goodness. I like that. Also, we spotted a Roswell Green Z06 in Detroit,
29:37
didn't we? Yeah, we've seen a few pictures of these now. I've been lucky to see the car in person. I've actually kind of come
29:43
around to it. It really has some nice gold flake undertones. I saw it inside the plant where it had the bright LED
29:49
lights on and it really came alive there. But outside, I think it's a really cool color. We saw another
29:54
picture of an E-ray down in Bowling Green in the sun and he had on the polished wheels which again look very
30:01
nice as well. So yeah, I'm coming around to this color in the shade, in the dark. It's a little bit more flat as we see with the rapid blue and the orange
30:07
colors kind of turn flat with no sparkle when the lights are out. This color might actually do all right. We've been
30:12
sharing it here and there. We still see some negative reactions to it. That's the problem, I think, with green because it's just one of those colors that's
30:18
very subjective. People want to see a bright green. They want to see a dark green. They want to see bowling green metallic again. People will have their
30:23
favorite greens and that's what they want to see. But this one I'm starting to really turn around on. Nice. I hope we have one at Corvettes of
30:29
Carlile. We'll see it there maybe. Yeah. Also, this is really cool. Our buddy Harlon Charles made a special
30:34
appearance at the National Corvette Museum and he was the host for an RHC delivery. Yeah. So he actually was just there as a
30:41
guest of Michelle Sadler. She's a member of the Midi Corvette forum and she has VIN number 25, the Corvette ZR1. She
30:47
invited Harlon and his friend to come down and kind of be a spectator. But while he was there, he actually got
30:53
present to duty as a temporary delivery host for the RHC program. Of course, he knows quite a bit about the cars and how
30:58
they function. So he went over all the finer points with its new owner. And the funny thing was Betty in the library gave him a staff shirt with RHC on it
31:05
and he had an official name tag. It was actually good to see Haron back in action again and we'd love to get him out to some of these future car shows as
31:12
well. Hopefully we'll see him at Carile. Yeah, and there was some video about that RAC delivery with Michelle and her
31:17
husband. That was really, really fun. Yeah, definitely go check that out. This is a very cool story, Keith. There is some mystery buyer on Bring a
31:24
Trailer. This person has purchased 33 63 split window Corvettes and counting.
31:29
He's not done yet. No, he's not. He's actually spent 6.69 69 million buying these 33 cars
31:34
averaging roughly 202,000 per Corvette. Wow. And he buys other cars as well. But someone had noticed, you know, after
31:40
like his sixth purchase. Wait a second. This guy's buying up all these split windows. I've heard he's a dentist. I've
31:46
heard he's up in Maine somewhere. I don't really know. But people have said, "Oh yeah, they've been through his collection. It's just a family car collection. He's not selling them. He's
31:52
not spinning them off anywhere else." He actually has purchased a total of 125 cars total, including a 50s pink
31:58
Cadillac, which is one of the featured cars. When you find something you love to collect, go for it all the way. Like you and your carbon fiber, Steve.
32:05
Yeah, but you know what, Keith? We're clearly in the wrong profession.
32:11
Yeah, that's right. Also, Randy Popes wrote the new ZR1, and I think he liked it a lot, didn't he?
32:17
Yeah, he does. This was an article he wrote for Grassroots Motorsports, which is kind of a racers website and
32:22
magazine. He really talked about the difference between the C70R1 and the C80 ZR1, and says it's really easy to drive.
32:30
He says the way the C8 drives, it makes the C7 feels like it's on ice. Puts you under power, the more power you get, the
32:37
worse it gets. Is what he said about the C7 ZR1's. With the C8 ZR1 though, he
32:42
says it hooks up extremely well having all that weight over those rear wheels. He calls it outrageously muscular car
32:48
and it feels very controllable and especially even at lower speeds, it's just a nice car to drive. Racer Randy
32:53
Popes, sometimes he's been a big Porsche fan over the years. Sometimes he hasn't quite given Corvette its due, but I think he's really come around to it. I
32:59
think so too. Our final story, Keith, this is kind of interesting. There's new data on this ZR1. It shows their time
33:05
from 60 miles per hour to 130 miles per hour is less than 5 seconds. All I can
33:10
say is wow. Yeah, that's moving. I've never really kind of paid attention to these numbers before, but they're really
33:15
starting to come out. You hear a lot of people talking about them. And the reason why is because it's a real world number. Like you can't go out and get on
33:21
the street and say, "I'm going to go 233 mph in the new ZR1." Actually expect not to go to jail when you do that. But the
33:27
60 to130, yeah, you're eclipsing triple digits there. It really just shows how well the car delivers power and torque
33:33
and now the aerodynamics are affecting the car at higher speeds. An owner of a new ZR1 over on the Corvette forum had a
33:40
Draggy and he posted a time with the Draggy. So, it gives us really accurate results. He said 4.49 seconds for his 60
33:46
to 130 mph pull, which again is amazing. And I got some cars to give you an idea.
33:52
A Tesla Model S Plaid does it 4.71 seconds. A Ferrari SF90 Stradali 4.8 to
33:59
5 seconds. The Lamborghini Mollto 5 to 5.2 seconds. A Porsche 911 Turbo S 5.2
34:06
to 5.5 seconds. McLaren P1 5.5 to 5.7 seconds. And then I do have the C8 Z06
34:12
is 6.5 to 7 seconds and the C8 Stingray 7.5 to 8 seconds. So it's twice as fast
34:18
as the Stingray 60 to 130 mph pull. So think about that next time you're out there driving like a madman. Steve,
34:24
amazing. That's pretty cool. That's really fast. But to see that number and better performance than a
34:30
Model S Plaid, better than the Ferrari, Lamborghini, it's really a testament to what these guys did. Yeah, I'll have to start paying
34:35
attention to those numbers again for sure. Well, buddy, thanks for being back on Corvette today. We will see you again
34:40
in two weeks. Thanks, Steve, so much. Everything that we talked about here was on Corvette Blogger. We appreciate you guys coming. And if we see you on the roads, keep
34:47
waving. Thanks again for listening and watching Corvette today. And be sure to tell your family, friends, and other Corvette
34:52
enthusiasts about the Corvette Today Show. And thanks to our sponsors, Wheelcraft. Want to dress up your
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