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CORVETTE TODAY #70-Meet John Heinricy, Retired Assistant Chief Engineer For Corvette
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May 8, 2025
In this episode of CORVETTE TODAY, you'll meet the man affectionately known as "Heinrocket"! Your host, Steve Garrett, sits down with John Heinricy. John was the Assistant Chief Engineer for Corvette during the C4 and C5 era. Heinricy details the beginnings of the GM Performance Division, which he was the director of. Learn how GM started testing at the Nurburgring, how he became Development Manager for Corvette, and hear about the launch of the C4 Corvette and the development of the ZR-1! He also gives you a behind-the-scenes look at setting the endurance record in the C4 Corvette. Heinricy is known as the "Father of the Grand Sport". He owns C4 Grand Sport #1. You'll also gain insight on the development process of the Corvette and how long it takes to develop a new generation. It's a jam-packed episode! Don't miss this installment of the CORVETTE TODAY podcast. Website & Merchandise: www.CorvetteTodayPodcast.com Listen Here: https://adori.page.link/corvette-today Sign up for CORVETTE TODAY emails: https://CorvetteToday.ck.page Join the CORVETTE TODAY Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2718423201763136
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0:00
[Music] welcome to corvette today the podcast
0:06
that talks about everything corvette with your host steve garrett mc and dj at one of the largest corvette weekends
0:12
in the country corvette fun fest president of the corvette club of kansas city missouri and radio disc jockey at
0:19
the number one radio station in kansas city for over 40 years here's steve garrett
0:28
thanks for listening to corvette today the podcast that talks about everything corvette i'm your host steve garrett i
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midengincorvetforum.com also a shout out to canadiancorvetforum.com welcoming corvette owners from around
2:22
the world my guest on corvette today is an automotive engineer and a noted race car driver he's had a long and
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distinguished career at general motors serving as the assistant chief engineer for corvette and also the director of gm
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performance division he retired from general motors in october 2008 and he's
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a 2014 inductee into the corvette hall of fame at the national corvette museum
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he's affectionately known as hind rocket he's mr john hiranci john welcome to
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corvette today hi steve hope you're having a good day thanks for inviting me to your show it's a pleasure to have you
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on sir john let's talk about your beginnings with general motors talk about your college years because
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you earned a degree in mechanical engineering from south dakota school of mines and technology and you earned an
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mba at michigan state so you're a spartan then you started with gm in 1970 so talk about your career there in
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college and leading into gm and what you first did when you entered general motors
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all right starting out with the south dakota thing i was born and raised on a farm in south dakota nice and i finished
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my grade school high school there and then went to school at south dakota school of mines and technology out in
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rapid city south dakota being from south dakota and a farm kid you can imagine i was a bit isolated the whole time i was
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there when i got time to graduate from college with a degree and i started interviewing with companies it was like
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i left the small town farm and entered into the big time because this was going to mean moving to a place like michigan
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or some big city somewhere and have a whole different lifestyle so it was quite a huge change for me coming out to
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michigan i accepted a job with chevrolet engineering i was into cars all the time
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as a kid in high school i was very into cars never really had any money to have any significant car myself but a lot of
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my friends did and face it in the 50s and 60s that's what a lot of the young guys were interested in the whole car
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culture so i was very into it and just being able to then get accepted for a
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job at chevrolet engineering was like the holy grail for me at the time it was like everything i wanted to do since i
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was a kid was happening to me and it was pretty awesome experience it's like a dream come true wasn't it john it sure
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was and that led you into becoming an assistant chief engineer for corvette and then also the director of the gm
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performance division so talk to me about the transition and what cars you worked on in those positions all right
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transitioning from my start first at gm i started in the training program so i had a two-year training program after
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one year i had a military commitment so i left gm and went into the army i had a
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two-year commitment but with vietnam winding down i ended up only spending six months there and was able to then
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come back to gm in about 72 that would have been finished my training program
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my training program itself was pretty exciting because i had a stint out at the proving grounds for three months and
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that was incredibly enjoyable the kind of cars that you run across think about 1972 what you might run across there's
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still a lot of 60s stuff supercars that are kind of hanging around there and i was able to latch onto a aluminum big
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black corvette the z01 corvette although they called it a zl1 it actually had a 454 aluminum engine in it rather than a
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427 so they were already doing some wacky stuff at that time and that was quite the piece to be able to get in
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into and drive when i was out at the proving grounds so just a lot of stuff like that that really gets your blood
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really boiling you can't hardly help but when you run into that kind of thing absolutely right and speaking of the
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proving grounds your forte was in ride and handling there at milford talk about the performance packages that you
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develop for like the citation it's domination in fcca racing yeah i started
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out as a test engineer there doing a few different projects but then the new gm front wheel drive program the x-car was
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just kind of in its inception at that time and i was asked to be a test engineer on
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that program i started in testing what we call mule cars which were cars that
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were cut up at the time we were using vw rabbits if i remember right and we were sectioning them and making them longer
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and getting the wheelbase and track with right and all that and putting the powertrains in them and then testing
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them on the roads at the proving grounds and this was mostly for durability and that kind of thing but that's how i got
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started and then as the program progressed and there became some prototypes being built of the chevy
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citation i moved from being a test engineer to being a development engineer and as a
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development engineer specifically i was assigned to doing write and handling work there's lots of different things you can do in development you can do
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noise and vibration and temperature testing and acoustics kind of things for noise but i was fortunate enough to get
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into the ride and handling part of it and i really had never done any ride and handling work at all before doing that
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other than that i used to drive a lot and i was used to driving along as it turned out driving amongst other
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engineers at the proving grounds and even in high school it turned out i could drive pretty fast whether it was
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going in a straight line drag racing or driving around a road course of some sort i quickly found that i was pretty
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fast amongst all my peers even in high school without having a car of my own my friends would get a car
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that would be like a gto at that time ss chevelles if they wanted to drag race somebody oftentimes they would ask me to
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drive the car on the citation one of my friends bob decroff was the lead development engineer for ride and
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handling on the car and he worked on the standard suspension stuff and i was assigned to do the
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optional suspensions who would have been at that time we called them f40s and f41s f41 was a common name for gm
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suspension packages for the kind of handling packages on all the car lines i worked on those at that time the
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marketing group decided they wanted this kind of sport package for the citation and it ended up being called the x11 but
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all that was was a trim package on the car with an f41 suspension and that came
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out in 79 when the whole car came out and after we got that into production the chief engineer on the program asked
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me if i was interested in you know working on some kind of a performance version of it and i said yeah damn right
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that's awesome he kind of just turned me loose and i started working on it and i worked on suspension picking tires i had
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wheels built for it wider than anything we normally had used on cars by that time i got the engine group to come up
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with nho version of the v6 so they did a camshaft and compression and some other
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things to the engine some breathing things i came up with a package there i worked on a cold air package for it to
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fit that all in we needed an induction hood and so the body group did an induction hood for it needed some
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different transmission ratios so got those done just a whole variety of stuff kind of made a whole package out of the
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car norm schaller the chief engineer would stop out at the proving grounds every once while to see what i had and
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when i had one car put together that didn't even have the engine performance done in it yet he was just really
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excited about it he thought it was a really cool car so he asked me to just keep going we ended up getting the
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program approved and bringing it into production and i guess it would have been 1981. as the x11 which at this time
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obviously had some graphics but it had a lot more to it other than what was in the first one that came out in 79.
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gotcha now you started racing scca in 1984. talk about your entry into racing
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who got you going into it how you got your license and what car did you use to qualify right about when the x11 came
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out in 1981 this would have been 1980 ralph cramer who was the director of pr
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at chevrolet at the time called me up and said hey do you know that they're running your x11 there in scca racing
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and i said no tell me more about this and i was really quite unfamiliar with
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scca racing at the time but he told me some of what was going on and then i contacted scca and found out everybody
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in the country who was running a citation and it was in the class the ssb class of scca and i found out there were
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a number of people around the u.s that were running them turns out there was one guy down in dayton ohio a doctor his name was dr bob
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mcconnell and since he was the closest one around i gave him a call just found out his number gave him a call and started
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talking to him about the car and he told me what he was doing and then i just started started kind of advising and
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helping him with the chassis and making the car more competitive for him and he ended up winning the national championship with it in that year wow
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that's amazing during your 38 years at general motors john you've worked on a number of cars cadillac firebird camaro
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cobalt hhr and obviously corvette you also served as the test driver for the
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performance division talk about those programs the goals for each of those cars when we started the performance division
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that was around let's say 2000 i think it was at the time okay the idea there
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was to show the world that gm could do more than they were doing with passenger cars and that kind of thing and that we
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really wanted to show that the goals were straight out we wanted to show we were the best at doing performance
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powertrains we wanted to show that we were the best at doing performance vehicles so those were pretty lofty
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goals when you think about the competition at the time we'd done performance cars certainly but we hadn't
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done anything quite for that kind of a level that's the direction we headed off in one of our first projects was to do a
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performance version for cadillac prior to starting the performance division i
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knew jim taylor very well who was the vehicle line executive for the cadillacs his office was just a couple down from
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mine i was working on the corvette camaron firebird at the time he was responsible for the cadillacs and so he
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and i had kind of lunch time talks and that kind of thing about what he was envisioning doing with the cadillac from
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a performance brand i had already kind of had that experience with jim taylor and the cadillac before i got assigned
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the performance division even back then when i was talking to him i told him if you get to do this if you get this
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approved i want to do it for you lo and behold i ended up being assigned as the director of the performance division jim
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taylor obviously came right away and said i want to do a performance version of the cadillac cts
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so we headed off in that direction to do one our goals were plain and simple we
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wanted to beat audi and bmw and amg mercedes beat them at their own game in
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that performance luxury kind of car that was our direction and that's where we headed that's where we started with
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going to the nurburgring jim merrill who was that time working on he i think he just started working on the corvette he
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was working on the scs cadillac at the time and one of the other engineers ken morris who's now a vice president at gm
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was working on the cts production car because we started working on the performance car before the production
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car even came out and he was working on prototypes of the cts and he was running them over at the nurburgring because we
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all felt that that was the kind of dna you had to have in the car if you were going to do a performance car and try to
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compete with the bmws and audi's of the world we were going to have to do that because that's what they were doing they
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were over there every day of the week testing at the nurburgring so we kind of started a program of going over there
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and jim merrill was running the sts over there and he came back and said john you got to get over there and see what's
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going on and so i did i went over and i actually had a c506 that i had over
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there and i was using that card to learn the nurburgring and get my licensing at the nurburgring and just kind of get the
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groundwork going so we'd be able to test our performance division cars at the nurburgring and get that kind of dna
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into the car so that we can be competitive with the rest of the world and that's kind of where that whole thing started with us going over to the
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nurburgring and running over there and as a result we took virtually every car we did in the performance division part
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of its whole development and test plan was going to be going over to the nurburgring two or three times a year
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and developing something over here in the u.s that would be like the nurburgring because we couldn't spend
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the kind of time at the nurburgring that the guys in europe do because they treat that as their test track on a daily
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basis right well at the best we're going to go over there for two weeks and spend two weeks and come back and maybe go
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back for two weeks later in the year and that's a heck of a lot different than 16 or 18 weeks they're spending every day
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going out there and testing a number of their cars so we knew we had a big job in front of us very true john you've
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raced all over the world besides the nurburgring talk about the countries and the tracks that you've raced on and do
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you have a favorite would it be okay if i kind of go back to the start of my racing a little bit and work up for sure
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right i talked a little bit about the x11 citation and helping bob mcconnell down in dayton at that time there was
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also something going on at gm between the camaro group and dick gulstan out in
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california nick elstrand was very interested in racing camaros back when the 1982 camaro came out he had gotten a
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car from gm to do some chassis work on it upgrade work and that kind of thing and he ended up getting a deal to run
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the camaro z28 at nelson ledges at the 24 hour which is longest 24 hour longest
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day they called it at nelson ledges he got a car tuned it up and ran it at
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nelson ledges and won the race there now i had met him when he was coming to gm to get some engineering help on the
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camaro and do some development on the car getting it ready to race i had met him and he invited me to come down to
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the race and see what they were doing there and so i did as a result i got to know dick pretty well in 1982
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83 and then at the end of 83 i had been working on the mid-sized cars
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like the citation and the monte carlos and that kind of thing and in 1983 at the end of that i was assigned to be the
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development manager for corvette so as the development manager for corvette i had the group out at the proving grounds
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but dick gulstrand then kind of graduated he went from the camaros running in nelson ledges to where he
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wanted to run a corvette at nelson ledges and also run in some other endurance races and he had formed a
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partnership with tommy morrison to do that they came and talked to dave mcclellan who was the chief engineer of
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corvette at that time spent a lot of time with him and kind of got the ball rolling with them doing some development
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on the car and making it into a raceable car so i was working with dick gulstan and tommy morrison with their team they
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purchased a couple of corvettes c4s at the time and were doing testing on them getting them ready to run in endurance
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racing specifically starting at the 24 hour at nelson ledges i let them know for certain that i was interested in
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racing myself and i would really like to get into racing as a race car driver i think kellstrand advised me that
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obviously what i need to do is become licensed and i had no idea what it even took to get licensed in racing but he
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coached me to go to scca and learn about what the racing licensing would be all about and what i had to do what kind of
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schools and training i needed to do so i decided i was going to head down that path and that would have been starting
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in 83 and then i called my friend bob mcconnell down in dayton who had the x11
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and talked to him about getting a car leasing a car i didn't even realize this time but he had already purchased an 84
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corvette and intended to run it in scca so he was going to be driving the corvette in 1984
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getting it qualified for the scca national championships and he wasn't going to be using his x11 so he agreed
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to lease me his x11 citation and i used that x11 citation to go to scca racing
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schools using that car and doing the scca schools so that would have been in 1984 by may of 1984 i had qualified and
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got my beginner's license in scca tommy morrison and dick gulstrand were running
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the nelson ledges race they ran that i went to that and hung with them there and then the scca was starting a new
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endurance series for sports cars that was going to be starting in 1984 running two races one was going to be actually
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there were several of them the nelson ledges one was the first one then they were running a 24-hour mid-ohio and then
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they were running a i believe it was a 12-hour out at willow springs and tommy morrison and dick ellstrand had two cars
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to run at the last two of the races they had a couple test sessions invited me to the test sessions and i was able to
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drive the cars in the test sessions and they decided that they wanted me to drive as one of the team drivers on the
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84 corvette that was going to be running starting at mid-ohio i drove the 24-hour mid-ohio and then i drove the 12-hour
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ride at willow springs did a decent job at those two races and they asked me to be a regular part of their team which is
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going to be a three-car team starting in 1985 running the complete series of i think was 10-12 races in scca endurance
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racing at the time i entered into that and that's what really kicked everything off with race car driving was getting
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into that endurance driving in 1985. john i tell you what let's take our first break and when we come back we're
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going to talk more about your time with corvette we're with john hiranci on corvette today
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kansas and now back to corvette today with your
20:49
host and my husband steve garrett [Music] hey thanks for listening to corvette
20:55
today the podcast that talks about everything corvette i'm your host steve garrett with me today is hind rocket mr
21:01
john hiransi the retired assistant chief engineer for corvette and the director of the gm performance division in
21:08
segment number two we're going to talk about john's time with corvette john you became the development manager for
21:14
corvette in 1983 through 85 and then again in 1989 you were also the vehicle
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development manager for the c4 corvette talk about that job and how you got started in corvette well i had been
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working on the mid-sized cars up until that point one of my friends who was the development manager for the c4 corvette
21:34
was fred shasma and fred was leaving to go to another job and he talked to me about moving to corvette and doing that
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development job of course that was something that i hadn't even really thought about doing before that but as
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soon as he mentioned it it was like the thing i wanted to go do at the time there was nothing at gm other than that
21:51
if i were to pick something it would have been that the car was just about to be launched into production as the 1983
21:58
and a half 84 car right at that point was where i came in so a lot of the pre-work had been done but now there's a
22:05
lot of the work involved in getting the car launched and then all the what i'd call continuous improvement things that
22:11
you do to a car from year to year to make improvements and that sort of thing i could see with the car just coming out
22:17
if you remember right when the c4 came out there were a lot of complaints about its ride that it was super stiff riding
22:23
and so there were complaints about that from the press i felt the same way about it that the car was very stiff riding that obviously
22:30
had the credentials for handling that go along with that kind of a stiff ride but we knew we needed to do something for it
22:36
for the road so i went about redoing all the chassis for the 85 car both the base car and the optional f41 cars rick
22:43
darling was in my group doing ride and handling and i had people doing work on noise and vibration and all the other
22:49
things that are associated with developing a car and making improvements on the car rick and i would work
22:54
together quite a bit on the ride and handling and trying to get it moved in the direction that i thought the car should go and we started at that time
23:01
doing track testing which they hadn't really had enough time to do very much track testing other than right at the
23:07
proving grounds because of the availability of cars and that kind of thing when you're doing a new car prototypes are pretty hard to come by
23:14
they're very expensive and if you damage one they're not exactly replaceable so you've got to be really careful about
23:19
how you treat the cars and that you make sure they last through the program so we started doing a lot of track testing and
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working on the ride and handling and getting things really tuned up and really made some big improvements for 1985
23:31
along with the new engine that came for 1985 which was the tune port it had been the crossfire when it came out in the
23:38
first year 1984 right but then upgraded to the tune port in 1985 and then there
23:43
were improvements to the tune port almost every year after as long as that was in production we also worked on
23:49
getting the abs going for the 86 model year changed the engine in 86 had more power had aluminum heads put on it so
23:56
just that kind of stuff was going on every year it was really very exciting time at gm and the corvette group to be
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able to do those kind of changes year after year also you were on the team that developed the c4 zr1 talk about the zr1 for a
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minute yeah that was pretty exciting dave mcclellan who was the chief engineer at the time i'd have to call
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him a really big thinker really good at coming up with ideas and with furthering the mark he was really
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extremely good at that and he wanted to do what he termed have the king of the hill in corvette the zr1 back in the
24:30
very early stages of development of different powertrains for that car he was thinking king of the hill for the
24:36
car when it would come out with whatever powertrain it was going to be but back in the early days the engine of choice
24:42
at that time was well there were a couple of them one was the turbocharged v6 had a number of cars running around
24:47
with that and then the turbocharged v8 went from a turbo v6 to a turbo v8 and
24:52
then went from the turbo v8 test cars to this program to do an all-new v8 engine
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working with lotus to help with the design work on it and come up with this double red cam v8 which was what was
25:06
finally approved to go into production with so that was kind of how that developed along through the two or three
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years before the lotus engine project with gm powertrain came about and was
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approved to get the car into production in 1989 or 1990 was quite the program i
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can imagine and also that zr1 set three world land speed records and then the
25:28
standard corvette even set nine fia international speed records those are remarkable that was all a pretty
25:35
exciting time when we first started on the zr1 program with the double overhead cam engine the lt5 i was at chevrolet at
25:42
that time i had gotten my master's degree in business mba back in 1985 and
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when i got my degree then i was promoted and became a product engineering manager in the chevrolet marketing division for
25:55
the first couple of years i had all the mid-sized cars like the monte carlos and
26:00
malibu's at that time the citations the celebrity i was trying to remember the other midsize car so i was responsible
26:07
for those cars at chevrolet and then around 1987 switched to being the product
26:14
engineering manager for the camaro and the corvette which again was a really exciting change for me to go into that
26:19
area and that's about when the zr1 was really starting to get kicked off so then at that time got involved in that
26:26
program and the intention was to bring it out in 89 it was a very aggressive program we weren't sure we could get it
26:32
done in 1989 or 489 and ended up putting quite a few cars into production in 89
26:38
the decision was made by chevrolet not to sell the 1989 cars we actually had a
26:44
program to build these cars in 1989 i think we could build something like we thought we'd build 400 of them in
26:50
89 if you remember in 1990 there was a whole new interior coming in the car and
26:56
chevrolet kind of got cold feet about bringing out a zr1 at the end of the year only having a few hundred cars and
27:02
then having a whole new interior in 1990 they kind of decided that wasn't the right thing to do from a marketing
27:09
standpoint they really wanted to go all out and just have the car come out in 1990 with the new interior as a product
27:15
engineering manager over at chevrolet i couldn't quite come to grips with that i thought what could be better than having
27:20
only 400 cars that are 385 horsepower king of the hill type cars like this
27:26
right to me that just seemed like wow this is an opportunity and to chevrolet it was like how are we going to sell
27:31
these cars it's just not enough they're used to doing this big program around having a lot of cars and getting them
27:37
all in production and the dealers all have them and they're doing big marketing programs with it and to be honest they didn't know how to do it
27:43
they just couldn't come to grips with that and they said we really just need to get it to where we have a normal production we're building as many of
27:49
these as we can and do a regular introduction on it so that was where we headed then instead for 1990. once we
27:56
got into production dave mcclellan was thinking about okay what are all the different things we could really do to
28:01
promote this car and he got this idea of doing some kind of an event let's say that would really make a real splash for
28:08
the corvette for the zr1 in particular about that time i had been racing for a number of years and my co-driver was out
28:14
in california stu hayner and he and a marketing guy out in california had had a discussion talking about the world
28:20
speed records and doing a world speed record he called me up and asked me about something like that and i thought
28:26
well i'd have to look into this i don't know very much about it but it sure sounds like a cool thing to do i had a
28:31
discussion with dave mcclellan about it and he got really excited about doing something like that stu hayner was
28:36
flying to detroit to go up to mossport for a race i was going to be racing with him in a 24-hour race in corvettes with
28:42
tommy morrison when he flew in i said let's drive up and we got a hold of tommy morrison and
28:48
said let's go up there together let's talk about this so we discussed it a lot that weekend at the races and tommy was
28:55
all excited about working at getting sponsorship forward and that kind of thing he had mobile sponsorship on the
29:00
cars for racing that year in the endurance racing he talked to mobile about it he talked to eds about it he
29:07
talked to delco about it it's a good year so he it was all about drumming up the sponsorship and meanwhile dave
29:13
mcclellan got really excited about it and so part of what we were doing at gm then was making sure that we thought we
29:19
knew the car well enough to know that it would be able to set these records but we really wanted to kind of do the nuts
29:25
and bolts work ahead of time to understand for sure that we'd be able to go out and actually do these records
29:31
because it was going to be a really big deal to get it done it's not the kind of thing you like to fail at when you start down that road so we got going with it
29:38
the car we actually used for it was a car that had been used for some of the development for the zr1
29:44
doing engine development what i'd call an engine mule and so since the car was now in production we no longer needed
29:51
that engine mule so that car became then the lead car that would be used for setting this
29:56
record and we went through a certain amount of preparation for it obviously a lot of safety preparation but also
30:03
looking at what it takes to go 24 hours and to really optimize it with the average speed for 24 hours because
30:09
that's what this record was about it would be the average speed that you would run for 24 hours running straight
30:14
for 24 hours right the average speed would be the record that you would then set
30:20
so we wanted to make sure we would minimize the number of pit stops we would have to make for fuel maximize the
30:26
potential for everything being able to live for the engine the transmission the drivetrain everything being able to live
30:31
for 24 hours without a problem because if you have a problem that amount of time you're working on the problem gets
30:37
factored in and your average time goes down pretty dramatically when you're not running so we needed to make sure that the car would continue runnings we did
30:44
things like installed a 45-gallon fuel tank on it wow made sure that we understood what kind of rpm we wanted to
30:51
run so talk to the engine group about what they felt like was the right rpm range to run the engine in for 24 hours
30:57
and so made sure we had the gearing right and the speed right to be able to run in that range went and ran the event
31:03
the rest is history it just worked out about as well as you could possibly want it to work out we had one problem right
31:11
towards the end of the run where the fan shroud on the radiator came loose from
31:17
the attachment and they started rubbing against the radiator hose lower radiator hose and wore a hole in the radiator
31:24
hose and while the car was running we had telemetry on the car which was almost unheard of at that time to have
31:29
telemetry on race cars and test cars but one of the things that we were monitoring was the cooling temperature
31:35
and immediately the coolant temperature started to increase and spike up and we called the driver in immediately
31:41
found that the problem and made the repair and continued running but it actually
31:46
took the average speed down about i think a mile and a half an hour just from making that repair of the pose that
31:53
was for the 5 000 mile record we actually set the record for 5 000 kilometers took about 18 hours
32:00
the 24 hour record took obviously 24 hours as we're completing the 24 hours
32:05
i'm on the phone with dave mcclellan telling him what we've done he says well what can you do next why don't you just keep running
32:13
we've already been running for 24 hours we're thinking oh man i don't know and i talked to tommy morris and he said
32:19
well what's the next record jim minnicker who worked at gm was very tuned into the record he knew him very
32:24
well and he said well the next record is 5 000 miles well how long did it take us to do that and said well it'll take us
32:29
about 30 hours so we'll have to run another six hours i was on the phone with dave and he said keep running keep
32:35
running if you can do it keep running amazing and so we did we just kind of within a half hour of doing the 24 hour
32:41
we had made the decision we're going to keep running and go for the 5 000 mile record and so we did that we kept on
32:46
going and ran the 5 000 mile record it was during that last six hours when we had the problem with the radiator hose
32:52
that reduced the speed for 5000 miles but even the reduced feed was way above what the previous record was that's
32:58
amazing so we set a new record there with that what a great story john hey also you're known as the father of the
33:04
c4 grand sport as a matter of fact you own grand sport number one you still
33:10
have it yes i do talk about that and the development of the grand sport let's see i became the assistant chief working for
33:17
dave hill now dave hill replaced dave mcclellan as the chief engineer in about i think was 91 or 92 and we had the 92
33:23
car come out with the lt1 engine but at that same time the work was really
33:28
starting to get going on the c5 car which was going to come out in 97 and you'd think well that's five years
33:34
doesn't take five years to do a new car does it well the actual engineering of the car is more like a three-year thing
33:41
but for a couple years before that you're working on what you're really going to do for the car what's the
33:46
engine going to be what's the chassis going to be what's the structure going to be so you kind of figure out what all that's going to be and then once you
33:53
have the basics understood then you kick it off and you actually engineer it for production and that's what takes maybe
33:59
three years and the time before that you're working on mules and development cars and testing out different ideas and
34:05
trying to narrow down what it is you really want to do so dave hill who is the chief engineer
34:11
for the corvette he took on doing the c5 and working out those issues and then
34:16
working the engineering of the car gaining into production and left me with doing the c4 car starting and i believe
34:22
it was 1992. so from 92 on to 96 i was
34:27
going to be responsible for the c4 car he would do the c5 well as we're getting to the end of the life of the c4 i would
34:33
say this was about in 94 because you're always doing the engineering you know the 95 car comes out early in 94 the 96
34:41
car would come out early 95 right so somewhere a year before that we were looking at what we might do for the last
34:47
year of the car that would be special and the program manager of the car at that time was russ mclean so dave hill
34:54
and i both worked for russ mclean and russ was like the overall manager of corvette he really wanted to see there
34:59
be something special for the 1996. he got chevrolet very interested in doing
35:05
something special for it so he came to me and said heinrichy what did we do that's special for 1996.
35:12
so we talked to design staff john cafero was responsible for the design work on the c4 and talked to him about it and he
35:19
had this idea of doing a grand sport look-alike car and he had some designs done on paper did some drawings for it
35:26
and came up with this blue with the white stripe kind of thing russ and i talked to powertrain about if there's
35:32
anything special we could do on an engine and they came up with the lt4 possibility of doing something like that
35:38
for the car and then amongst other things the zr1 is out of production so let's use the wheels and tires from that
35:44
car and make something on the grand sport that would utilize that and so all of this stuff just kind of comes
35:50
together obviously you gotta work with chevrolet marketing hopefully they have a warm and fuzzy about the car that it
35:55
would make a cool car for the last year we set about getting that car engineered and into production
36:00
and that was another really fun project we actually that same year we did the
36:05
collector edition car there's kind of an interesting story if you want to hear it about how that one came about sure
36:11
working with chevrolet marketing they had some concern about the grand sport
36:16
in that it was kind of a different car from what the dealers were used to having to sell there it was going to be
36:22
different looking it was going to be low volume because of the paint scheme and the stripe on it working with the plant
36:28
we determined the most we would be able to build would be a thousand of them with the engine and the other parts in the car was going to get to be a little
36:34
on the expensive you know they're used to a special edition maybe being a thousand dollar kind of thing and here we're looking at something that's going
36:40
to be several thousand and not have very much volume and they were really interested in something that could keep
36:46
the volume of the car for that year too not just have a special edition that people would be really interested in
36:51
buying but something that would help to hold the volume for the overall car this was before 1995 but we were about to
36:58
come out with a couple new colors for 95 and one of them was this metallic silver which i thought was just an awesome
37:04
color on the car when we looked at the prototypes i thought this car is beautiful i talked to john cafaro and i
37:09
said john if we want something that's high volume for 1996. why don't we look at doing this grand sport which has got
37:16
more power and really got handling bigger tires and all that kind of stuff but it's low volume what if we did a
37:22
collector edition car that was a silver car and what would you do to that to make it look special and have it be a
37:28
really cool collector car is it just the color has got to be enough and he was very excited about that and wanted to go
37:34
the same way so then it was a matter of now let's sell that to chevrolet because this was going to be one of their signature colors for 1995 and here i am
37:41
going to chevrolet and telling them let's not do that for 19.95 let's save that for 96 and do a collector edition
37:47
and you'll be able to sell what at that time i probably said a pile of cars that's the beautiful car and you're
37:53
going to be able to sell a bunch of them so we built one of them showed it to them and they got real excited about it said okay we're going to cancel this
37:59
color for 19.95 we're going to make it a 96 and we'll call it the collector edition and do the badges and everything
38:04
and probably be able to sell a lot the dealers were excited about them and so that's the way it went forward we did both those cars from 1996 and 96 had a
38:12
surprising volume i mean everybody was really amazed at the last year of a car that's now been in production for 13
38:19
years and still be able to sell that kind of a volume in 1996 with a new car coming out the following year it worked
38:25
out really well for chevrolet they were really happy with it and obviously we got to have a lot of fun doing it very
38:30
nice what a great story john let's get personal a little bit i know that you're so dedicated to racing i mean your
38:36
nickname is heim rocket talk about what happened in the paddock at sebring in 1993. it's a great story okay i've got
38:44
to tell you now i've got to give you a little background here for this too okay in the 93-94 time frame tommy morrison
38:51
wanted to run the corvette with his team down at sebring in the 12-hour sebring and at the 24-hour in daytona we had
38:58
tried that before and hadn't been as successful as we wanted to be and we knew we had to do something kind of
39:04
special to be able to compete against what we were going to see at daytona in those classes and at sebring
39:10
we had done some arrow work at the wind tunnel at gm on race car parts on the c4
39:15
and so we had some knowledge about what would work there and i showed some of that stuff to tommy
39:21
morrison and he got excited about it said wow can i build some of these i'd like to build him so he kind of went off
39:26
to build some of those to be able to race him and i was at the same time thinking graphically you know if we're
39:32
going to do this grand sport for 1996 how cool would it be to take that appearance package and run it on the
39:38
race cars like this 94 95 time frame and have those be the race cars and this is
39:44
what the race car looks like with this blue color and this white stripe and the red hash marks on the fenders how cool
39:50
would it be to race those prior to the car then coming out as a production car in the grand sport we won't call it a
39:55
grand sport but we'd have it look like this and so i kind of ran the trap line with that at chevrolet and with
40:01
chevrolet pr because obviously they want to do a pr campaign around the 96 and a lot of times they're not interested in
40:06
having this exposed before it comes out because that's not going to help them to do their pr campaign they got on board
40:13
with and say that sounded really cool so we actually use delivery on those cars that looked like the grand sport for
40:19
1996 and ran it in racing and were successful with it and then that led into the car coming out in 1996 but that
40:26
kind of leads me back into 1993 when we're running at sebring i had gotten
40:32
engaged to rita and we were talking about the second marriage for both of us and we were talking about where we were
40:37
going to get married and what we were going to do and we talked about going down to maybe jamaica get married there
40:43
or something like that i was telling tommy morrison that we were going to get married somewhere around the race so
40:48
that we had to be careful about when we were going to be testing and that kind of thing because i was getting married sometime in that time frame and needed
40:54
to carve out the time to do that obviously and he said well why don't you get married down at the race and i
41:00
thought wow i don't know could we really do that he said well sure we could [Laughter] it's easy for you and i to say we could
41:06
but i have to talk to rita about this and see what she thinks about that so i talked to her about it and she got
41:12
excited about it said you know that sounds like it'd be really cool why don't we do that wow and so we set that
41:18
in motion and we ended up going to the race ahead of time i contacted the chief marshall about the fact that we would
41:24
get married in the paddock and i actually talked to him i said would you marry us i knew him quite well and it
41:30
would really have pleased me a lot if he just said yes and by golly he said yes to doing it so we had the chief marshall
41:35
signed up to actually marry us in the paddock and we had the car set up with a nice awning over you know and tommy
41:42
morrison brought in catering so we had catering for the people who were there after we got married and right there in
41:47
the afternoon after we were done testing rita and i got dressed up and tommy was my best man and tommy's wife was rita's
41:53
bridesmaid and we got married right in the paddock right around the race cars with the chief marshall helping us with
41:59
the vows and everything so that was that was really cool that's a fantastic story and let's talk about your induction into
42:05
the corvette hall of fame in 2014 what a tremendous honor for you yeah it was
42:10
people talk about their bucket list and the things they'd want to do i'd have to tell you that if i were to tell you my
42:16
bucket list and what's on that bucket list almost everything came onto that bucket list i'd call it postmortem it
42:22
was something i already did because my bucket list is made up of things that i did that i never really ever thought
42:28
about doing they're not something that you can think ahead and plan out and say what if i could ever do it this is what
42:34
i'd want to do it'd be this the museum hall of fame was one of those things i never really thought about being in the
42:41
hall of fame and so it wasn't something that you'd put on the bucket list but after you go through it and get on the
42:46
hall of fame you realize that's one of the things turned out to be such a fantastic thing my good friend fred
42:51
galache nominated me for it i didn't know about this at the time that he went through the nomination and put together the package and ended up talking with a
42:58
lot of my friends to help with interviews and that kind of thing to put the package together we went down there
43:04
had my family down there it was a very big event i think the induction ceremony had like a thousand people at it wow
43:10
jerry burton he was one of the guys who got inducted that year also turned out to be a great thing and for me when i
43:16
talk to the people in the audience about it and talk about what you did they want to know what you did to be in the hall
43:21
of fame and i think i didn't really do anything just did my job i worked on the corvette and i just once i got working
43:27
on the quarat i worked on it as hard as i knew how to work on anything you make the car as good as you can make it and
43:33
the reason you're making it this way is for all the people who buy them and for all these people in the clubs that live
43:38
and breathe corvette every day they're the people that are really the special people and you're just one of these
43:44
people who come along and you're part of what makes the car special for them it almost feels like you shouldn't be the
43:49
one that's honored in the hall of fame it should be all of them who are honored this was a real humbling experience and
43:55
very worthy my friend very very worthy let's take our final break john and in our third and final segment we'll talk
44:01
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45:06
this is the corvette today podcast with steve garrett
45:11
hey thanks for listening to corvette today the podcast that talks about everything corvette i'm your host steve
45:17
garrett with me is mr john hirancy heinrocket as they call him john is the retired assistant chief engineer for
45:23
corvette and also the director of gm performance division in this third segment we're going to talk about life
45:29
after general motors john after your retirement you were in with gm for 38 and a half years you became the chief
45:36
engineer for hennessey special vehicles how did you get connected with john hennessey and how did you get that job
45:43
well when i retired from gm i think a lot of people retire maybe not so many i don't
45:49
know but i think a lot of people that i know anyway retire and they kind of have a plan for retirement on what they're
45:54
going to do whether it's get another job or i'm going to spend all my time volunteering or whatever and i have to
46:00
say i retired from gm and really didn't know what i was gonna do there were some things i was already doing like racing
46:06
well i'll keep on racing i still love racing i'm gonna do that but as far as what i'm gonna do i thought i was gonna
46:11
work but what i was going to do or how i was going to do it i really didn't know i had already started my racing business
46:18
back in i think was 1999 that i incorporated hind rocket and so i was on
46:23
the side doing a bit of driver training and vehicle development helping some people with their race cars and that
46:28
kind of thing but it was kind of small time so when i retired i thought well i'm going to head in that direction even
46:34
more and i'll publicize it a little bit obviously need to get some business cards and work around people i know in
46:40
racing and kind of formalize maybe the driver training thing a little bit more do some consulting with race teams or
46:46
people who are developing cars maybe i can do some consulting with them and lo and behold out of the blue john hennessy
46:53
calls me he and i had some friends that i didn't even know we were both friends with but joe jacuzzi was one of them who
46:59
was a pr guy at chevrolet at the time and he was a good friend of hennessy and he mentioned to john hennessey that i
47:06
was retiring if john had any interest he could give me a call and right out of the blue john called me up and said he
47:12
was interested in potentially working with me and would i like to come down and spend a couple days with him and talk about what he's doing and see if
47:18
there was any good fits and it kind of went on from there i went down and we hit it off really well very like-minded
47:24
and thought a lot of like we started off a program where i would come down occasionally and spend a day or two down
47:29
there with look at what he was doing with different work on different cars and where i might be able to help him with develop the cars and kind of up his
47:36
game a little bit in the development arena right around the same time he made this decision to do a supercar almost
47:43
immediately i got involved in this supercar which was built off of a lotus
47:48
platform and putting a small black v8 in the back of it so this car was two foot
47:53
longer and a foot wider than the lotus and had a complete new rear end on it
47:59
and a new front end on it and all it used it was lotus was the cockpit itself and we went through a number of
48:05
different power trains with it we started out with ls7s as a powertrain then the supercharged be the ls9 engine
48:13
that came in the zr1 corvette back in 2009 and the idea was that there'd be optional engines on it quickly went
48:19
beyond that nobody wanted the base engine they wanted the hottest engine it was quickly apparent to john that he
48:25
needed a much hotter engine yet beyond that immediately started developing the twin turbo v8 which then became the only
48:31
engine in the car that's the only thing everybody wanted and then john also had a couple of different ideas he wanted to
48:38
take the car over to goodwood vessel of speed and of course that was something that once i went there i realized was on
48:43
my bucket list too and so john wanted to do that with his venom gt at the time the first one so we took that over there
48:49
and it was just a blast i mean it was so much fun that whole weekend is incredible if you've never been there
48:55
steve you've got to do it i would love to john that's one of my bucket list items as well also you drove the c8
49:02
around the circuit of the americas talk about that lap and also what was your impression of the new mid-engine c8
49:08
corvette that was really fun it was everything i had dreamt that a mid-engined car would be from the time
49:14
when i was at gm working on the corvette we all talked about mid-engine cars and the possibility of doing that someday
49:20
here was my chance to drive it once it came out at the circuit of the americas a great track to drive it at and just
49:26
really good fun we were quite quick with the car and it really impressed the other people who were there also john
49:31
talk about hind rocket incorporated and tell us what hind rocket actually does well hind rocket is a business i can
49:37
tell you a little bit where the name came from it was back in 89 as a matter of fact i was racing for eddie macomb
49:43
and eddie make him is dana macomb's dad he had a race team running camaros in
49:48
the firehawk series eddie called me about racing with him in that series and i did and two of the other people were
49:54
mitch wright who ended up being the general manager of the racetrack down in bowling green at the museum and then a
50:00
guy whose name was leighton reese and leighton reese had a garage in minneapolis called leighton's garage and
50:06
i'd known leighton for a number of years as a racer he ended up being one of the drivers on that team with all the racing
50:12
that year every time we went to the track i was the fastest in the car and i would set the hole with the car for the
50:19
race and leighton was always working hard to try to beat me and he never could quite do it he ended up calling me
50:25
the rocket when i get in the car and then he called me one day he called me the hind rocket it stuck just like that
50:32
so when i decided to incorporate and have a business i decided to call it rocket incorporated so that's how it got
50:38
the name the business that hind rocket did especially after i retired was driver training so i would work with
50:44
race car drivers who wanted to get better at what they were doing and at their craft and so i would develop these programs to help them improve their
50:51
driving would work with race teams helping them to develop cars so that was another thing i would do another part of
50:57
it was expert witness and forensics engineering i had a number of different projects that came out of that where i
51:04
probably fell into several different categories one would be accident investigation john if someone wanted to
51:09
get in touch with you what is the website and how can they reach you my website is heinrocket.com the email
51:16
through there is john heinrocket.com perfect john thank you so much for being
51:22
my guest on corvette today the stories were absolutely phenomenal well thank you it was a lot of fun remembering them
51:29
and being able to talk about them a couple times it almost brings a tear to my eye just thinking about some of the things and how much fun they were how
51:35
much i remember them ladies and gentlemen john heinrich from heinrocket.com
51:41
you've been listening to corvette today with steve garrett if you'd like to contact steve with any thoughts on the
51:47
podcast or ideas for guests on corvette today you can email him at stevegarrettdj gmail.com
51:55
that's stevegarrettdj gmail.com garrett has two r's and two t's or
52:01
connect with steve on social media on facebook twitter or instagram using at steve garrett dj
52:08
thanks again for listening to corvette today [Music]
52:34
you
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