What’s New At The Bloomington Gold Corvette Show? | Car Show 2025 | CORVETTE TODAY 266

Name: What’s New At The Bloomington Gold Corvette Show? | Car Show 2025 | CORVETTE TODAY 266 | Open Video
Uploaded: 2025-05-19T19:50:43+00:00
Duration: 41 min 4 s

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your loan is funded And a shout out to Corvette Forum welcoming Corvette enthusiasts from around the world My
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guest on today's show is a return guest to Corvette today He appeared way back on episode number 40 in mid January of
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2021 He's the proprietor of Bloomington Gold And today we're going to talk about the show and the exciting new location
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they have for this year's event So please help me welcome back Guy Larson to the show Guy welcome back to Corvette
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Today It's been way too long my friend Well thanks Steve and it is good to be back and reconnect with you and give the
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folks an update on the Corvette world Yes we've got a lot to talk about here for Bloomington Gold Guy before we get
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into this year's event let's talk about the history of Bloomington Gold Yeah I think what you have to do is to think of
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the history of Bloomington Gold and how it started I would ask you to remember that there was no eBay at the time There
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wasn't internet People couldn't buy things from Amazon So at in the early '7s what people did is they'd get
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together really actually get together with each other Think about that Wow So they started convening in Bloomington
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Illinois with a Corvette corral You know they just guys got together showed their cars and they brought parts that they
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didn't need and they wanted to sell to other people and people bought parts back and forth That kind of took off
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really quick So in the early 70s the Corvette group just sort of honed in on
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getting together in Bloomington and exchanging parts and such Then in the later 70s the founders of the group came
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up with a judging system for judging cars Where it came from was back then at
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that time you'd go to local car shows and you'd enter a show and one guy won and everybody else lost Yeah And they
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didn't really understand you know how you win and my car is better than your car and I don't know why they picked
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that one So they came up with a system of judging that became Bloomington Gold certification eventually but the concept
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was that every car competed against how the car was built originally Mhm So
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you're not competing with the guy next to you or three doors down or the car that spent $50,000 more than you did
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You're just competing with how correct your car is compared to how it was built Over the years grown to call that
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typical factory production TFP Gotcha The judges always refer to TFP That
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alternator is TFP That seat cover is TFP And they can go into more depth
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explaining but when you get that in your head and you think you know that's really what judging is about is comparing it how how it was done at the
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factory So that took off and between the people bringing parts to sell and people
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bringing their cars to get judged and know that they were right Bloomington Gold really sprung into becoming a big
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national Corvette show you know and it's really nice because that way you aren't judged like a typical show and shine
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which is what a lot of people put on these days Like you said this is going against how that car came out of the
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factory which is really cool Yeah And nowadays you know if you go to other events and you see a car and it has on
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it that it was Bloomington Gold certified the people who understand that think "Wow that means that car is really
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right." Yeah absolutely They don't just see a trophy from I don't know the Springfield Fair that somebody got a
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first place doesn't tell them much And it's even grown into extending value to
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cars now You know if you go to the big auctions and you see collector Corvettes for sale the really important ones many
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many of them have been Bloomington Gold certified to show that they are authentic Yeah we're going to talk about that in just a little bit Bloomington
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Gold has been in some really great places in the past Talk about some of the different places that you've had the
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show Oh yeah So it started out in Bloomington It was there for a lot a lot of years and it moved to Springfield
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Illinois to the fairgrounds for a few years That was a transition where it went into ownership Dana Mikum from
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Mikum Auctions owned Bloomington Gold at that time Gotcha And he moved it around and he found a place up in the Chicago
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suburbs called Feeasant Run and moved the show up there right around the year of 2000 And so the show went to Feeasant
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Run on a golf course and that was really really pretty People still talk about the show at the golf course So that was
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pretty neat Unfortunately the golf course fell into financial trouble and was closing down So we moved around from
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there A few years later we struck a deal with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway
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That was really uh amazing that we went there and we rented the whole Speedway The show was growing and it was really
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pretty neat Unfortunately again you can't control everything In 20120 I guess it was CO hit Yep Co just caused
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everybody to stay home and not go to shows and events And heck people didn't even go to movies or go out to eat
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Remember oh yeah The show had to downsize so we had to move out of the Speedway We hunted around We moved back
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to Bloomington Illinois for a few years at the college campus which was pretty neat to be back in the old home grounds
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But people were telling us you know we really like the track We like driving our cars around the track and that was
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more fun We got to use our cars not just walk around and look at cars So this year in 2025 we're going back to a track
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We're going to the Worldwide Technology Raceway in Madison Illinois We're pretty excited about it Absolutely And
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congratulations are in order too because in 2022 Bloomington Gold celebrated the 50th year of existence That's pretty
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darn awesome Yeah we are the longest running all Corvette show So that's kind of a neat thing to hang your hat on We
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call ourselves the granddaddy of Corvette shows And you are absolutely Guy let's talk more about
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Bloomington Gold Judging We talked about that just a little bit but talk about what sets it apart from other shows I
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know it differs from regular car shows I brought up the Show and Shine shows Talk about how it's the crown jewel of
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authentication judging I know that even European collections like Ferrari they don't even judge in detail like
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Bloomington Gold does That's correct Yeah So Bloomington Gold in certification judging we'll talk mostly
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about certification That's where you enter your car and it's judged in four different areas and they compare it to
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how it would have been done when the car was built Like I said before typical factory production So in the exterior
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interior chassis and engine compartment those four sections they judge a number
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of components It could be anywhere from 30 to 50 components They judge that those components compared to how they
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were when the car was built I give you a few examples In the engine compartment they can judge everybody kind of knows
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what an alternator is So they judge the finish of the alternator the dating on the alternator the configuration which
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means the shape and how it's mounted and all that They look at that item and they determine is that how it was when it was
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new and they check that it is or they determine in what extent is it not as it
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was when new That's an engine item An easier one for folks to understand is let's say tires on a car A lot of people
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don't think very much about the tires but you know if you got a 1967 Corvette it came with a certain size tire a
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certain diameter tire and a certain manufacturer and tread pattern and so on and so forth So the judges know this
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stuff and they don't look it up in a book They just know what the tire should look like on that car and they'll look
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at the width of it Is it a black wall is it a raised white letter is it a white stripe or a gold stripe or a red stripe
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and certain cars had certain tires They evaluate those things and if it is not quite as it would have been there is a
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deduction taken or what we call a deviation from what it would have been So the judges go through those four
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areas and they do that component by component by component And in order to get a gold certification the car has to
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attain 95% of those components being correct or easily undetectable is what
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we call it They look like they were as they car was built Gotcha And let's also
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talk about why it's so important to get your Corvette certified at Bloomington Gold We touched on that but really
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elaborate on that Well yeah there's different reasons people do it One is self-satisfaction They own this car They
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fall in love with the car They know that things are correct on the car They correct things that may not be They may
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refinish different pieces They may repaint the whole car They may take the car apart all the way down to the frame
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and put it back together to make it as it was and getting a gold certification is their reward that they did that
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correctly So that's probably the first driving reason why people do it is self-satisfaction A more practical
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reason is if you make the car correct and you get a gold certification it enhances the value of a car The cars
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that are really collectible that collectors look for certain specific cars that are rare If they've been
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certified the buyer knows the car is pretty correct Right Right They want those cars over the ones they don't know
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are correct The easy example is a collector is looking for a 1969 L88
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Corvette which are kind of expensive and rare and hard to get your hands on one
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And if there's two or three of them in the marketplace for sale and one of them has been certified and the other ones
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have not the certified one is more desirable to buyers Yeah You know they know that that car has been done
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correctly Yeah Absolutely right Guy let's take our first break When we come back we're going to talk about this
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833-639-4231 I'm your host Steve Garrett With me is Guy Larson the proprietor of Bloomington Gold We've got some exciting
16:53
news about this year's show Guy let's just jump right into it We have a brand new venue this year Give me the dates
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and location again of this year's show Sure The dates are June 5th through 7th
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It's a full show on the 6th and the 7th Friday and Saturday The 5th on Thursday
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The beginning of the day is really more like a setup day but later in the day we do have a gala event which is an
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introduction of the gold collection cars We have gorder and drinks and a ticketed
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event that you can come and see these cars and walk around This year we're actually opening up the judge cars will
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be on display right next to the gold collection cars So there's going to be somewhere near a 100 cars to look at
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that evening at the gala and that's going to be from 5 to 7:00 p.m that evening That'll be nice Yeah The other
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half of your question is where is it so it's at the Worldwide Technology Raceway
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which is in Madison Illinois And to put that into terms we're about 5 to 10 minutes away from St Louis So we're on
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the Illinois side of the Mississippi River In the evening you could go over to St Lewis and see the arch and do
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things like that but during the day we're going to be at the racetrack having fun That'll be a great location And the cool thing is Corvette owners
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can drive their cars on the Worldwide Technology Raceway Talk a little bit more about that And I know there's also
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some carting opportunities too Right So the driving on the track some folks might remember we did that at the Indie
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Motor Speedway And so we're doing it here at technology also So they're going to be cars will go out in groups of up
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to 20 cars at a time They'll go around and do several laps It's sort of a time
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factor how long it takes and how many laps you get to do but they'll get a good amount of time and be able to run around the track They do curtail the
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speed Everybody kind of goes oh so the speed is curtailed at somewhere near 65
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miles an hour They might go a little quicker than that And people say I do that on the highway right well try doing
18:52
65 miles an hour around the bank turns of a mile and a quarter track It's going to be a little different So people are
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going to have fun All in all they get to have their car on a racetrack is a fun thing you get to go away with So that's
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the track time that will be done on Friday and Saturday Some of the cars
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that are getting judged Thursday we're going to do a private little session for them to take their cars out but the
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public on Friday and Saturday can take their cars You can sign up online for this ahead of time or you can show up
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then and do it But you're better to sign up ahead of time and get in a time period that you know you're going to be
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there and you want to do it Yeah absolutely Let's talk a little bit more specifically about the racetrack Tell me
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how big it is and who races out there It's a mile and a quarter track They have Indie Car racing They have NASCAR
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racing And they also have an NH strip that they do racing on that too I
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believe it's the only facility that has all three types of races like that So it's a pretty versatile place and pretty
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well used You know lots and lots of racing going on all summer at this facility That's amazing Let's talk a
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little bit more about the judging that goes on during the show Tell me how long it takes to be judged what Corvettes are
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eligible and what levels of awards they can win Okay so you know people are sometimes taken back when they ask me
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"How long does it take to judge my car?" And I say "Well our answer is 36 minutes." And they're like "What?" Where
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that comes from is we can do about 10 cars in a judging group and 10 time 36
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is 360 minutes and that's a full day for the judges Their goal is to do one car
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every 36 minutes So one car might be done in 34 one might be done in 38 but
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all in all they got to get through that group of 10 cars in 36 minutes Now the way that that's done and what surprises
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people until they see it in action is a team of four judges walks up and even as they're walking up to the car their eyes
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are looking at things They're taking things in and they do not use reference books for the most part They just know
20:55
the product So you have one judge who judges engines and he knows everything about the engines on that specific year
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or the couple years that he may cover For example we have judges who only judge 1967s We have judges who judge
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only 70 to 72 The reason there sometimes they judge a few years span is the cars
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stay pretty much the same in that time span but they can walk up and open the hood and they know all the different
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engines that are in a 70 to 72 They know what carburetors are on the car They
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know what the air cleaner looks like They know all these things And what the judge does is he looks at a section and
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in his mind he takes in four or five different items and immediately says those are all as they should appear on a
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car that is as done at typical factory production So they can process that quickly So they walk up and they say yes
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that appears undetectable or no I see something that my mind tells me look further So they may look at a individual
21:54
component in there and determine that let's say the finish of a component is a little different than it should be It's
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painted in glossy black and it should be matte black and they find that immediately and they mark that down
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That's how they do it in the 36 minutes Now the level of awards I said earlier to get a gold certification you have to
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attain 95% or higher The award just beneath that is a silver award which is
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90 to 95 and a bronze award is 85 to 90 In our world everybody wants first place
22:25
or the top award But you also have to understand that getting a bronze or a silver is still quite an accomplishment
22:31
To get a car that's 40 or 50 years old and to get it to be 80 some percent as
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compared to when it was built is quite a challenge or 90% So all those awards are
22:42
important and valuable But those are the different levels of certification That's cool I like that because that way you
22:48
can work back up You can go to the next year if you have a bronze certification You can work up next year and get maybe
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a silver or a gold the year after Right That's right And many of the people do that You know they get the sheets and we
23:00
encourage the judges to spend time with them after they're done judging and help them a little more on what their
23:05
deviations may have been The owner can go home and improve things So let's say like I talked about earlier tires They
23:12
didn't know that the tires they have on the car are not quite correct So they might go find some original tires that
23:17
are correct and purchase those and get them for their car or they may redo that alternator that I talked about that may
23:23
not have been quite correct You know they go home they perfect it they come back and go for the gold is what we call it That's awesome And you also this year
23:30
have some really good looking Corvette displays Talk about the Corvette displays that'll be there I know that
23:36
this year's gold collection the theme is called generation finalees That'll be interesting Yeah every year we do a
23:42
special collection To me this is one of the most important parts of the show because the cars that we have in the
23:48
collection many times you never see these cars anywhere else I mean they're just rare special cars And each year we
23:55
pick a different theme You know we have done Z06 displays we've done ZR1's
24:00
displays we've done display of all Stingray Corvettes So this year's display as you said is the final of the
24:07
generations meaning the end of each generation of Corvette from the first generation C1 to the current generation
24:14
of the C8 So we will have the cars at end each generation And the reason I came up with that idea was in each
24:20
generation General Motors Chevrolet perfected the cars They had improvements they had more features and the last year
24:28
or two of each generation are the best of what they produced in that generation So that's how that came up This year's
24:34
card and I'll tell you a few of the examples that we have we have a gentleman bringing the last C1 Corvette
24:41
produced Wow 1962 the very last serial number made of that generation before it
24:46
became the C2 So that's a collectible car and as I said you're not going to see that at car shows We have a 67 L88
24:54
race car It's called the Le Man race car In 1967 Chevrolet built 20 of these L88s
25:01
There are 17 in existence This car was a Le Man racer car Extremely rare
25:06
extremely valuable and as I said not normally seen And then you jump we have a 2019 ZR1 limited production manual
25:14
transmission 750 horsepower I believe Pretty rare car that will be on display
25:20
So we have a whole range of different cars and they go from the old old ones to we will have some C8s and we're
25:27
hoping we'll have one of the C8 ZR1s but we haven't got our hands on one of those yet Yeah nobody has but we hopefully
25:33
will get some soon That's for sure Well guy let's take our final break my friend When we come back we're going to talk
25:38
about how you can get registered and attend Bloomington Gold this year That's coming up next on Corvette Today
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833-639-4231 I'm your host Steve Garrett With me is my buddy Guy Larson who owns Bloomington Gold We are talking about
29:37
this year's show at the new venue guy Before we get into that you know what i forgot We haven't even talked about the
29:44
survivor and benchmark awards that you can win during Bloomington Gold Talk about that real quick Yeah we got to get
29:50
to that But you know before we go into that I forgot to bring up that not all the world knows that we also certify
29:56
Camaros You're kidding We do that same kind of judging that we do for Corvettes on the first generation of Camaros No
30:02
kidding That is awesome Yeah You know the Camaro's always been like a cousin to the Corvette True Little brother or
30:09
something And for years I would know people who own both And I thought you know the judging sheets we have you
30:15
could take those judging sheets and walk up to a Camaro and judge them almost Sure enough a friend of mine Bill
30:20
Nichols who's been a judge for Corvettes for a lot of years and is a retired Chevrolet engineer He and I met up with
30:26
some guys who did Camaro judging at a parking lot at an event We took our judging sheets out to a Camaro went
30:32
through them with these Camaro experts and you know we said "Well you know the batter is in a different place so we got
30:38
to take it from being in the interior of a Corvette it's under the hood of a Camaro so you got to move it to that
30:43
portion of the judging sheets." And it was a matter of no time we had the judging sheets redone and we started judging Camaros Amazing Camaro lovers
30:50
come to Bloomington Gold That's awesome All right let's talk more about Survivor and Benchmark then Sure Survivor is
30:56
another type of judging that we do Actually I hold the trademark for the word survivor What survivor judging is
31:03
is a team of judges going up to a car and determining how much of the car is not been restored how much of it is as
31:10
it was original These are cars that have not been repainted have not had the engines redone These are cars that are
31:17
still pretty much as they were and haven't been tinkered with too much you might say So much like the certification
31:23
judging we have three different levels of awards We have a bronze a silver and
31:29
a gold And they in the same way they go up to the car and they look at the four different sections but instead of one
31:35
judge doing one area and one judge doing another they do it as a team So the whole team they can walk around the
31:41
exterior of the car and determine how much of the exterior is unrestored So
31:46
they might find that most of the paint and fiberglass has not been any work done to it but they may find one section
31:53
that some years back may have had a repair So that's a bit of a area that's a percentage of the area that's not
31:59
original or unrestored Eventually what they're determining is is this car 80%
32:04
or more unrestored that's what you have to hit to get a gold Wow That's a high mark Steve If you had a 1965 Corvette
32:12
that car is now 60 years old And they're judging the car and saying "Okay 80% or
32:18
more of the paint has never had anything done to it." These survivor candidate cars are just amazing But you know we
32:24
can learn so much from them because nobody's redone the things You know what you're looking at For the most part all
32:31
the pieces of it are as they were supposed to be Mhm That kind of leads us to benchmark our highest award Benchmark
32:38
is given to a car that attains a survivor award and a gold certification award in the same weekend at the same
32:46
event Oh So a car is judged for certification and the judges have said "Yeah this car 95% of it all the
32:53
components are correct." And then on the next day the survivor judging team goes around and says "It's not only correct
32:59
but more than 80% of the car is as it was built It's not been restored." If a
33:05
car hits those two levels and then meets another criteria and that is the
33:10
majority of the finishes are still there then it can be a benchmark car And a
33:16
benchmark what it means is it's a benchmark for other people to use when they're restoring their car Gotcha That
33:22
makes sense So the car has all the right parts according to certification and according to Survivor they've not been
33:30
messed with Yeah You could say So they're authentic And if you're restoring a car that's the car you want
33:35
to look at when you say "Well I don't know how should the widget on my engine how should it be mounted?" Mhm and you
33:41
look at a Survivor benchmark car and you say "Wow okay now I know what I got to do." Yeah that's how benchmark cars are
33:47
And there's very very few of them There's only several hundred of them over the many years that we've done it
33:53
If you have a benchmark car or you see one stop and take some time on that car and look at it Definitely All right guy
33:59
Let's talk about where you can purchase tickets and what the pricing is for the show coming up this year at Bloomington Gold Sure It's easy to purchase tickets
34:06
You go to our website which is bloomingtonold.com Across the top of the site there's several pull down menus and
34:12
you'll find one where you can go to our store and buy tickets Tickets are $30 a person per day There's discounts If you
34:20
buy them in a package for both days there's a discount If you come as a club with 10 or more cars there's a discount
34:26
Nice And you get special club parking inside the track by the way That's awesome That's pretty cool You can also
34:32
purchase lap time like we talked about We don't have the cart racing times up there yet but we will have that in the
34:38
coming weeks And you can also purchase club parking like I said So if you're part of a club like Steve I know you are
34:44
You can get all your buddies and say "Let's 10 or 20 of us go and we'll get a discount We all get to park inside the
34:50
racetrack not on the outside in a parking lot." I will talk to everybody at the Corvette Club of Kansas City See
34:55
if we can put something together That'll be fun Yeah that's a neat thing to do You actually park on the inner raceourse
35:01
not on just a piece of pavement So it's going to be pretty cool Very cool Also you've got seminars coming up this year
35:07
too don't you that's right And our friend Steve here is going to do a seminar We have other seminars David
35:13
Burroughs who's one of the founders of Bloomington Gold is going to do a seminar on a system that he does called
35:19
Prove It where he proves that a car is what it is said to be Like if it was a
35:25
rare rare race car and everybody sees it but they're not quite sure is this really that car he did a prove it
35:31
project on a Mickey Thompson race car But interesting enough he's going to talk about how he can do prove it on
35:38
anything He could do prove it on your mom's dresser that came from France He
35:43
could do a prove it project and prove that it is or isn't what she's always told you it was That's a seminar that
35:49
will be interesting We've got another fellow doing a seminar on C1 engineering and C1 components That's the older first
35:56
generation cars Nice We'll have some more other seminars We usually have them on some aspect of judging We're hoping
36:03
to have somebody there on performance of the C7 and C8 cars Performance
36:09
enhancements he could do to those cars That'll be fun Yeah David Burroughs was on Corvette today He was number 58 That
36:16
show came out at the end of May of 2021 So if you want to check out that show and check out what David Burroughs does
36:22
and prove it you can listen to that episode That was pretty cool Well you know what Steve that's probably one thing I did before he did Yeah exactly
36:30
And I am going to do a seminar on Corvette today at Bloomington Gold this year So if you do come to the show make
36:36
sure you stop by and say hello Guy you've also got a terrific array of vendors for the show Who's going to be
36:42
there this year oh yeah That's pretty neat So I'll rattle off some names and some different companies We always have
36:48
companies selling apparel Of course you can find t-shirts and polos and stuff with Corvettes on them And we have our
36:54
own brand of Bloomington Gold apparel that will be on display Corvette Central is a sponsor of us Thank you And they
37:01
will have a tent and a display They're a catalog company You can order parts for any generation Corvette and get them
37:08
through Corvette Central Mother's polish company will be there and they're going to be doing some demos on different
37:14
things you could do in polishing and correction of scratches and things on your car Nice I think we're going to
37:20
have a fellow who does dry ice blasting which is a newer technology on how you
37:25
bring back the finishes of an engine or a frame without destroying the original
37:31
paint That'll be cool Yeah we'll have some car dealers with cars for sale We have DNA restoration always has a
37:38
display and I think Dick Fernando has been an exhibitor for 51 years or
37:43
something like that when we've been there Dick sells restored cars and he also will build a car to what you want
37:49
if you want to do a modification on a Corvette Nice They'll be there Oh boy On and on Dana Forester one of your friends
37:57
in your car club Dana Forester is a known artist that does images of Corvettes and different settings Very
38:03
famous for the brick building pictures with Corvettes Dana always has a display there and he'll be selling his wares
38:09
Yeah Dana was on show number four of Corvette today That was in the middle of May of 2020 Listen to that show Dana's
38:17
Prince and his Corvette stuff is just world famous It's really really good guy
38:22
We also have hotel information on the website too don't we yes You go to the website there's several different hotels
38:28
that are available I mean you could go and try to hunt them down on your own but there's actually a lot of things going on in the St Louis area that same
38:35
weekend including the Cardinals baseball game So we've got hotels listed where we know there's availability Great And once
38:43
again give us the website for Bloomington Gold and any social media that you've got Sure Bloomington.com is
38:50
the website On Facebook just type in Bloomington Gold and it will take you right to us The dates again are June 5th
38:56
through 7th It's open to the public I should have said that much earlier People sometimes think you have to be
39:01
part of our club or something or you have to own a Corvette Now you could just kind of like cars and come and
39:06
enjoy the day there That's awesome Oh and children under 12 are free Excellent guy Thank you so much for being back on
39:13
Corvette today It's been way too long but I'm looking forward to Bloomington Gold this year Thanks for having me
39:19
Steve It was a pleasure and hope everybody has a great summer with their Corvettes Thanks again for listening and
39:24
watching Corvette Today And be sure to tell your family friends and other Corvette enthusiasts about the Corvette
39:29
Today Show And thanks to our sponsors Wheelcraft Want to dress up your Corvette with bright chrome or black
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call 833639-4231 Soul performance products at
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sulp.com The official performance exhaust of Corvette today Sio Corvette at
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ciocvet.com E5 wheels at e5wheels.com Intellisense at
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intellisense.com Also Aerolari wheels Get $100 off your purchase with the promo code CT111 at aolari.com Mark
40:14
Walter with the Retirement Income Hour podcast and Hendrickk Chevrolet in Kansas City at
40:21
cheviusa.com Thanks for checking out Corvette Today on podcast and YouTube If
40:26
you'd like to contact Steve with ideas for Corvette today you can email him at stevegared
40:32
djgmail.com Garrett has two Rs and two T's That's stevegared
40:38
djgmail.com Also sign up for email notifications at corvettetoday
40:44
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40:49
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40:54
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