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CORVETTE TODAY #91, Corvette News & Headlines, Early January 2022 and Year In Review 2021
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May 8, 2025
It’s the first Corvette News & Headlines podcast of the new year! Your CORVETTE TODAY host, Steve Garrett along with Keith Cornett from CorvetteBlogger.com, fill you in on the latest news in the world of Corvette as we begin 2022. But the guys also to a look at Corvette in 2021 too. Here are some of the stories covered in this podcast… Current News & Headlines 1. 4th quarter Corvette sales numbers 2. Update on the Corvettes damaged by the tornado at the NCM 3. Now Consumer Reports ranks the C8 amongst its best road performers 4. Chevrolet clarifies C8’s first service visit 5. Top Gear UK/BBC gets up close & personal with two C8 Z06’s The top Corvette stories in 2021, Year in Review (News & Racing) 1. BGA Plant stoppages in 2021 (supply chain issues, Covid, tornado, cancellation of final quarter allocations in 2021, etc…) 2. Announcement of the C8 Z06 and the new LT6 engine 3. Debut of the right-hand drive C8’s for the world market 4. 2 new women in the world of Corvette: Sharon Brawner named President/CEO of the NCM and Laura Klauser named to new position of Sports Car Racing Brand Manager
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[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
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in the country corvette fun fest president of the corvette club of kansas city missouri and radio disc jockey at
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the number one radio station in kansas city for over 40 years here's steve garrett
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[Music] thanks for listening to corvette today
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the podcast that talks about everything corvette brought to you by mid-america motorworks pursue your passion at
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mamotoworks.com i'm your host steve garrett i appreciate you tuning in you can listen to corvette today on all
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you can also sign up for the printed version there as well corvette fever magazine come along for the ride also
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mid-enginecorvetforum.com the forum that focuses on the new mid-engine c8 corvette meet a lot of
2:27
fellow corvette enthusiasts like yourself at mid-engine corvette forum.com also a shout out to
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canadiancorvetforum.com welcoming corvette owners from around the world it's time to get the latest corvette
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news and headlines with my pal keith cornett from corvetteblogger.com and to start off 2022 in section number one of
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the podcast keith and i have the latest and greatest on what's going on in the world of corvette today in sections two
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and three keith and i are going to take a look back at 2021 and talk about the most impactful and important corvette
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stories from last year first of all keith happy new year how was your holiday season happy new year steve oh
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it was very good very relaxing actually not a lot of stuff going on here so i was able to get out and do some fun
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family stuff over the holidays but now it's the first of january we're ready to get back to work it's time to get on to
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2022 buddy well as we always do to start off corvette news and headlines let's talk about corvette production at the
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bowling green assembly plant this year we've all know about the tornado that struck on december 11th and what's been
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interesting is that they had the plan up and running that second week so december 20th is when they were able to open back
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up again they only did like six cars that first day but then the second third and fourth days they did like 130 140
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150. they were off friday and then off that whole week for the break between christmas and new year's so we've only
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really seen nine days of production since the tornado hit on the 11th wow so yeah with the holidays and such so last
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tuesday they actually went back and were able to do 185 cars so that was the highest total we'd seen since the back
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so it looks like that's full production right there 185 cars over two shifts so that's really good news i think that
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bodes well for things are back and running up to normal because we didn't see that couple of those days where it's 137 you kind of wonder something going
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on there it could also be the omicron viruses going around and getting people it could be some personnel issues as
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well last wednesday they crossed over 11 000 on the 2022 vins nice by friday
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they're almost at 11 5 so really moving right along and here's the big thing steve is as we look ahead january
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they're going to be off for martin luther king day on that monday okay but after that there will be nearly 12 full
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weeks of unbroken production available to us and the real key will be is if we
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can be producing cars that whole time at nearly 100 production because that takes
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us into march and then march is when we're supposedly going to get the final build outs for the 2022 those
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allocations and then at the very end of march we think that the first orders might be coming in for the 2023s and of
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course that opens up the door for the z06 there was that report that they were going to start production of those cars
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on may 9th that's really an estimate it could go later than that but i don't think it'd go any earlier than that but
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it could go later than that and i think it just bodes on what happens in that first quarter with production stuff's
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happening it's all good and they're cranking out cars we'll really have some 12 weeks here to really see what they're able to do and we also got fourth
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quarter corvette sales numbers as well didn't we keith yeah so gm releases their sales figures every quarter now
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and in fourth quarter we had 8297 corvettes delivered it was a little bit down from the fourth quarter last
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year again we just had a couple different weeks of being out and again it hurt us at the very end there with the tornado that one week is 900 cars
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and that would have put us over 9000 probably for the year it's a huge calendar year number though we did 33
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041 corvettes over the course of the 2021 calendar year we've been writing
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about this since 2005 and in fact this was the fifth highest year of corvette
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production since we've been keeping track so it's a huge number and again we missed six weeks of production during
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2021 because of the shutdowns at about 900 cars if we'd been able to do those
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six weeks we're nearly at 40 000 cars there we are so close to really breaking
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the record for corvette production hopefully 2022 will be the year that that happens that's fantastic news when
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i say breaking the record i'm talking about the calendar year numbers i think the highest i've seen over the past 15
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years was 36. so if we can get 38.40 you know that's going to just be a huge
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modern day number there's big changes at the corvette playing over the last few years they've slowed the line down so
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they spend more time on cars there's a bigger gap between the cars and yet if they're still able to use those t shifts
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to crank out 40 000 c that's going to be a huge number that's going to make a lot of corvette owners happy to get their
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cars that's outstanding keith it's good to hear that those numbers are up and everything's running at full capacity as
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well exactly also we have an update on some of those damaged cars from the tornadoes and when those cars will be
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rebuilt and sent out to the owners don't we yeah so there was estimated 122 corvettes that were inside the plant
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that were deemed unsellable insurance regulations if any water damages get in there obviously general motors can't
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warranty those cars the way they could with a new car that's been protected the whole time during the production phase
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they took those 122 corvettes they put them out back and hopefully you've seen the drone video of those the cars in
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various cycles of production so what they've done is they replaced the orders for those customers that were damaged so
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we heard back from one guy in december said he got the call what they did was they resubmitted the order through their
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dealer the nice thing was they were able to finalize any new changes to the car somebody might have been able to change
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an option or a color or something if they decided to but they've been resequenced and now we're seeing cpws
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for next week on some of these cars really it's only been two weeks of production two weeks off for repairs and
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then the holiday and then two weeks on for production and already these cars are going to be going down the line a
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bit of a delay but very welcome news for these owners and glad to see that gm is
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on the ball and just getting taken care of right away the other thing that we heard about with these tornado cars and the overall damage there's a website
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called the insurer and our friend jeremy welborn who's in the insurance industry sent this over to me and it shows that
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the insurance claims can go as high as 225 million just for the corvette assembly plant wow they're saying that
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about 175 million for the physical damage to the property the equipment the vehicles and then another 50 million to
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cover the business interruption losses obviously huge numbers and you think well gee they're only down for so long
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only those six days or so but there was a lot of resources that were brought to bear to get the plan up and running
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again that's why you have insurance i guess right steve absolutely right buddy and those numbers are crazy but you know
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what in this day and age it's understandable and it is what it is it is you can't get away from it you got it
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so you use it you get rid of those cars you wipe the slate clean and then you start over i think that's just really the best path forward absolutely right
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also this next story keith was kind of confusing it's about consumer reports first they ranked us really really low
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and then they ranked the c8 amongst the best road performers ever so
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i'm confused you wonder are they using different people are they bipolar today my guy that wrote the story he
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says consumer reports giveth and consumer reports take it away exactly so yes they have this overall survey they
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do and of course we did really bad on one portion of it that's what we hear is that reliability but this was the
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driving test and they gave the corvette a perfect five out of five they like the acceleration the handling the braking on
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the negative side they dinged us for the tricky cabin access i guess they don't like the hidden button under the
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boomerang there and maybe getting in and out it's a little bit harder for some people but then they gave us 13 out of
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100 on the least reliable survey that was a month ago right so again they give us a great report one day the next day
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they trash us who knows what's going on over there all the reports leading up to that previous one were all good they
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liked the corvette they would drive the corvette they had it in their fleet they were testing it and then all of a sudden you get this survey that is based on the
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future that's why we got dinged on that one survey was future reliability they didn't know they just guess right again
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it's consumer reports you just got to take them with a grain of salt we'll accelerate the highs and we'll lament
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the lows when it comes to them i guess so buddy you know they're different from day to day so i kind of deemed them unreliable
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and not a great source but it's nice to see that they came back and gave us a nice report as well so i guess it all
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balances out and you know they gave us a report on the driving and that's really what the corvette is all about right
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yeah absolutely also chevrolet has clarified the first service visit for the ch and i think that's important news
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yeah so we talked about this last time so the blurb came out that they were going to increase the time period that
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you could have as a new c8 corvette owner from 12 months to 36 months to get
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your free service change done and that free service is basically an oil change and then they change out the
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transmission filter right before it was always done within that first 12 months you know i started hearing from dealers
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saying hey where did you find that because i can find nothing on it so they came out with a clarification our
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friends over the corvette action center had this directly from general motors and so what they've done is they've
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extended the included maintenance on the corvette for 24 months so between 12 and
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24 months is now the extension okay what you can do is your transmission filter doesn't need to be changed until 7 500
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miles okay but your oil life is going to be done within a year let's say you get a new corvette that first year you just
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go ahead and pay for that oil change but the second year if you're getting close to that 7 500 miles it might be then
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time to get it in there and get that transmission filter changed and you definitely want to use your free service
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visit to do the transmission filter because it can run three four five hundred dollars depending on the dealership that you take it to it's a
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little bit of a service intensive procedure there again we talked about this last year my belief is that a lot
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of the early transmission problems have all been resolved we haven't really heard of people having transmission
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problems lately true corvette people some of us drive our cars very little over the course of the first year you
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know there might only be 2 000 3 000 miles on that car so maybe general motors is trying to get some more life
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out of that transmission filter because you can go all the way to 7 500 miles again we don't really know the reason why other than the fact that they said
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it just is more based on the driving habits of corvette owners just assuming that they're trying to extend it out a
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little bit longer just to get more life out of that transmission filter sounds good and finally in section number one
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keith top gear in the uk gets up close and personal with not one but two new
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c806s how did that turn out yeah pretty good so they sent one of their riders down to california where the two cars
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are out there the coupe and the convertible really it's just kind of a walk around for top gear magazine it was
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their first opportunity to really spend time with these two new cars of course you know they just had their review out
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for the right-hand drive stingray that's been released over in the uk so in reality they're seeing the next
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iteration right after getting their first cars over there it was a really good review a nice walk around and again
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anytime we get a chance to look at these cars some more you know we saw them in those first days steve i haven't seen
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them since i'm missing them looking forward to getting out and seeing those cars again but for people across the
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pond want to check it out it's a really good video review so take a look at it but it again it's just a walk around there's no driving or anything like that
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okay well i always get excited buddy i'm like you i kind of miss everything and every time i see stories about the new
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z06 i get excited i'm on the list i'm ready to go i want one of those z06s next year absolutely well buddy let's
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take our first break and in section number two we're going to talk about 2021 the corvette year in review from a
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or accessory pursue your passion with mid-america motorworks [Music]
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and now back to corvette today with your host and my husband steve garrett
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hey thanks for listening to corvette today the podcast that talks about everything corvette brought to you by
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mid-america motorworks pursue your passion at mamotoworks.com keith cornett from corvette blogger is
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here it's our first news and headlines of 2022. in section 2 and 3 we're going
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to cover the biggest and most important stories of last year in corvette in this section here we're going to talk about
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news and racing first of all keith we had a lot of stoppages of the bowling green assembly plant last year supply
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chain issues coveted tornadoes cancellation of the final quarter of 2021 let's get a review about that
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because when section one we talked about how great the numbers are and that's a tribute because we had a lot of
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stoppages last year yeah we said in the first section i think there was about six different stoppages and none of them
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were all full stops in october we had just the second shift shut down right the first shift was still open the big
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news obviously for any automotive production facility is how good are you sourcing the parts are you getting the
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supplies you need and then of course there's the personnel issue for the most part i think the personnel issue has been handled they've got their team
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they're trained on multiple processes so if they end up losing some team members in one section they should have somebody
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there that can bring in and cover it for that shift so they seem to be working that pretty well when we did the ncm
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anniversary show and kai spandy does his seminar and he talked about just that day they had 30 people out because of
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covent when you have 1200 people building cars 30 is a pretty significant number right so you know they've done
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really well general motors has really stepped up for us they're building silverados without chips and heated
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seats and steering wheels and other components now they're talking about there's been rumors of you might only get one key fob versus two key fobs wow
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a lot of cars they're still building but they're parking and then waiting for the appropriate parts to come in we've been
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very fortunate that none of that has really happened for us i'd rather take reduced production and make sure that
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people get completed cars as opposed to somebody having to go back to a dealership in six months to get their
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heated seats ecu's installed or whatever it takes to do those right i think it's been pretty good and then you have like
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the natural stuff like the tornadoes you have snow storms so there's always something out there that could rear its
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ugly head and strike kai standing his team just did a phenomenal job i hope he'll do a seminar on the repair of the
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tornado damage at the ncm bash give us on all an idea of what really was going on there i think that is really big news
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the stoppages but also not so much the stoppages but the perseverance to be able to press on like we said we did 33
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000 cars which is the fifth highest in the last 15 years that bodes very well for corvette owners as well as the team
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members that are building our cars in spite of all the stoppages we still had some great numbers that's true yeah
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probably one of the biggest stories we had last year was the announcement of the new c806 and the new lt6 engine well
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as chevrolet has said in many of their teasers the sound of corvette will never be the same but started back in july
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they put out a teaser of just the sound of the car corvette owners especially there's a lot of long-term people that
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have been on list for a while now but when that happened there was just this huge excitement all these new people
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coming over and checking it out and then we got the videos the teaser videos we were at the ring with those videos
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coming out you could hear the car under heavy acceleration it's going to be an amazing platform and it's just something
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that i know that so many people are excited about there's going to be some issues there are going to be some sales
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things some shenanigans going on there with dealers i'm really hoping that chevrolet can get a handle on that
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because it really leaves a bad taste in your mouth if you're trying to buy a car and you can or you're getting jerked
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around with these high market adjustments yes that's the downside of this new car and that's probably the
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thing that i worry about the most with the z06 not so much any of the performance or reliability or anything
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like that general motors has done a phenomenal job on this engine there'll be some things that come up just like the transmission was for the dct
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transmission for the stingray they got that licked in the year they're going to throw all their resources at this car
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and make sure that it's running as top-notch as they think it should be the z06 is going to be a great car and it's
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very exciting and it's going to be here in five or six months people can be driving it this summer you're gonna see the different shows this is a real fun
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time for corvette fans and looking forward to seeing what comes next with this car it's the tip of the iceberg
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that's for sure buddy also we have the debut of the right-hand drive car for the world market that is outstanding
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news from last year yeah this is one of the reasons why i think this story deserves to be in this section here is
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because for years we've sold left-hand drive cars to markets that drive on the right-hand side of the road japan uk
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australia obviously australia is a huge market for corvettes they've had to transform the car so that it is a
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right-hand drive and to do that is very expensive so the fact that they're able now to order these cars and get them
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directly from the factory as a right-hand drive car a you're just going to increase sales because it's more
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natural there's less cost involved to retrofit that and then you're driving in a natural environment so the opportunity
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for conquest and being able to sell more cars to that market over competitor
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really opens up the world market for corvette we've always done well we've always sold corvettes in japan but boy
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the second they did a right-hand drive they sold three times as many corvettes in japan that year there you go the
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right hand drive i know some people out there are lamenting the fact that these cars are being sold around the world when there's this huge waiting list of
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buyers here in the united states it's part and parcel of what a manufacturer does their job is to sell corvettes
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their jobs to some as many places as they can we're hoping that we're going to see a lot more owners transformed
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into corvette enthusiasts in those markets and will continue to buy the car model after models so again right hand
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drive what a huge feat for the corvette team the implementation the testing and then the sales figures i think it's been
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a momentous change for corvette with the right-hand drives we're just getting started absolutely right it's a huge
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accomplishment and i can't wait to see how we can attack and conquer the world market with corvette i think it's
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fantastic also keith we had two new women come to the world of corvette and i'm so excited about both of them sharon
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broner is the new president and ceo of the national corvette museum she was on the podcast last month and also laura
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clauser was named to a new position at chevrolet she is the sports car racing brand manager let's talk about those two
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ladies and what they're bringing to the table yeah well these are really important posts obviously the corvette
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museum near and dear to our heart we're lifetime members there we donate we spend time we go to the events it's a
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great organization sharon comes from a background of museums and raising money
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and supporting the events of those that is very good news for the corvette museum bringing in somebody with that
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kind of street cred already she ran the country music hall of fame museum in nashville for nearly 20 years so you can
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imagine the people that she's been in touch with over that time period not only the corporate sponsors but the people that donate their time and money
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and efforts to those we're expecting big things from her we know from your podcast she talked about they've already
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implemented a strategic multi-year vision for the museum they laid out i believe it's through 2028 as a plan of
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what some of the things they want to get accomplished i don't know if the museum has ever had anything like that that long range it just kind of shows where
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her thoughts are and where we're going to head with that the second person laura clauser obviously came to us in a
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little bit of a i don't want to say a downer obviously we all love doug feehan we respect for everything he's done for
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us sherry though thought that what they needed a little bit better integration with their research and development for
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racing and more of a structured leadership there with people within the organization we're both racing and
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chevrolet general motors laura had been there for years she'd already been doing cadillac racing she comes to us at a
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pivotal time right away we just lost the gtlm class so there was the what to due
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there did we go gtd do we go with the lmdh program which a lot of the top auto
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manufacturers now are looking at you race that car at le mans you're looking for the overall win corvettes have
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always been sports cars though i'm glad to see that we're going the route that we are took a little while but
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eventually we got the note from laura that there is going to be a gtd program for the corvette so they're going to
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downsize from the gtlm to gtb pro there's some changes there but nothing major you know they're able to work with
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the balanced performance to get the car where it needs against the others in that gtd pro class
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secondary news is that we're looking at a future at le mans where there might not be any of these gt pro classes
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anymore they might just want to go a single gt class and make it customer cars so what does that do for corvette
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racing we've got two years to kind of figure that out in the meantime they've already announced that they're going to do a gt3 customer car they'll do 10 cars
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in 2024 10 cars in 2025 that gets us to our 20 that we need for homologation
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then that opens the door of what do we do at le mans do we have multiple cars do we have multiple teams running do we
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become like a nascar setup where we're supporting multiple corvette racing teams that are out there really the
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future's wide open she's young she's very dynamic and she's got a great future ahead of her if she can pull all
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this off in the next three or four years there's a lot on her plate i don't doubt though that she'll get it done as a matter of fact keith laura klauser will
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be my special guest next week on the corvette today podcast we talk about all this it's a great interview and look
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forward to that next week with laura clauser yeah well that's big because we got the rolex coming up we got the roar
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i think in two weeks and then right after that is the rolex 24 the following week that all kicks it off and then everything's hot and heavy all the way
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through september october again we'll be tuning in to hear that one steve timing is everything buddy timing is everything
24:55
and finally our story let's talk about corvette racing you touched on it just briefly but let's kind of give an overview of what happened last year sure
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so we came right out of the gate the number three corvette picked up where it left off it won the championship in 2020. jordan taylor and antonio garcia
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were dynamite especially the very beginning of the season there's only the three of us that were racing for the most part the two corvettes and then
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there was a porsche 911 we did see bmws at the longer races the four endurance races but for the most part it was just
25:23
a three-car affair the number three car did very well at the beginning but then you notice the number four car started winning at the end there yeah so we
25:29
swept the championships again looking ahead there's going to be a gt3 car they're going to split the team for 2022
25:37
where the number three car will stay here in the united states are racing the gtd pro in imsa whereas the number four
25:42
car will become the number 64 car or maybe the number 74 car they're gonna go to europe and race in the wec and then
25:50
they'll probably bring both cars back together for selected races we know they're gonna have two cars at the rolex my feeling is they might even have two
25:56
cars at sebring as well as a two-car team hopefully at le mans as well so again big news i don't really know
26:03
exactly who we're gonna be racing against for 2022 in gtd pro so we're anxious to find all that out and then
26:08
it's going to be a little bit different of a racing you know in gtlm we got our choice of tire compounds whereas in gtd
26:15
pro we have to run with michelin customer tires we also have abs brakes so there's going to be a little bit of a
26:21
learning curve i think not only for the drivers who didn't need to get re-acclimated to that but also just
26:26
against the different competitions so it's gonna be interesting to see how it all shakes out for 2022. i'm looking forward to it i can't wait for racing to
26:32
start back up buddy that's for sure keith let's take our final break and in section number three we're going to talk about the 2021 lighter year of corvette
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the state of kansas you're listening to the corvette today podcast with steve garrett
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hey thank you very much for listening to corvette today the podcast that talks about everything corvette brought to you
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by mid-america motorworks pursue your passion at mamotoworks.com i'm your host steve
29:02
garrett with me every other week is keith cornett we keep you up to date on what's happening with america's sports
29:07
car in this third and final segment we're going to talk about the lighter side of corvette from 2021. keith our
29:13
big story amelia hartford is racing to get the fastest c8 corvette in the world
29:18
but she's got some big competition you know i think of the stories of 2021 this is one of the funner things to watch was
29:24
this competition between these different builders trying to break into the eights right from the gate amelia was out there
29:31
i think she probably held that record 9.4 seconds in the quarter mile for four or five months or so her best time was
29:38
936 at 147 miles an hour but in the background we were also following
29:43
anderson dick over at fuel tech usa and his car they were taking a little bit slower approach to it right he was
29:50
working in conjunction with the guys down at late model racecraft to kind of come up with the overall package and i
29:56
think they really did a good job on it they use a secondary controller that's mounted in their cup holders for the
30:01
extra fuel loads and there's a whole lot of great engineering that they put into their car to get it to where it was
30:07
towards the end of the year they're starting to creep up there and then all of a sudden out of left field comes extreme turbo systems and they said oh
30:14
wow we had a customer car that ran 9.05 seconds at 159 miles an hour and then a
30:20
week later anderson dick and fuel tech usa finally broke that eight-second barrier running at 8.97 seconds at 160
30:27
miles an hour with their c8 these speed wars these horsepower wars have been really a fun thing to watch for a lot of
30:34
us anderson says he's gonna try to take the car to seven wow we know that amelia her car was a little bit beat up there
30:40
at the end of the year but she's done a bunch of updates to it to kind of get it back she wants to break the eights i
30:45
hope that she does that and it's just fun to watch these competitions as they go on it was almost like a mini tv show
30:50
for us okay we tuned in this weekend who ran what and where it just bodes well it shows what people can do with time and
30:56
money on their hands it's been fun for all of us to watch it has been fun that was really one of the fun stories to
31:02
kind of keep up with because everybody kept one-upping each other during 2021 with these horsepower races so it was a
31:07
lot of fun yep absolutely also we had a lot of awards for the c8 last year didn't we yeah you know every time you
31:14
turn around it seems like there was another award or accolades being given to the corvette some of them are great
31:19
you know obviously japan's car of the year that was big news we already talked about consumer reports and
31:25
i don't know about that but even little sub-systems of the corvette so like jd power gave the corvette go win in the
31:31
multimedia for its radio and entertainment system we see again the jd power appeal study where the corvette
31:38
shows up very well in its first years of ownership my favorite is probably the car and driver 10 best list because not
31:45
only do you have these automotive journalists that drive everything for the 10 best but corbin it's a driver's
31:50
car and these guys are drivers it's just to be consistently ranked i think we've been on the c8 now for all three years
31:56
of the 10 best list with the c8 that just bodes well for the corvette you went on sunday sell on monday we've had
32:02
these monthly sales reports of the ic cars and how well the corvette's selling
32:07
you know and it's always been within the top 10 of the survey i think for eight
32:12
months of the year several months it was number one or number two so you can't get out of the way of that if you're
32:17
showing actual sales figures and the number of the average transaction price as well again just a big win over the
32:23
years for corvette when the z06 comes out we'll be up for a lot of those previous awards again hopefully car of
32:30
the year sports car of the year the engine of the year those kinds of things so we'll be watching that closely to see what the market brings corvette in this
32:37
way too the awards just keep on coming buddy get out of the way it could be an avalanche there you go
32:43
that's awesome also this was amazing chevy put out a crate engine last year
32:49
that was 632 cubic inches and a thousand four horsepower all i can say is wow
32:56
yeah you talk about letting the big dog off the chain truthfully i don't know how many corvettes this engine is going
33:01
to be offered in the zz 632 it's 10.36 liters wow the power level 1004
33:09
horsepower and 876 foot-pounds of torque it makes its peak power at 66 rpms and it revs to
33:16
7000 rpms so it's a huge motor as we were working on this list i went looking
33:21
for the price i still don't see a price on it yet but still thinking it's going to be 20 25 30 somewhere in that range
33:28
sure huge engine imagine popping the hood at the local cars and coffee and you're showing that off i mean it's just
33:33
a massive engine you think the 350 is a 5.7 liter yeah this is 10.3 so it's
33:39
almost twice as big just an amazing engine yeah they call it their big dogs for a reason that's mind-boggling that's
33:46
amazing our final two stories keith are some really feel-good stories first of all we had a florida couple that
33:53
exchanged their wedding vows at the national corvette museum and then took delivery of a c8 stingray yeah you gotta
33:59
like these stories this is ralph and jennifer bowles they were gonna plan a time they're not in 2020 but the
34:05
pandemic through a wrench and all that so they stayed together but they ordered a car they ordered a 2021 corvette
34:10
stingray convertible in arctic white they were doing a museum delivery with it and i think it was her idea she just
34:16
said you know what let's go ahead and get married so they brought in a cake they set their vows in the library in
34:22
front of that dana forester mid-year big mural on the wall and then afterwards
34:27
they cut the cake and enjoyed that and then they went and took delivery of their 2021 corvette pretty exciting for
34:33
them i'm sure and then for the people involved at the museum just fun to watch people take these life journeys every
34:38
day by picking up their new corvettes but it's fairly rare that you're starting off as a husband and wife that day picking up a car that's a fun story
34:45
and i like to share those with people that's awesome all i can say is wow what a day that's a story to tell all your
34:51
friends about that's for sure absolutely yeah and then these next ones are also feel good stories these are veterans who
34:57
have taken delivery of their new corvettes right bobby carson got a 2022 corvette he's 95 years old luckily he
35:05
only had to wait just 30 days to take delivery and he got the 42nd corvette built for the 2022 model year what
35:12
happened was the dealers recognized that while this guy's 95 years old let's move him up let's give him one of our first
35:18
allocations and make sure he gets a car that's how that worked out and then another one this was an air force
35:23
veteran lieutenant colonel tony pavakwa he was flying the u2 spy planes and eventually was flying the blackbird
35:30
sr-71s he is 90 years old he got it from wheeler chevrolet in yuba city
35:35
california who had saw the reports of the 95 year old getting a car and said well we need to do the same thing so
35:42
what they did was they knew tony he was on their list they moved him right up to the top of the list now he's driving
35:47
this car and he says it's gonna be his daily driver this should be fun to watch and again congratulations to these guys
35:53
especially for their service of this country and it's nice to see that they're getting a few perks for their age driving a corvette should be
35:59
something that everybody experiences if you can do it into your 90s that's even better for you it gives me something to
36:05
shoot for that's for darn sure buddy something to live for yeah and as you're driving this car you think does that make you feel young again that's got to
36:11
do something to your body to make that rush you're driving something that you wanted to drive you're able to still
36:16
drive it at that age so yeah go for it is what i say just a great way to end this podcast with those two stories so
36:23
thanks for bringing those to my attention again you bet well keith thanks for being on corvette today i hope you enjoyed listening to our year
36:29
in review of 2021 buddy we'll get back together in two weeks and do it all over again sounds great steve i appreciate it
36:35
happy new year to everybody out there in corvette nation and if you see on the road you'll throw up that hand because we're waving thanks for listening to
36:41
corvette today and please be sure to tell your family friends and other corvette enthusiasts about the corvette today podcast and also thanks to our
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37:12
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37:18
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