Speaker 1: Welcome to Car Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hell wan, Welcome to car Stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: Scott Benjamin, I am Ben Bolan, and I am Kurt
Speaker 1: garn Hey, that's that's all three of us. Yes, that's
Speaker 1: everyone in the room. We've taken a roll call. Now,
Speaker 1: as long as everybody else is out there, we're good, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I don't know about you guys, but it feels
Speaker 1: like we're on a pretty good mood. Today. We spent
Speaker 1: u we spent a few minutes just shooting the breeze
Speaker 1: about today's episode before we eventually said. I think Kurt
Speaker 1: had to get us in line and say, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: maybe we should we should just record it and just
Speaker 1: do this show. So this is I've got. I've got
Speaker 1: an announcement before we get started. The short thing. Alright, alright,
Speaker 1: I don't know how you guys are gonna take this,
Speaker 1: but I for years I have been driving one iteration
Speaker 1: of a Monte Carlo or another, and all of all
Speaker 1: of our long time listeners, you guys have been with
Speaker 1: you guys have heard my trials and travails with that
Speaker 1: with that car, and you know what it's like when
Speaker 1: you own a car for a long time. You know,
Speaker 1: it's idiosyncrasies. You get used to not having a car payment,
Speaker 1: which is beautiful. Uh, And eventually I had to give
Speaker 1: up the ghost man. I still have my money, Carlo,
Speaker 1: but I bought a new car. Yeah, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's what do you get what? I got a seventeen
Speaker 1: four to escape because I got a great deal on
Speaker 1: the newest car I've ever driven, and I'm actually taking
Speaker 1: possession of it, like all the deal stuff has done.
Speaker 1: I'm taking possession of it tomorrow as we're recording. Congratulations. Well,
Speaker 1: let's let's hope man. It's I still have the money, Carlo, though,
Speaker 1: it's you know, I won't be able to sell it
Speaker 1: for anything, honest, Yeah, I understand. Maybe your dad will
Speaker 1: take it. He takes about he takes on projects like this, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe he will. Well, you know, I'm I'm just
Speaker 1: a couple of quick questions if you don't mind, I
Speaker 1: know we have to jump into just a couple al right,
Speaker 1: So how did you find it? Is it something you're
Speaker 1: buying from a dealer, You buying it from a friend,
Speaker 1: you buying it from you know, just Craig's list what
Speaker 1: where has it come from? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm buying
Speaker 1: it used with I found it with the help of
Speaker 1: a third party, but the purchase itself is direct. And
Speaker 1: so I've checked out the car and I'm literally tomorrow
Speaker 1: all I'm doing is like taking possession of it. It's black, black,
Speaker 1: okay black on the outside, and it's you know, that's
Speaker 1: another thing with the cars as a little worried game model,
Speaker 1: because the color is kind of the last thing I
Speaker 1: care about when an engine that works that says this
Speaker 1: has six d K on it. But I got a
Speaker 1: good deal, uh, And I was just very happy that
Speaker 1: I didn't get stuck with you know, like a corn
Speaker 1: flower yellow or they have all these fancy car paint
Speaker 1: names like you know, absent minded, vermilion and whatever. I
Speaker 1: don't get it. But yeah, I just got just a
Speaker 1: regular black Bard Escape because I gotta do some haul
Speaker 1: and I got some road trips ahead of me, and
Speaker 1: so I I, uh, I wanted to get, uh, just
Speaker 1: a little beater pickup truck. But like we talked about before,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the Ranger, it's tough to get the
Speaker 1: kind of pickup truck I would want, you know, no
Speaker 1: disrespect to an F one fifty. But I don't need
Speaker 1: something like that. I want to like a little manual
Speaker 1: transmission to seater that parking lot, which is already difficult enough.
Speaker 1: And you know that's funny. I mean, I don't know
Speaker 1: why I asked the color. I mean that that's the
Speaker 1: last thing that you should be, you know, concerned with. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: probably just so I can prank you in the parking
Speaker 1: lot if I see it out right. Well, this this
Speaker 1: made me start thinking because I actually went through some
Speaker 1: of the old research that we had done on the
Speaker 1: ends and outs of buying a car, what you should
Speaker 1: know and what you should avoid, what you should look for,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Confusing as hell. Yeah. Well, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people here in the audience today have war stories.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that we had said in
Speaker 1: the past that I think maybe some people weren't on
Speaker 1: board with was that I like you, and I don't
Speaker 1: know about you, Kurt. We'll see if you're on board
Speaker 1: with this. I am very much against uh buying a
Speaker 1: brand new car. Oh yeah, I just it's just not
Speaker 1: for me. I know it's for some people, but it's
Speaker 1: not for me. What about you, Kurt? I'm not completely
Speaker 1: against it. All right, So you buy a new car
Speaker 1: and it's gonna last you for maybe four or five years,
Speaker 1: I mean depending on how much you drive, but for
Speaker 1: five years trouble free, maybe more. You can get two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand miles on pretty much any car nowadays. I'm
Speaker 1: not totally against it. So you see some security in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you get used to making the car payment every month,
Speaker 1: it's not too big. That's the one thing. That's the
Speaker 1: one thing. Because I did get it, like through a
Speaker 1: third party, so I do have a have a car.
Speaker 1: Note again, Yeah, it's sure, just it's tough to d stomach.
Speaker 1: But you know what, you've got, that reliability, you've got,
Speaker 1: you know, the the solid feel again of a car
Speaker 1: underneath you. Because i know what it's like to go
Speaker 1: from an older vehicle to a newer vehicle, and I'm
Speaker 1: back to the position now, by the way, where mine
Speaker 1: is feeling older. You know, it's a little more sloppy,
Speaker 1: it's not quite as tight as it was yet. It's
Speaker 1: just it's tough to explain unless you're in the seat
Speaker 1: experience in it. But a new car just has that
Speaker 1: correct feeling, that right feeling to it and something new
Speaker 1: to you. I mean going, You're going from what you're
Speaker 1: two thousand four, yeah, yeah, yeah, actually two thousand, two
Speaker 1: thousand six six. You're going from two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: almost almost ten years with feature many many less miles
Speaker 1: on it. I'm sure it's probably it's probably just a
Speaker 1: more solid feeling vehicle underneath you. It's gonna be nice.
Speaker 1: I'm excited about hearing about whatever you intend to do
Speaker 1: with this. I mean, you know, honestly, guys, the fact
Speaker 1: that it might start every time that I wanted to
Speaker 1: start is flowing me away, you know. But I I
Speaker 1: bring this up. I bring this up. I know there's
Speaker 1: a very long tangent, but it bring this up because
Speaker 1: it had me thinking about new cars, and you know
Speaker 1: how it is whenever you're going to buy an automobile.
Speaker 1: I can't speak for everyone, but for me, a good
Speaker 1: seventy of my time overall is just window shopping through
Speaker 1: one format or another. I know that, I would say
Speaker 1: easily twent That is me taking deep dives into cars
Speaker 1: that I will probably never buy, you know, like I
Speaker 1: I one time saw a ninety three Rolls Royce that
Speaker 1: had an ungodly number of miles and was just like
Speaker 1: barely affordable, to the point where I thought maybe it
Speaker 1: was an estate sale from like a criminal in the
Speaker 1: Atlanta area or something, because I had it was not
Speaker 1: a pretty vehicle. It had been road rough. But one
Speaker 1: of the things that the three of us have been
Speaker 1: talking about for a little while now off air in
Speaker 1: different conversations is the idea of getting the classic car,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And that's why today's episode
Speaker 1: is about the Chevy Corvettes. Oh yes, and that's the
Speaker 1: car we've talked about a few times in the past.
Speaker 1: Of course I have to bring this up. And you
Speaker 1: know what, I think, we've talked about corvettes many many times,
Speaker 1: So I'll just leave it at this. We would you
Speaker 1: say we're veterans, I would says, oh, got okay, now
Speaker 1: we are. We've talked about for sure in full episodes.
Speaker 1: I know we've talked about the Remember the old v
Speaker 1: H one Corvette giveaway that they did. We had a
Speaker 1: full episode on that because I remember someone discovered them
Speaker 1: years later after an artist had owned them and left
Speaker 1: them abandoned in a parking lot. You know, he had
Speaker 1: painted some of them. It was really a mess. I think.
Speaker 1: I think there's some work underway to restore that full
Speaker 1: collection now, by the way, But anyways, that was like
Speaker 1: thirty six Corvettes that were given to one winner back
Speaker 1: in If you have interest in that, you know, check
Speaker 1: out the Car Stuff archives. The other one that we
Speaker 1: that I know for sure we did about Corvette was
Speaker 1: the switch over to to the C seven model, which
Speaker 1: is the model I think it's model year we did,
Speaker 1: you know, just ahead of time and uh and that's
Speaker 1: kind of something similar to what we're doing now, only
Speaker 1: now we're gonna be talking about a completely different animal. Right.
Speaker 1: This is something that people have been been talking about, really,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you want to really get down to
Speaker 1: it here, I guess people have been talking about this
Speaker 1: for fifty one years at that point, and finally, finally
Speaker 1: people are getting, you know, the Corvette, and not everybody,
Speaker 1: but some people are getting the Corvette that they've been
Speaker 1: asking for that entire time. Pretty exciting forward with the future,
Speaker 1: right the Corvette is already the motor trend car of
Speaker 1: the year. It's we're not done with January and you
Speaker 1: know what we are. I checked into this, We're about
Speaker 1: this is just bad timing on our part. I suppose
Speaker 1: but I mean, this happens right as as of the
Speaker 1: recording of this episode, and I know this will change
Speaker 1: by the time the episode airs, but it is in
Speaker 1: the running. It's the top three for the North America
Speaker 1: Car of the Year and as well, and Corvette has
Speaker 1: one in the past. You know, there've been I think
Speaker 1: at least two other years when Corvette is one. I
Speaker 1: believe back in the year that we talked about, uh,
Speaker 1: that one did win the North America Car of the Year. Uh.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's not unheard of that this one
Speaker 1: might be the car of the Year by the time
Speaker 1: this episode airs. But Corvette is really something to behold.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a it's a to me. I think
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful car. I really like it. I mean,
Speaker 1: we can each talk about it, you know what we
Speaker 1: think about it. I suppose if you think it it
Speaker 1: hears or it it it holds two Corvettes, you know,
Speaker 1: lasting image. I guess the you know, the historic image
Speaker 1: of the Corvettes and what we see as a Corvette. Um.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people have felt that it
Speaker 1: it so dramatically deviates from that that you know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't hold true for the purest you know that the
Speaker 1: people want to see the long front end. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the real world drive of course, but you're you're kind
Speaker 1: of slung way back in the in the chassis. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's it's it's just a
Speaker 1: different um, it's a different looking car all around. I mean,
Speaker 1: the silhouette is completely different than it was before. And
Speaker 1: I don't think that's a bad thing. This new Corvette
Speaker 1: kind of reminds me of the spirit behind the original
Speaker 1: in the way that it wanted to be kind of
Speaker 1: like this new thing, this innovative thing that other companies
Speaker 1: looked at and said, whoa, we wanna we want to
Speaker 1: make a car like that. This particular car may start
Speaker 1: a trend with companies looking to make kind of a
Speaker 1: low cost supercar, or at least a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of new people can get into. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a neat concept. Low cost. He just said it. That's
Speaker 1: one of the key points here that we want to
Speaker 1: talk about today. And I don't know if we want
Speaker 1: to jump in this right now or maybe we can wait.
Speaker 1: You tell me, we can do it later. But low
Speaker 1: cost doesn't mean lacking in features and performants, design standards
Speaker 1: and all that. I mean, it's a great looking car.
Speaker 1: And I would also say low cost is a comparative statement,
Speaker 1: you know what, I every time you new used whatever, right,
Speaker 1: I feel you have to uh categorize that even if
Speaker 1: you're talking about buying a new pair of socks or something.
Speaker 1: I mean, so we're both notoriously cheap with stuff like that, right,
Speaker 1: that's right? So what about what about this? What if
Speaker 1: we talk a little bit about the before we get
Speaker 1: to the price, before you get two brass tacks. What
Speaker 1: if we talk a little bit about just some of
Speaker 1: the specs, a little bit about how this came out.
Speaker 1: Because one thing listeners need to know, uh, and people
Speaker 1: who have already pre ordered to Corvette are very well
Speaker 1: aware of this. Uh. Production on the vehicle actually got
Speaker 1: pushed back to January, right even a little bit later.
Speaker 1: Maybe I got a little bit of insight info just
Speaker 1: just garnered yesterday, and I can tell you about you
Speaker 1: want to tell you about right now? You see, I
Speaker 1: went I went online and I went to Corvette. I
Speaker 1: got it gause a beat Chevy dot com or Corvette
Speaker 1: dot com where but I ended up chatting with the
Speaker 1: Corvettes person on the other end. You know, it says
Speaker 1: you want to chat with GM about the new Corvette,
Speaker 1: and I said, why not, I've got some questions. I'll
Speaker 1: just do this. So I go on there and I,
Speaker 1: you know, of course, I guess I had to pretend
Speaker 1: that I'm really interested in buying one of these and
Speaker 1: so that I could get, you know, some realistic answers, right,
Speaker 1: And I just said, you know, I'm really interested in
Speaker 1: the new Corvette, which I am. A lot of this
Speaker 1: is not made up. I guess the fact that I was,
Speaker 1: you know, want to buy one. I do want to
Speaker 1: buy one. I don't know if I will, um, but
Speaker 1: but I pretended to be an interested party and I
Speaker 1: talked to someone on the other end, or chatted with
Speaker 1: someone named Carrie. Now who knows if Carrie is a
Speaker 1: real person or not, but robots. But the answers were
Speaker 1: very real, so I'll leave it with that, very human answers.
Speaker 1: But I said that I'm you know, interested in corvette
Speaker 1: and the and the production schedule, you know, when they're
Speaker 1: planned to begin in production. Because I've heard that the
Speaker 1: same thing as you, that this strike had pushed production back.
Speaker 1: The strike, yeah, it was, it was like the longest
Speaker 1: strike and what like fifty years or something like that.
Speaker 1: It was a long strike ended finally the end of
Speaker 1: October of last year, and really it really bumped back
Speaker 1: production on this brand new vehicle, which is something GM
Speaker 1: didn't need at this time. Of course. In fact, you know,
Speaker 1: i'll tell you this right now. I found a number
Speaker 1: about this strike. It said that, you know, due to
Speaker 1: the extent of it, how long this thing lasted. GM
Speaker 1: as a company lost two billion dollars in production during
Speaker 1: that strike. And you might think, well, Okay, the workers
Speaker 1: really showed them whose boss. You know, they got, They
Speaker 1: got what everything they wanted. But it turns out they
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily come out much better either. They got a
Speaker 1: couple of benefits, I guess to this whole thing, you know,
Speaker 1: they didn't exactly win. It wasn't a big win. They
Speaker 1: also ended up losing a billion dollars in wages during
Speaker 1: that time, so kind of a a lose lose for
Speaker 1: both parties involved. But I think they were just happy
Speaker 1: when it was over. Fortunate timetell So, so I asked, when,
Speaker 1: you know, when does this uh, when does this corvette
Speaker 1: production schedule to begin? Because I thought it was January,
Speaker 1: but it looks like it's going to begin in February
Speaker 1: or mid February, and I think they're started to begin
Speaker 1: maybe early could also be pushed back to early second quarter,
Speaker 1: so it could go as late as that um And
Speaker 1: they said that productions start up from that time all
Speaker 1: the way until when you'll see the cars on dealer
Speaker 1: lots is going to be approximately six to eight weeks,
Speaker 1: but you know, of course that time can vary, and
Speaker 1: they're gonna launch, I think with the coup and then
Speaker 1: they're going to begin the convertible production just after that,
Speaker 1: so it's gonna be a little while before you see
Speaker 1: them on dealer lots because I've been really anxious to
Speaker 1: go and check one out on a dealer dealer property,
Speaker 1: just to go see one. I know that can be
Speaker 1: a little awkward for some people to go into a
Speaker 1: dealer and you know, you have to kind of play
Speaker 1: the game and you know, act interested, or you know,
Speaker 1: they might know that you're just there to kind of
Speaker 1: kick the tires, you know, but it's fun either way.
Speaker 1: I like doing that. And I did get another couple
Speaker 1: of answers too. I was looking for specific information if
Speaker 1: they were going to continue some of the trends of
Speaker 1: pass some of the things that they had done at
Speaker 1: the Bowling Green Assembly plant in Kentucky where they allow
Speaker 1: you to come in and take a factory tour, watch
Speaker 1: your car, your specific car being built and you know,
Speaker 1: final assembly and then you get to drive it away
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, photo op all that, and they
Speaker 1: said that that. Unfortunately, right now, and I think this
Speaker 1: might be because of the strike, they are not going
Speaker 1: to allow that at least for the foreseeable future. They
Speaker 1: might change that in the near future, but as of
Speaker 1: right now, no factory tour is no factory you know,
Speaker 1: assembly experience. You know, you can't go help build the
Speaker 1: engine or any of that stuff. You couldn't have passed
Speaker 1: with some models. So I don't know, just just it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting to get to talk to the
Speaker 1: Corvette concierge for a bit and uh and get the
Speaker 1: straight scoop on things, and it's a it's a great
Speaker 1: tool to use if you ever want to do something
Speaker 1: like that for any vehicle. There's plenty of answers out
Speaker 1: there for everyone. Now, did you go into any nuts
Speaker 1: and bolts under the hood stuff? I did not, And
Speaker 1: that's that's what I think you're probably gonna be able
Speaker 1: to shine some light on here, because I don't have
Speaker 1: a whole lot of facts and figures on this other
Speaker 1: than just the standard quick stuff, you know, like the
Speaker 1: stuff that everybody reads in the you know, the first
Speaker 1: three or four bullet points of the story, right right,
Speaker 1: stuff like of course it's zero to sixty and two
Speaker 1: point eight super fast. That's what I I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the most important stats that people want to know.
Speaker 1: I feel like it is. That's it. That's so quick.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's this is a big car. It's it's
Speaker 1: you know, long, low, and wide, the big vehicle two
Speaker 1: point eight seconds. That's that's gonna feel awful fast, like
Speaker 1: like rockets led fast, and a lot of the So
Speaker 1: there are three there are three different iterations. You can
Speaker 1: get different builds that they have listed. And one thing
Speaker 1: that I thought was interesting was that the the initial build,
Speaker 1: the one LT or the you know, the lower end,
Speaker 1: the emphasis really from Chevy side is on how light
Speaker 1: that that vehicle is. I like it. They know that
Speaker 1: there is a huge demographic of people who Corvette fans,
Speaker 1: who are probably probably even grew up around them and
Speaker 1: then later bought their own. We're very excited about this,
Speaker 1: but they're excited for the old school kind of Corvette,
Speaker 1: which was relatively few frills and it was about being
Speaker 1: able to drive like a bat out of heck. Since
Speaker 1: we're a family show. What's interesting about the zero to
Speaker 1: sixty number is that it's I mean, I don't think
Speaker 1: it was the base model. It was maybe had like
Speaker 1: sports package or something, but it's not like a z
Speaker 1: R one or anything. It's a fairly entry level car.
Speaker 1: You can up this. Now we're gonna go through some
Speaker 1: of the the upgrades and you know what you can
Speaker 1: do in the pricing and all that in just a minute.
Speaker 1: But one step there's something called a Z fifty one package,
Speaker 1: and that is the performance package. It costs a lot more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we will talk about what that gets you, I guess
Speaker 1: in the end. But here's the other thing you said.
Speaker 1: There are three versions of this, right, So you get
Speaker 1: to the top version, there's the one EL there one
Speaker 1: LT right, Yeah, the two l T the sting gray trims.
Speaker 1: Sorry LT one and l T two. I'm mistakenly had
Speaker 1: them transpose. But yeah, so there's trim options. But then
Speaker 1: there's the LT three also, right, which gives you even
Speaker 1: more of the same. Really, the engine stays the same,
Speaker 1: The engine stays the same throughout, and they're uh, that
Speaker 1: higher package, that higher trim package. It's more on oddly enough,
Speaker 1: of course has everything from the first two package builds.
Speaker 1: But then it it has this emphasis on making the
Speaker 1: interior of the Corvette nicer. Which aren't the Corvettes traditionally
Speaker 1: Aren't they known for not having the best interior? You're not, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean yes and no, And I think I've really
Speaker 1: tried to improve that in the past, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: customers want it. It's like, do you feel like there's
Speaker 1: a lot of older buyers of this vehicle because it's
Speaker 1: gonna GE's getting out there in price, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: a lot of people that are older. They're gonna want
Speaker 1: a few more comforts, it's gonna be, you know something.
Speaker 1: But but at the same time they want that you know,
Speaker 1: that killer perform it And and well I got kind
Speaker 1: of animated over here when you started talking about this
Speaker 1: is because you're talking about how it's lightweight and it's
Speaker 1: sort of a no frills version. If you go with
Speaker 1: the bass version that they are thrown out there for
Speaker 1: what fifty nine, there's under sixty, right, get comparatively when
Speaker 1: you're talking about a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: very absolutely when you when you compare it against what
Speaker 1: it what it can compete against. But when you go
Speaker 1: from the the LT one to the l T three,
Speaker 1: this is what I found really remarkable. You're talking about
Speaker 1: just a fraction of a second difference in zero to
Speaker 1: sixty time. In fact, the performance package, when you start
Speaker 1: adding the spoilers and some of the other accessories, it's
Speaker 1: a tiny bit slower than the base version of the
Speaker 1: same vehicle that you pay less four. But you get
Speaker 1: all the you know, the appearance packages, and you know
Speaker 1: all the the benefits of like cooling and breaking and
Speaker 1: all the other stuff that we'll we'll talk about. But um,
Speaker 1: and if you go up to the LT three, I
Speaker 1: think between LT one and LT three, um, you're talking
Speaker 1: about just again like a tenth of a second from
Speaker 1: zero to sixty faster for you know, the top version
Speaker 1: versus the lowest version, which is not going to be
Speaker 1: really felt a whole lot. I mean, we are talking
Speaker 1: about two point seconds as quick, um, But they have
Speaker 1: the exact same quarter mile speed, So it's not like
Speaker 1: you're really gaining any top speed or anything like that.
Speaker 1: So if you're going to just just purely for speed
Speaker 1: in this car and you don't really care about, uh,
Speaker 1: you don't care about the handling characteristics of it, because
Speaker 1: that's added in later with different you know, performance, well
Speaker 1: we'll talk about them there. There's a really interesting chassis
Speaker 1: work going on here too. But if you just want
Speaker 1: a flat out fast car for the price that they're offering,
Speaker 1: which not a lot of people are going to buy,
Speaker 1: you can still get that for that for that base price,
Speaker 1: it can It's something that's definitely accessible, which I thought
Speaker 1: was pretty exciting. You know, not very often that you
Speaker 1: know the performances matched so closely between the low end
Speaker 1: vehicle and the top end v That's a good point,
Speaker 1: you know, And I think it's it's also pretty well
Speaker 1: thought out. The way that you can tell Chevy was
Speaker 1: Chevy probably spent some intense research time figuring out which
Speaker 1: customers would want what, because I think maybe I'm a
Speaker 1: little more optimistic. I think there there's a ton of
Speaker 1: people out there who will say a car like this
Speaker 1: for sixty grand, you know what I mean? Uh, And
Speaker 1: and true, maybe some of those people say, well, the
Speaker 1: kids are finally away of college, right, and now I've
Speaker 1: got a little more time and uh, a little more
Speaker 1: capital will play around with, you know, so I can
Speaker 1: see so many kitchen table conversations or some family it's like,
Speaker 1: all right, uh, the kids are gone, or maybe I
Speaker 1: just retired and years ago you promised that I could
Speaker 1: get whatever car I wanted after that, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like I could see that happening for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know what, sixty thousand might be kind of
Speaker 1: your upper limit to you might have you wanted a sedan,
Speaker 1: it was gonna be fifty five thousand anyway or fifty
Speaker 1: and this is a bump up, sure, and it's a
Speaker 1: sports car versus sedan, that kind of thing, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot of considerations to to make,
Speaker 1: some concessions to make as well, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: moving to a sports car from you know, a family vehicle.
Speaker 1: But still, you're right, it could be a very exciting
Speaker 1: move for somebody for a relatively low injury price that
Speaker 1: gets you right in the in the performance bracket with
Speaker 1: other supercars. As as Curse said earlier, you know, this
Speaker 1: is something this is a remarkable vehicle. Really. I mean
Speaker 1: when you when you really, if you go online, you
Speaker 1: really look at what they've included in this package and
Speaker 1: included in this deal, and the the redesign that's been done,
Speaker 1: because every single part of this car has been gone over.
Speaker 1: It's all new. They've got some This is like it's
Speaker 1: got to be a marketing thing. They say there's one
Speaker 1: carryover part from the previous model, uh model Corvette. No
Speaker 1: one knows what the one part is, and I feel
Speaker 1: it's just one of those things that you know, is
Speaker 1: meant to garner attention. Yeah, so that's just something that
Speaker 1: people love to say. And if to me, this is
Speaker 1: an all new car really, and then that doesn't make
Speaker 1: it a bad thing. I saw the same thing you're
Speaker 1: talking about with the one component being carried over, but
Speaker 1: I also wasn't able to nail down what it was exactly. No,
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone ever will probably unless you know,
Speaker 1: someone leaks at the top and maybe that'll be you
Speaker 1: know later like oh, it's this emblem or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: You know, this log nut, it's the carpet. The carpet
Speaker 1: is the same. It's the carpet. It really, it really
Speaker 1: does though it doesn't feel like there was some meeting
Speaker 1: where there was a brilliant engineer describing this and they
Speaker 1: said one that one throwaway line and then somebody in
Speaker 1: their sales are marketing was like, I remember that one
Speaker 1: sentence and someone said, oh, really, what specific component wasn'
Speaker 1: and they're like that, I just remember that part of
Speaker 1: the sentence. I can't tell you, but people love it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: cut and pri but but yeah, so it's it is true,
Speaker 1: And I think for that reason. You know, Motor Trend
Speaker 1: does their research. I know that they're not perfect, but
Speaker 1: I think that affordability to get into that supercar kind
Speaker 1: of bracket, I think that is one of the primary
Speaker 1: factors making this the Motor Trend car of the year.
Speaker 1: They've had some weird choices in the past, and then
Speaker 1: sometimes they've chosen things because of what they see as
Speaker 1: the the future potential of it instead of what it's
Speaker 1: actually done. So like the Tesla Model Esque, for instance,
Speaker 1: was the car of the year, right, and Tesla again
Speaker 1: has no shortage of criticism, right and honestly rightly so
Speaker 1: in some degrees. But I see the logic of Motor
Speaker 1: Trend going towards this, and honestly I spent some time
Speaker 1: looking at one, and I thought, well, sixty grand, that's
Speaker 1: that is a lot of money. It's a lot different
Speaker 1: than an escape though it is it is, but I mean, I, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I I love road trips and I would
Speaker 1: love to have a car that I could take out
Speaker 1: on a track for it. Escape is not that, No,
Speaker 1: not necessarily. It might require some modification. Yeah, we might
Speaker 1: have to mode it a little, just a little, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say. So, you know, there's a there's just
Speaker 1: a there's a ton of exciting things about this car.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what. I'm gonna go ahead and list
Speaker 1: off a few more of these specs that I have,
Speaker 1: and then we'll jump into a few other things that
Speaker 1: I found interesting along the way, and maybe we can
Speaker 1: kind of branch off from there if you want. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So another couple of things that people should know about
Speaker 1: this vehicle if you don't already, is that, um, there
Speaker 1: are twelve here we go with colors. Again, they're twelve
Speaker 1: colors to choose from. However, you can pay for additional
Speaker 1: four colors that are an up charge, so they kind
Speaker 1: of make it a little specialty. But these are colors
Speaker 1: probably that tested very high in their focus groups or whatever.
Speaker 1: Those are going to be the ones that you pay
Speaker 1: a premium for. But I think it's on the order
Speaker 1: of something like, you know, five extra bucks or something
Speaker 1: like that. And it's been the way that Corvette has
Speaker 1: done in the past. You know, they've been different colors
Speaker 1: of it that are you know, sought after that they
Speaker 1: then say this is our premium color and you have
Speaker 1: to pay extra if you're gonna order a brand new vehicles.
Speaker 1: So colors again probably, yeah, Like if you're gonna order
Speaker 1: a new car, that's pretty important, I guess, right, yeah, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: why not? You have three seat options. They make a
Speaker 1: big deal about the seats in this car, and the
Speaker 1: seats do cost you know that you get different versions
Speaker 1: in different packages that you order. Of course, if you
Speaker 1: go online you can find all that. But people are
Speaker 1: talking a lot about the seats in this vehicle, as
Speaker 1: they always do. You like this, the stitching and the
Speaker 1: comfort and just the appearance of them and everything, and
Speaker 1: the color leather that you use, and you know, the
Speaker 1: inserts and all that. I mean, it's it's always a
Speaker 1: big deal when they talk about seats in a in
Speaker 1: a sports car. They all look like fantastic choices to me,
Speaker 1: even the base seat looks like it's an incredible seat.
Speaker 1: I would love to get some seat time GM listening.
Speaker 1: But it would be a lot of fun to drive
Speaker 1: one of these, even even with a base seat. I
Speaker 1: can tell you that. But maybe maybe people's last, last
Speaker 1: last option they choose. Maybe um, magnetic ride control. That's okay,
Speaker 1: that's one that we had talked about being in this
Speaker 1: Z fifty one package. Now, the Z fifty one advantage
Speaker 1: is really if you do want to go up to
Speaker 1: that package, which does bump you up to the l
Speaker 1: T two package as well, it's not the speed, um
Speaker 1: you're again we talked about that, how it's you know,
Speaker 1: really similar to the base model in speed as far
Speaker 1: as you know zero sixty and in quarter mile speed.
Speaker 1: What you are getting for the Z fifty one package, though,
Speaker 1: is this magnetic ride control, and you're also getting upgraded
Speaker 1: breaks and cooling. As I mentioned earlier. The Z fifty
Speaker 1: one package, however, is a five thousand dollar upgrade, plus
Speaker 1: you have to pay eighteen hundred and fifty dollars on
Speaker 1: top of that five thousand dollar upgrade in order to
Speaker 1: get the magnetic ride control. So if that makes sense.
Speaker 1: You have to kind of bump up to the Z
Speaker 1: fifty one package and then also opt to get the
Speaker 1: magnetic ride control, so it becomes essentially a nearly seven
Speaker 1: thousand dollar option if you look at it that way,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I mean you have to
Speaker 1: have one on top of the other. You have to
Speaker 1: kind of combine these numbers to get it, so kind
Speaker 1: of an expensive upgrade. They have things like, you know,
Speaker 1: as you would expect, you can get better speaker systems.
Speaker 1: You can get a fourteen speaker sounds, and so I
Speaker 1: don't know where you're gonna put fourteen speakers in that
Speaker 1: in that cockpit anyway, but I think they get aggressively smaller.
Speaker 1: I think so too. But they said that, you know,
Speaker 1: most people are happy with ten will no kidding, They're
Speaker 1: probably happy with ted I mean, and and likewise, you know,
Speaker 1: there's probably a lot of people that will never turn
Speaker 1: the radio on in that car. I mean, I would
Speaker 1: think you're gonna have the windows down listening to the
Speaker 1: engine the whole time. You know. That's it's probably the
Speaker 1: way most people drive it all the time. And it
Speaker 1: does have some kind of cool things too. It has
Speaker 1: a big display you know, heads up I'm sorry they well,
Speaker 1: they do have a heads up display, but then just
Speaker 1: the driver information display, the one that's behind the steering wheel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the touch screens like behind and to the right. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a different one. I'm talking about that. Well, they
Speaker 1: have a big twelve inch display that has you know,
Speaker 1: the tech and you know, the accelerometer displays and all that,
Speaker 1: you know, some really fancy stuff behind there. And then
Speaker 1: they do have the NAV system that you're talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the entertainment thing, right, So that's like a pretty big screen.
Speaker 1: It's like an eight inch HD screen that is standard
Speaker 1: in every vehicle, so you can even again, you can
Speaker 1: get the base model and still get the standard HD
Speaker 1: eight inch uh you know entertainment screen, which is exactly
Speaker 1: the same one you're gonna get in the three LT version,
Speaker 1: although it's going to have more features and options available
Speaker 1: to you at that point. And one last thing that
Speaker 1: I feel like, I'm I'm just listening off a bunch
Speaker 1: of crap here now, but have you seen that that
Speaker 1: array of buttons or that that lineup of buttons that's
Speaker 1: on the side of the driver's driver's console. So you
Speaker 1: get in and it's like everything is is angled towards
Speaker 1: the driver, as is the kind of the trend recently
Speaker 1: in the last chiefs maybe decade really to kind of
Speaker 1: position everything so that's in control of the drivers, so
Speaker 1: they feel like they've got access to everything to the
Speaker 1: right and all the way down from the dash down
Speaker 1: to practically where you fasten your seatbelt. That looks like
Speaker 1: there's a lineup of looks like twenty buttons in a row,
Speaker 1: but they're all in a single file row all the
Speaker 1: way down. It looks a little difficult navigate it first
Speaker 1: to manage, but it has just a cool appearance. I
Speaker 1: like the way it looks. I think it's a good
Speaker 1: use of space really, because they're gonna have that beam
Speaker 1: there anyway. Talking about that single strip, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is interesting to me. It is I've just never
Speaker 1: seen anything like that in another vehicle that you know
Speaker 1: that it doesn't mirror exactly some of the other vehicles.
Speaker 1: I've seen a lot of controls over there, but they're
Speaker 1: always clustered together into clumps, you know, like this is
Speaker 1: the the navigation, this is the window operation for you know,
Speaker 1: all the windows in the car. Well, it's also the
Speaker 1: minimized the distraction to right. Sure, yeah, exactly, But I
Speaker 1: just wonder how hard it is to learn those positions.
Speaker 1: It's almost like learning a keyboard, you know. Yeah, doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like that. I mean maybe some of them are.
Speaker 1: Most of them are meant to be you know, viewed
Speaker 1: and then pushed instead of you know, trying to access
Speaker 1: them at you know, at speed. I would hope, Well,
Speaker 1: here's the here's the thing. Those buttons are all the
Speaker 1: climate controls, right, so it's the fans, speed, airflow, to frosters,
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And of course it's a little classy
Speaker 1: now it's guys. So the passenger and the driver have
Speaker 1: different temperature controls and then heated seats stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So it maybe something people do at speed, but typically,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're doing a de froster or something,
Speaker 1: you put that on when you're starting your car. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't see a lot of people hopefully there's no words.
Speaker 1: I have to eat later. But I don't see a
Speaker 1: lot of people, you know, doing and saying, you know what,
Speaker 1: this seed is too cold? Hang on, let me look away.
Speaker 1: I have to adjust my lumbar right now. My lumbar
Speaker 1: is killing me. Yeah, maybe people say that. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but um, but yeah, it is an interesting design and
Speaker 1: it's not it's not something super familiar. There is while
Speaker 1: while we're going along this side, there is one thing
Speaker 1: I have to say, um, that you had pointed out
Speaker 1: off air, Kurt, that is probably one of the greater
Speaker 1: contra verses about that. It's automatic. Yeah, now, Kurt, that
Speaker 1: particularly bothered you, but didn't really bother me. I just
Speaker 1: thought it was interesting that they wouldn't have They wouldn't
Speaker 1: include that option and a Corvette, at least at least
Speaker 1: from the get go. I think eventually maybe now I
Speaker 1: saw you stand up and kick your chair across the room,
Speaker 1: gambling loss so scambly all right, I thought I thought
Speaker 1: maybe it bothered you more than I guess it did.
Speaker 1: But but we had a little back and forth about that.
Speaker 1: I just know that it it bothers a lot of
Speaker 1: other people. I think that it makes the car a
Speaker 1: lot more accessible in a way, along with the price
Speaker 1: point and the automatic. I mean, I guess I guess
Speaker 1: they could have. They say that it was a structural issue,
Speaker 1: like that center posts there is essential to the rigidity
Speaker 1: of the car, So if they cut a hole in it,
Speaker 1: and also of the transmission. I mean the placement may
Speaker 1: may cost some issues with that as well. Yeah, I guess,
Speaker 1: you know, everything in the car, as we've heard with
Speaker 1: the the other vehicle, kind of had to fight for
Speaker 1: a place on the vehicle. You know that everything had
Speaker 1: to be proven, everything had to be within weight, specks
Speaker 1: be within you know, of course the design spec so
Speaker 1: that they didn't have to change too much along the way.
Speaker 1: But but you know they had automatic by the way,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a pretty amazing piece of machinery there itself.
Speaker 1: I mean they say that the shifts are made within
Speaker 1: what is it like, one tenth of a second? One
Speaker 1: tenth of a second, which is still uh as they
Speaker 1: say ultra quick. It's ultra quick shifting. It's an eight
Speaker 1: speed automatic transmission, and it's the same one that they
Speaker 1: use in again all three models. Yeah, and you can
Speaker 1: get the paddle shifter stuff as well. Yeah, so if
Speaker 1: you want, you know, the supercar feel, I guess you
Speaker 1: can shift with the battle shifters or just throwing and
Speaker 1: drive and go. The Corvette did make an appearance at
Speaker 1: Daytona in January seven. Do you guys see that it
Speaker 1: was just it's weird because it's it's also on the
Speaker 1: track with Ferrari and Porsche. This is the roar before
Speaker 1: and more or less. Think of it like if you're
Speaker 1: not familiar with the Rice, think of it like a
Speaker 1: dry runner, a rehearsal for the Daytona Endurance Races time. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't. I did not see that. Man, Things like this, it,
Speaker 1: things like this are just passing me by. Ben. We're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about this in a future episode. I know
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about you know, some motorsports events that
Speaker 1: are just kind of missed. Yeah, Like there's so much
Speaker 1: scattering of of I don't you don't even know where
Speaker 1: to I don't know how to better put this than
Speaker 1: you just don't know where to go sometimes to watch
Speaker 1: it all, to take it all into to realize what's happening.
Speaker 1: Unless that's something that's marked off in your calendar every year. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a good chance that you know it's
Speaker 1: January eight and you realize that happened on the seventh.
Speaker 1: That's happens a lot nature of the game. But also,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of the I think part of
Speaker 1: that is because a lot of times if somebody really
Speaker 1: loves a race or racing, they love a particular genre,
Speaker 1: are kind of racing. I mean they might say like,
Speaker 1: uh so and so it is fine, but I'm a
Speaker 1: NASCAR guy, you know, something like that. But I've been
Speaker 1: keeping an eye on some of the Corvettes um news
Speaker 1: the or some of the Corvette appearances would be a
Speaker 1: better way to say it. One of the things that
Speaker 1: I don't know whether we've emphasized this enough, Kurt, you
Speaker 1: mentioned it a little bit. Remember this doesn't just enter
Speaker 1: into the supercar category. It holds its own in there.
Speaker 1: The the Ferrari, for instance, the Ferrari twelve super Fast
Speaker 1: also hit sixty in two point eight seconds for several
Speaker 1: hundred thousand more. Yeah, several We have to keep adding
Speaker 1: that that, Yeah, this is a bargain. And so for
Speaker 1: the past I don't know how many years, the Corvette
Speaker 1: has been the best in this class. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: the fastest. Yeah, there it is. It's comparable specifically to
Speaker 1: the two seventy grand six to forty horse power Lamborghini Hurrican. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this car, but this one is it's four horse power, right,
Speaker 1: and and it's based, so we're talking based vehicles. Four
Speaker 1: power seventy pound feet of torque. But if you do
Speaker 1: go up to that Z fifty one package, here's again
Speaker 1: you're not gaining a whole lot there. You're gaining mostly
Speaker 1: in breaks and cooling and and the potential for the
Speaker 1: magnetic ride if you if you opt for that, But
Speaker 1: you're only gaining five horse power and five pound feet
Speaker 1: of torque if you go up to the Z fifty one.
Speaker 1: So it's not really a tremendous increase. And that's why
Speaker 1: we see again just that very very slight difference in
Speaker 1: overall speed top speed and zero sixties speed. So I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's just it's an interesting way that they've
Speaker 1: gone about this, isn't it. I Mean, you would think
Speaker 1: that now. I wonder if we're gonna see soon, and
Speaker 1: I would hope we would. We'll see like the you know,
Speaker 1: the zero six package come out and uh or the
Speaker 1: z R one package you know, which still top even
Speaker 1: that and and just come out with some of these incredible,
Speaker 1: crazy ultra performance versions. Of course, the price is going
Speaker 1: to probably double, you know, if you if you do that,
Speaker 1: but it's going to have you know, all the added
Speaker 1: bells and whistles, and it's gonna look more like the
Speaker 1: Batmobile than the one you know that's already out there,
Speaker 1: if that's possible, and just be kind of a cooler
Speaker 1: version of something that's already cool. That's what I think. Anyways,
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna see it soon. I don't know
Speaker 1: if they've even said it or not. I think it's
Speaker 1: gonna happen. I mean there's gonna be of course, there's
Speaker 1: there's coup and convertible versions of each one of these,
Speaker 1: and and you know what, should we just like, let's
Speaker 1: talk about pricing right now, just so that we can
Speaker 1: get that out of the way. I think we've already
Speaker 1: talked about the base. Of course, the one LT coupe,
Speaker 1: which is gonna be if you want to get the
Speaker 1: one LT convertible, Uh, that sends it up significantly. It's
Speaker 1: a it's sixty seven, so it's just under sixty eight
Speaker 1: thousand dollars and that does. However, I should say that
Speaker 1: the convertible is a folding hardtop, which is that's pretty nice. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's kind of cool to watch it. It It looks really cool,
Speaker 1: it is, yeah, and it's just a it's a really
Speaker 1: interesting thing. Yeah, I think you can operate that up
Speaker 1: to which is again, that's that's right right there alone.
Speaker 1: That's pretty interesting. Really. The bummer with the convertible is
Speaker 1: that you can't see the engine through the rear window. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's another point. I love being able to see the
Speaker 1: engine through the Yeah, I like that too, or you
Speaker 1: through the glass. It's not a rear window. Well, you're right.
Speaker 1: With the you're right though. With the convertible, that panel
Speaker 1: covers up that that entire area. You don't get to
Speaker 1: see it. Yeah, since the roof slaying on top of
Speaker 1: basically the engine, there's a lot of heat concerns and
Speaker 1: sure things like that, so you don't get to see that. Okay,
Speaker 1: well that's but it still does. Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 1: I'm a man. We were getting another conversation, but just
Speaker 1: not a convertible guy. I'm not much of a convertible guy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like, well even more so on this one. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: You can already take the top off of the Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can still in the back. Right. It's a
Speaker 1: hard time. It's like a um, I guess what they
Speaker 1: call a targa top. Yeah, it's like a single panel
Speaker 1: that you can put behind you. Open the glass again
Speaker 1: and you store it back there somewhere. It's just a
Speaker 1: method of taking it off isn't as cool. You can't
Speaker 1: do it at thirty miles. You could try, but I
Speaker 1: don't think it would be a good idea. What you
Speaker 1: could just kind of let it go, you know, also
Speaker 1: where we are. You know, I love the idea of
Speaker 1: driving one of those vehicles and hitting that drop top man.
Speaker 1: That would be so cool. Converting a like twenty miles
Speaker 1: an hour, But uh, to me, more moving parts equals
Speaker 1: more opportunities to break. So for that reason, I'm not
Speaker 1: the biggest convertible. Maybe I would convert to convertibles if
Speaker 1: I owned one, and I would think this is the
Speaker 1: best thing ever. God knows. I was blown away the
Speaker 1: first time I got a sunroof in a car. I
Speaker 1: was like, things are different, but there's a big hole
Speaker 1: in the roof with with another seal to leak, right,
Speaker 1: that's that's what happens often happens. Right. Convertible has six
Speaker 1: motors to bring the roof back, six six. Those little
Speaker 1: micro motors six broll probably more than that of those
Speaker 1: little micro sensors that you know determine the buttons that
Speaker 1: determine when to fire those motors, so even more parts
Speaker 1: to break. And you know, someday, Kurt, you and I
Speaker 1: should talk about the Cadillac XLR and uh and it's
Speaker 1: the convertible top on that one, the hard top and
Speaker 1: uh oh, what a disaster. It's hard and not so
Speaker 1: much a disaster, is just really really difficult for service,
Speaker 1: really difficult. The uh. I think we're back at two LT,
Speaker 1: which is the coup if you go to two two
Speaker 1: l T convertible seventy So we're getting up into the
Speaker 1: mid seventies already at this point. So if you get
Speaker 1: a convertible kind of mid level, it's up to just
Speaker 1: under seventy five thousand dollars already, the low end or
Speaker 1: the brother the high end coupe, the three LT, you're
Speaker 1: looking at a base price of seventy one, and again
Speaker 1: the high end convertible around seventy eight thousand, four ninety five.
Speaker 1: Now I believe you can even go up higher than
Speaker 1: that if you want. I mean, there are other options
Speaker 1: you can add on, of course, sure, mostly appearance, as
Speaker 1: you have talked about before. Change the wheels, you can change,
Speaker 1: you know, the sound system, you can change, the leather,
Speaker 1: you can oper you know, the convenience and comfort package
Speaker 1: that has you know, the heated steering wheel and all that,
Speaker 1: um but it but really that just comes down to
Speaker 1: you know, your opinion, your taste esthetic. Well it is
Speaker 1: yeah at that point, but some people, you know, they
Speaker 1: really want all that stuff. They like it. If you're
Speaker 1: gonna pay that much money for a car, might as
Speaker 1: well be, you know, instead of just a sports car,
Speaker 1: might as well be a luxury sports car, right, and
Speaker 1: you can turn it from just a performance car into
Speaker 1: a luxury performance car, or you can go the other
Speaker 1: way with it. You start out with, you know, the
Speaker 1: performance car and get upgrades that that are soon to come,
Speaker 1: I would guess, either from the factory or you know,
Speaker 1: right now, early early days, they are not going to
Speaker 1: be the aftermarket pieces that everybody is you know, probably
Speaker 1: dream enough right now, it doesn't happen that way. There's
Speaker 1: a little bit of a leg until they figure everything out,
Speaker 1: get to play with the parts a little bit, and
Speaker 1: then there comes the aftermarket, and then they refine the
Speaker 1: aftermarket and gets better and better, but it takes a while.
Speaker 1: So so early on you're gonna be stuck with whatever
Speaker 1: you buy. Not that you're stuck with it. But you're
Speaker 1: gonna be um in the position where you just buy
Speaker 1: that from Chevrolet and and that's what you've got unless
Speaker 1: you mody yourself, which is another reason a lot of
Speaker 1: people buy used cars. My friends. Yeah, that's true, but
Speaker 1: I do want to say still to emphasize Chevy clearly
Speaker 1: knows that people are buying this idea of a Corvette. Yes,
Speaker 1: but they're buying the engine. The engine is really the
Speaker 1: it's almost cliche to say at the heart of the sale.
Speaker 1: Here at the heart of the drive. And I think
Speaker 1: it's pretty telling that no matter which build you buy,
Speaker 1: you get the same engine. As you said, Scott, that's
Speaker 1: the only part that's non negotiable. Well, I you know
Speaker 1: what I like to do, and I tried to do
Speaker 1: this with this car, and I eventually I got to
Speaker 1: the point where I kind of I wouldn't say I
Speaker 1: lost interest, but I just got distracted with other things.
Speaker 1: There were so many options that you could choose on
Speaker 1: this vehicle. So as as Car and Driver put it
Speaker 1: in one article that I read, it's it's uh kind
Speaker 1: of the way that they would specttte they built one
Speaker 1: on their own, and I wanted to see kind of
Speaker 1: where my own version fell in there, and I never
Speaker 1: got to the you know, the ultimate end of this
Speaker 1: whole thing. But I was somewhere up near where they
Speaker 1: got to, and they said, you know, it's fantastic value,
Speaker 1: it's a great vehicle. But as they put it here
Speaker 1: in this article, he said, let's be They said, let's
Speaker 1: be real here. No one is buying the base price Corvette.
Speaker 1: No one's going to buy that one. But I, like
Speaker 1: you said, you're probably more optimistic though, right, Well, I
Speaker 1: think people no rights. So there's some psychology here. I
Speaker 1: think people will go into a dealership or go onto
Speaker 1: the website to spec out builds and stuff with the
Speaker 1: full and honest intention of only paying the base price,
Speaker 1: plus you know, a tax tag and all that, all
Speaker 1: that jazz. Will they get to the end of the
Speaker 1: deal by and still have stuck to that price. I
Speaker 1: don't know, man, I don't know. You know how it
Speaker 1: is when the fever hits. Well, I'll tell you that
Speaker 1: in this by the time you get to the end
Speaker 1: of this article, the same one that you know, they
Speaker 1: started out with the base price, and by the time
Speaker 1: they got to the end, the price of their vehicles
Speaker 1: seventy eight six seventy five, so just under eighty thou dollars.
Speaker 1: Now that's upgrades. And I'll tell you just quickly. And
Speaker 1: they got kind of a I think it's a white color.
Speaker 1: It looks like maybe I think they call it like
Speaker 1: Micah silver or something that's like a real light gray color.
Speaker 1: Was that one of the four premium colors? No, no,
Speaker 1: it's not one of the colors, just just one of
Speaker 1: the colors. But they chose a pretty simple looking color,
Speaker 1: and they decided they were going to go for performance
Speaker 1: versus appearance in this whole thing. So there the idea
Speaker 1: was just make it fast, make it cool, make you know,
Speaker 1: something we can live with. But you know, we're not
Speaker 1: going over the top with you know, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't need every heated option, you know, the steering wheel,
Speaker 1: the you know, every every other thing. I don't know,
Speaker 1: the vibrating pedals to your feet, are you know, relaxed
Speaker 1: on the tree. No, I'm just kid. They don't have that.
Speaker 1: But but they did upgrade from the two LT the
Speaker 1: three L T and that's of course an expensive option there.
Speaker 1: I think it's like all in it's like seventy because
Speaker 1: of other desirable convenience features. They had it in but
Speaker 1: um so they went to the for the Z fifty
Speaker 1: one packet Performance Package, which is five thousand dollars. They
Speaker 1: added the suspension with magnetics selective ride control, which I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people will Yeah, that's another one thousand,
Speaker 1: eight hundred dollars. The g T two bucket seats, now
Speaker 1: they did go up from the first so they did
Speaker 1: change the seats. I think that was the recommendation of
Speaker 1: someone who said, I have experienced in these seats and
Speaker 1: you probably will want these if you're gonna take it
Speaker 1: to the track, if you're gonna really want to be
Speaker 1: held in place while you're you know, potentially racing this.
Speaker 1: So they got the competition seats, competition sports seats. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's right, g T two bucket seats. It's fourteen. It's
Speaker 1: a fourteen up cell. So almost fifteen hundred dollars for
Speaker 1: the better seats. Not like the car didn't come with seats,
Speaker 1: they just got the seats. That's that's what I want
Speaker 1: to check. So there are three different seats they can get.
Speaker 1: The top one is the competition Sports seat, and the
Speaker 1: main difference is that has more robust bowl stirs for
Speaker 1: track driving. It sounds like they went up just to
Speaker 1: the mid grade seat, which has the carbon fiber trim.
Speaker 1: Oh come on, did they really? Okay, second, I gotta
Speaker 1: more carefully read this article then, because I thought, I
Speaker 1: really thought that they were just going simply for track performance,
Speaker 1: because that would mean that they would go to the
Speaker 1: g T three seats or the third level the competition
Speaker 1: disease anyways, Okay, so it's an expensive upgrade. Anyway, they
Speaker 1: went with the Oh, they did upgrade the wheels because
Speaker 1: I think the wheels are a lot of people are
Speaker 1: complaining about the wheels in this car. I like them.
Speaker 1: You know. One thing it's interesting is there's a package
Speaker 1: you can get that includes summer only performance wheels. Oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: a lot of sports cars do that. Or you can
Speaker 1: do the three season tires as well. Yeah. So it's
Speaker 1: it's a tire package essentially the rubber that you buy
Speaker 1: on the wheels. And if you do that, you got
Speaker 1: to be pretty confident if you're going for just the
Speaker 1: summer wheels, right, I mean, just the dry weather summer
Speaker 1: wheels or summer tired. They keeps saying wheels, but summer tires. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you've got to be pretty confident I think that
Speaker 1: you're not going to be driving this in any inclement weather.
Speaker 1: You're not going to be driving it in I mean
Speaker 1: any snow at all. Of course, I mean most people
Speaker 1: can you know, determine if that's true or not. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure most people know when it's snowing. But but still,
Speaker 1: I mean, even so, the three season tires don't really
Speaker 1: cover that either, So I don't know, this is all.
Speaker 1: That's all gets very tricky. But the wheel upgrade, you know,
Speaker 1: the actual metal part the wheel upgrade. They went with
Speaker 1: the five tried and spoke wheels, which look really cool.
Speaker 1: They really are cool. That's an that's an additional dollars.
Speaker 1: So that's not necessarily the cost of the wheels. It's
Speaker 1: just the upgrade cost of the wheels. Okay they did okay,
Speaker 1: you know here it is. Here's against right here, ceramic matrix,
Speaker 1: gray metallic paint. Zero dollars. That was a free one.
Speaker 1: That's that's one that you know, it's just an option.
Speaker 1: The yeah, not bad, that's that's that's the right price.
Speaker 1: Oh and you know what you can also just see,
Speaker 1: you know, in the seats, you can also offer something
Speaker 1: they call the the adrenaline red seating surfaces and inserts
Speaker 1: which you can have into whatever seats you get. And
Speaker 1: that's also zero dollars, so another another name, not bad upgrade,
Speaker 1: I guess if you want to spend no money on
Speaker 1: something like that, not bad I mean, and to offer
Speaker 1: something like that, I know it's cosmetic, but it does
Speaker 1: look pretty cool in this vehicle when you look at it,
Speaker 1: because you can do a three sixty view of this
Speaker 1: car and to see that, you know, the red seats
Speaker 1: behind the glass, it looks pretty nice. I agree. But again,
Speaker 1: but you know, just these simple things that we talked
Speaker 1: about here. You know, the UH, I guess the biggest
Speaker 1: one is of course going up to the Z fifty
Speaker 1: one Performance package, and then the UH the selective ride control,
Speaker 1: the magnetic ride control, those are the big ones. But
Speaker 1: but getting up to about eighty dollars isn't quite as
Speaker 1: hard as everybody thinks. And this again was one where
Speaker 1: they were holding back on some of the options. They
Speaker 1: didn't go for everything. And as I went through, you know,
Speaker 1: this build process, where you know, I wanted to like
Speaker 1: kind of see what mine would cost, kind of like
Speaker 1: they did. The price did start to rapidly climb at
Speaker 1: some point and I realized, oh man, yeah, I've got
Speaker 1: to back this down again. Maybe I don't need, you know,
Speaker 1: the the caliper's painted red, you know, or maybe I
Speaker 1: don't need because that's like, you know, another five dollars,
Speaker 1: and you think, like, well, just paint on top of
Speaker 1: the calipers, calipers that were already there. It's not like
Speaker 1: they're better, they're just read and it's five dollars. Do
Speaker 1: I really need that? Probably not? But but when you
Speaker 1: look at the photo, like, yeah, I need that. You
Speaker 1: can design the most beautiful looking car, but I mean
Speaker 1: they also have like, you know, stripe packages that have
Speaker 1: you know, fender fender stripes and you know stripes to
Speaker 1: go over the full car, and they all look, you know,
Speaker 1: someone look really good. Together the packages and the combinations
Speaker 1: you can do and you can play around with that.
Speaker 1: It's very tempting to do stuff like that. But then again,
Speaker 1: every time you click that button, it's another five dollars
Speaker 1: or a thousand dollars. Also, I want to point out, hey, uh,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the C eight. You guys anticipate a
Speaker 1: price drop in the C seven's only well it's not
Speaker 1: as the dealer lot. No, I don't use market for
Speaker 1: the seven. I mean, hey, hey why not? Kind of
Speaker 1: why not? There might be one that's been hanging out
Speaker 1: there for a couple of years or something, you know,
Speaker 1: a color you know, combination that someone doesn't want or something,
Speaker 1: and you might be able to luck into a pretty
Speaker 1: good deal, you ever know, how Okay to your point, unrelated,
Speaker 1: well semi related, Uh, this is something I was running into.
Speaker 1: I thought, how good does a deal have to be
Speaker 1: on any car for you to agree to? You know,
Speaker 1: like you're buying a used car. The mileage checks out,
Speaker 1: the systems check out, and the price is actually great,
Speaker 1: but one thing the car is just some terrible color
Speaker 1: or design, you know what I mean. Let's say for
Speaker 1: some reason, you wandered into this deal where you got
Speaker 1: like a twenty fifteen kick ass sports car. But part
Speaker 1: of the reason the price was so great is that
Speaker 1: it had you know, this huge airbrushed bright green Mickey
Speaker 1: Mouse on it or something like. Yeah, I get you.
Speaker 1: Would it be something where you would buy it if
Speaker 1: you were saving so much money that you could afford
Speaker 1: to get a new paint job on it. I think
Speaker 1: absolutely myself. But but it would have to be done
Speaker 1: because I've bought you know, I've bought so many cars
Speaker 1: where I think, I'm gonna buy this version of this,
Speaker 1: but I you know, I'm gonna. I'm gonna make this
Speaker 1: my own. I'm gonna, I'm gonna buy the wheels I want.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get you, I'm gonna, i'm gonna do the
Speaker 1: engine upgrades that I want. You know, I'm gonna, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do this to this vehicle. And then everything else
Speaker 1: gets in the way, and you know, some of that
Speaker 1: stuff doesn't happen, maybe all of that stuff doesn't happen
Speaker 1: along the way, or something else happens that, you know,
Speaker 1: prevents me from doing that, and then I never quite
Speaker 1: get the vehicle that I really wanted to have. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people fall into that trap,
Speaker 1: is that you know, I'm gonna buy this car. You're
Speaker 1: sure I'll buy that one. And it's purple, but you know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make it, and maybe you love purple. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but but I want to make it, you know, red,
Speaker 1: and you know, no big deal. You take it to
Speaker 1: the paint shop and you have a painted It might
Speaker 1: cost you a couple of thousand obviously got a really
Speaker 1: nice at jop on that vehicle, and you fully intend
Speaker 1: to do that the day you pick it up, but
Speaker 1: you just never get around to it, and it happens,
Speaker 1: it does happen, or someone or someone dnse the car
Speaker 1: in the parking lot and then you have to get
Speaker 1: the dent fixed before you can get the paint done,
Speaker 1: and it just kind of it's snowballs like that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's trouble. So yeah, it have to be a
Speaker 1: pretty darn good deal. Especially and I think about the
Speaker 1: shows where we talked about in the past, where you know,
Speaker 1: car sales and how strange that whole world is and
Speaker 1: that you know, you can sometimes sometimes in these off
Speaker 1: the beaten path dealer lots, find a brand new vehicle
Speaker 1: that is several model years old that's just been that's
Speaker 1: just been sitting there. You might be able to in
Speaker 1: You might be able to go back and pick up
Speaker 1: model that's been hanging out in the back of the
Speaker 1: parking lot for a while and it's in rough shape.
Speaker 1: You know, people are just trying to get rid of
Speaker 1: it because they've been losing money on it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they to be honest that they've probably forgotten about it.
Speaker 1: But if you find it, you know, maybe that's the
Speaker 1: deal that you go for because it has zero miles,
Speaker 1: but you know that also comes with some inherent problems.
Speaker 1: There's there's there's a lot to weigh into consideration here.
Speaker 1: You know, Man, I'm sorry I just went off on
Speaker 1: that time. It was all right, But I want to
Speaker 1: say this because I know people are gonna say, well,
Speaker 1: why aren't you talking about the most important part of
Speaker 1: this car, the most important update to this vehicle, really,
Speaker 1: and that's the mid engine. This is partly by design
Speaker 1: that we've done this, but partly because I think this
Speaker 1: could be another full topic for us. I think it
Speaker 1: has been in the past. We've already discussed it, but
Speaker 1: now that we've got some new vehicles out there that
Speaker 1: are employing this, I'd love to do another mid engine
Speaker 1: episode completely just about that. Let's do it because the
Speaker 1: technological innovations, just the engineering breakthroughs that have happened with
Speaker 1: mid engines have have change the landscape such that I
Speaker 1: think it's worthy of an update. I absolutely agree, And
Speaker 1: there's just can I just mention a couple of things
Speaker 1: about the mid engine configuration while we're talking about it?
Speaker 1: I mean it's a core it's uh, you know, groundbreaking
Speaker 1: for the Corvette to do it. I mean they had
Speaker 1: hinted at doing this back in nineteen sixty nine, I
Speaker 1: think is the first time we really saw them testing
Speaker 1: a version of this, you know, um early early days.
Speaker 1: We're talking you know, photos with Bill Mitchell and and
Speaker 1: Doune Tough behind the wheel and you know the transversal
Speaker 1: amounted V eight just cool old photos with you know,
Speaker 1: body work on it or anything, but really really interesting photos.
Speaker 1: So I started digging into the different layouts of vehicles
Speaker 1: and I came across something that I thought, and again
Speaker 1: understanding that we're going to talk about the mid engine
Speaker 1: layout later in a full show, but I wanted to
Speaker 1: share this with you, Ben, especially since we're talking about
Speaker 1: your my Carla today. Did you know that your car,
Speaker 1: your Chevy Monte Carlo, the first generation, which is the
Speaker 1: one that's front, well, I guess you know seven, But
Speaker 1: the first generation of that vehicle was a considered a front,
Speaker 1: mid engine, rear wheel drive vehicle. And this is a
Speaker 1: category of cars that I don't know why, but I
Speaker 1: just I have neglected to really think about those vehicles
Speaker 1: as mid engine up until this point, and all it
Speaker 1: has to do with with is that the engine is
Speaker 1: of course placed in front of the front I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: behind the front end in front of the drivers still,
Speaker 1: so these are really easy to spot. And I again
Speaker 1: I'm kind of baffle as to why I haven't really
Speaker 1: thought a whole lot about this, in fact, because when
Speaker 1: we talk about mid engine, we typically think behind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we that's what we typically think of mid engine. But
Speaker 1: mid engine can also be in the front of the vehicle,
Speaker 1: in front of the driver. But these are the cars
Speaker 1: that have kind of that long elongated front end at
Speaker 1: that long nose. So you're seeing that in cars like
Speaker 1: you know, the old Opal GT, or you're seeing it
Speaker 1: in new cars like the Keyest Stinger. You can see
Speaker 1: that on the road. Of course, Dodge Viper is a
Speaker 1: good one. Corvette, you know, the previous, not every version,
Speaker 1: but see two through C seven. I think corvettes are
Speaker 1: front mid engine vehicles technically, if you want to go
Speaker 1: that with that route. But um, that's again this like
Speaker 1: textbook definition of what it is. You still call it
Speaker 1: a front engine vehicle, but it's placement behind the axle
Speaker 1: makes it a front mid engine vehicle. And you know,
Speaker 1: the S two thousand's another one. There's the excess the
Speaker 1: Lexus l f A. If you just look for vehicles
Speaker 1: on the road that have that stretched out front end,
Speaker 1: you know where the driver, passenger, and even sometimes a
Speaker 1: rear seat are set way to the back of the vehicle.
Speaker 1: You know, you can you can see how the long
Speaker 1: and low that front end is. Those are the vehicles
Speaker 1: that have that front mid engine design. And again, it's
Speaker 1: just a kind of a category that I don't really
Speaker 1: think a whole lot about. It's one of those things
Speaker 1: you can't unsee pretty often because you can tell by
Speaker 1: the shape of the vehicle. And some Corvette enthusiasts have
Speaker 1: reacted adversely to the mid engine of the They've said,
Speaker 1: you know, I like the C five through seven way better.
Speaker 1: Uh You've seen you can see some reviews where people
Speaker 1: say that as a stubby nose and that it's the
Speaker 1: opposite of the long nose with the shorter back deck
Speaker 1: kind of sports cars or that Corvette had for you know,
Speaker 1: the past six decades. Well, you know, I I just
Speaker 1: I love the look and the style of this new vehicle.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to get to a dealership and sit
Speaker 1: in one you know, and just kind of kind of
Speaker 1: go over one closely, real closely and check out everything
Speaker 1: about it. You know, I just kind of marvel over
Speaker 1: what they've done with it, because you know, they're gonna
Speaker 1: have a great example. I'm sure in a lot of showrooms,
Speaker 1: you know, just even if it's that one car that
Speaker 1: they've got on the you know, the main floor there
Speaker 1: to draw people in, they're gonna have one. Everybody's gonna
Speaker 1: order at least one to get people excited about it. So,
Speaker 1: you know, even if you're in a small town somewhere,
Speaker 1: you can I'm sure you can find a Chevy dealer
Speaker 1: in nearby that's gonna have one. They're available to do
Speaker 1: something like what I'm gonna do, and it's going, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, leave a few nose prints on the glass.
Speaker 1: You know what a lot of people are doing now
Speaker 1: and have been for a while. It's an industry that
Speaker 1: I personally don't know a ton about. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are buying exotic cars or high
Speaker 1: performance vehicles entirely to rent them out. And you can
Speaker 1: actually make money doing this in you know, in a
Speaker 1: in a city with a dense enough population like Atlanta.
Speaker 1: I sense a new show coming on you. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: it's at least a pitch. So what are you guys?
Speaker 1: So well, they do it through um, they do it
Speaker 1: through different I think there's a like a third party
Speaker 1: service where you can say, Okay, I want to performance car,
Speaker 1: high end luxury vehicle of some sort. And I only
Speaker 1: learned that people were doing this because I talked to
Speaker 1: a guy who really really did My god, he did
Speaker 1: it that, that crazy son of a gun. He put
Speaker 1: down his order for one of those cyber trucks, one
Speaker 1: of the Testlas cyber trucks. Yeah, that's the face I'm ade, dude,
Speaker 1: are you serious? Which one are you going to get?
Speaker 1: You know, when we talked about it, and then part
Speaker 1: way through he corrected, he said, oh, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna it's not my daily driver. No, No, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna put it up on this thing, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get the camping package and then people are going to
Speaker 1: pay to rent it to go camping. And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: that's a what a cool idea. That's a lot of
Speaker 1: confidence is And man, can you imagine what your insurance,
Speaker 1: you know, premiums are gonna be for something like that
Speaker 1: or like offering a service like this. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: You know, people do it with boats a lot. Yes,
Speaker 1: you could. You could own a fleet of boats or
Speaker 1: supercars or just one. Yeah, And and it's an interesting idea.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's definitely a way to support your growing
Speaker 1: corvette habit. You know, I feel like, um, you know,
Speaker 1: we're nearing the end here. There's there's just there's a
Speaker 1: lot to talk about with this new Corvette. A lot
Speaker 1: of it is just really kind of gut feeling stuff, opinions,
Speaker 1: and you know, because right now we haven't really got
Speaker 1: any kind of concrete vehicle to look at or get
Speaker 1: hands on with right now. We're not one of those
Speaker 1: uh automotive magazines that you know, they hand the keys
Speaker 1: over to and allow them to drive around for a week.
Speaker 1: That would be great if they did, wouldn't it. But
Speaker 1: but we're not those guys yet. So we've only been
Speaker 1: doing this like eleven years, right another another eleven, fifteen
Speaker 1: more years, whatever, and maybe we'll be those guys. One
Speaker 1: one thing though, I do have to add u the
Speaker 1: rumors about a possible hybrid plug in or electric model
Speaker 1: continue to this day, and people are getting a little
Speaker 1: little antsy about it on January eighth, so literally yesterday
Speaker 1: as we record this, there was a little bit of
Speaker 1: excitement because a stingray was spied testing with a cable
Speaker 1: hanging out in the hood. So people freaked out and
Speaker 1: they thought they're secretly testing the electric one, but uh,
Speaker 1: Chevy reached back out and said it was a very
Speaker 1: early test mule for the and that the orange cable
Speaker 1: they saw sticking on the front hood was actually a
Speaker 1: way to ease access to the twelve volt battery. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's like, yeah, it's not super we're not super
Speaker 1: advanced and being top secret about it, this is how
Speaker 1: we jumped the car as an extension cable from home
Speaker 1: depot right exactly. Know. I was to guess, okay, this
Speaker 1: is Detroit, right, that likely that we're seeing this this
Speaker 1: car and driving around because that's where they test all
Speaker 1: these things and they get to see all this stuff
Speaker 1: right early, way but way earlier than us. But it's
Speaker 1: probably camouflaged. And I was thinking, all right, that's somebody
Speaker 1: who just got in and accidentally shut you know, their
Speaker 1: their phone charge record in the door or something, and
Speaker 1: everybody's like, oh, that's the electric version, but that with
Speaker 1: an orange chord stick out of the hood. That would
Speaker 1: be something that would draw attention. I would guess interesting though.
Speaker 1: I wonder, you know'd be kind of funny if it
Speaker 1: was like, well, man, this Detroit in January. That's that
Speaker 1: that's a block heater. He's on the big diesel and
Speaker 1: it's like like they can't park it inside at GM right. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just straight out of garage space. Yeah, they don't
Speaker 1: have any space at all. So yeah, I think the
Speaker 1: reason these rumors are gaining so much power and so
Speaker 1: many peoples have their eyes on it is because after
Speaker 1: the car was debuted back in July. Uh, someone on
Speaker 1: the Corvette team said, hey, we might electric, we might
Speaker 1: try to electrify, to have some sort of electrification of
Speaker 1: this vehicle at some point. But that's all they said.
Speaker 1: And that's right where I would have slapped them, knock
Speaker 1: it off, get out of this room. No, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have done that. But but oh man, this is a
Speaker 1: different episode. Yeah, yeah, it really is. I just feel
Speaker 1: like I just feel like the power is not there yet. Well,
Speaker 1: look at the La Ferrari. That's everybody points to those cars.
Speaker 1: Wasn't there a McLaren. There's McLaren m one or something
Speaker 1: those have it that that's true. But just I'm just
Speaker 1: saying for that price point, electrified a car and keep
Speaker 1: you that performance would mandate a higher pro But I
Speaker 1: can't help It's just it's just like the um instinctual
Speaker 1: response to me to to like kind of screw my
Speaker 1: face up and go, oh no, what are they doing?
Speaker 1: Because I had the same thought when they talk about, um,
Speaker 1: you know, electrifying the Mustang or you know, any other
Speaker 1: performance car that that I've known from the past that
Speaker 1: you know, like, what are they what are they gonna do?
Speaker 1: Because every time I'll put it real simply, just anything
Speaker 1: with batteries in it has always let me down every time.
Speaker 1: And I don't anticipate this to be any different with
Speaker 1: with cars, right, every everything has let me down. I
Speaker 1: mean your phone, radio controlled toyss, early electric cars, remote controls,
Speaker 1: and your you know, for your television. You're right, the
Speaker 1: battery in this stupid laptop and I'm looking at right
Speaker 1: now has let me down. Well we're recording as a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, but every time anything relies on battery power,
Speaker 1: it has always let me down through my whole life.
Speaker 1: And I feel like maybe that's something that you know.
Speaker 1: I I there's just something that that prevents me from
Speaker 1: fully trusting that as you know, viable technology. I know
Speaker 1: that there's a lot of you know, research and of
Speaker 1: course billions of dollars spent to prove me otherwise. You
Speaker 1: know that that it's it's working. But um, I just
Speaker 1: get that that gut reaction and to say that you're
Speaker 1: going to create a hybrid electric um corvette, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just having a hard time with that. I'll ease
Speaker 1: into it maybe, yeah, I'll have to. I mean again,
Speaker 1: this is another full show. We can talk about you know,
Speaker 1: performance and hybrid hybrid electrics if you want to, we can.
Speaker 1: But for sure we're gonna have another show about mid
Speaker 1: engine design cars because, as you said, Ben, we do
Speaker 1: need to do an update on it. There's a lot
Speaker 1: more out there available now. We had not that we
Speaker 1: had a limited supply to talk about before, but now
Speaker 1: they're even more that we can discuss with that you
Speaker 1: heard it here first. GM, if you do decide to
Speaker 1: lend some corvettes to Scott myself, make sure you don't
Speaker 1: give Scott an electric one, because it doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: he's gonna have it. Uh. I don't want to sound
Speaker 1: like I'm begging a bit, and I would love to
Speaker 1: drive one of the Corvettes. I've been I've been on
Speaker 1: this campaign. I've I've I've this is the honest truth.
Speaker 1: Since last summer, I've been asking my wife if I
Speaker 1: can make a large, you know, a significant withdrawal from
Speaker 1: our savings in order to buy one of these cars.
Speaker 1: I would buy one of these cars brand new. This
Speaker 1: is what I would. I am jack about this car.
Speaker 1: I think this car is It's amazing. I really, I
Speaker 1: really am excited about the format at the beginning. I
Speaker 1: really am. I'm excited about Corvette and you know, maybe
Speaker 1: that will fade a little bit here in the near future,
Speaker 1: but but man, I just it's such a cool vehicle.
Speaker 1: It really is. Also, even though I know it's not
Speaker 1: the same thing, think about how much the price on
Speaker 1: a on a C seven is going to drop. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and I love those two you know what I mean? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a fantastic design. And you know, okay,
Speaker 1: we can't we keep adding more things, but I would.
Speaker 1: I would kind of like to know this from from
Speaker 1: you and from our listeners. Maybe this is the final question.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but what's your gut feeling on this too?
Speaker 1: Every time they release a new Corvette, I feel like
Speaker 1: that it immediately dates the previous version of Corvette, you know,
Speaker 1: like the when they released the C seven, the C
Speaker 1: slicks look pretty old to me, and and all the
Speaker 1: way going all the way back, and there are other
Speaker 1: models that you know, I don't know, they still look
Speaker 1: like they're they're not great if something I would would
Speaker 1: still cherish where if I were to get one, of course,
Speaker 1: but um, there's a few years in there that I
Speaker 1: just don't really like personally. But what do you think
Speaker 1: about the C seven Corvette now that you've seen the
Speaker 1: C eight? Like, would you go back and buy a
Speaker 1: C seven knowing that you could get a C eight
Speaker 1: with the you know, dramatically different appearance? And it does
Speaker 1: look like it's the old Corvette now, right, even though
Speaker 1: it's still a fantastic car. It looks beautiful in my opinion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I just looking at it, I was
Speaker 1: thinking how quickly does this date everything else before it?
Speaker 1: And it wasn't around that long. C seven was around
Speaker 1: for a very short amount of time, just a few years.
Speaker 1: I don't think I would feel it maybe dated, but
Speaker 1: I don't think I would feel bad about it because
Speaker 1: it's already. Um it's already such a great vehicle for
Speaker 1: what what it does that. I don't you think it
Speaker 1: holds up? I think it holds up. Yeah, I will
Speaker 1: say that, I think it holds up. Now also consider that,
Speaker 1: you know, if you take care of those cars in
Speaker 1: a few years time, depending on how hard you ride them, uh,
Speaker 1: you'll end up with legitimately a classic car. That's the
Speaker 1: thing that kills me, you know, Like with last time
Speaker 1: I mentioned the Monte Carlo and air for a while, man,
Speaker 1: I was in those conversations with myself where I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, I just gotta keep it running, keep it
Speaker 1: going until until I can get so I can get
Speaker 1: the old school license plate that means I don't have
Speaker 1: to do emissions anymore. And I was like, then, I'm golden.
Speaker 1: It's still several years ago, still while away. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm I'm I'm yeah, we can't get rid of
Speaker 1: a C seven just because the C eight is out.
Speaker 1: But no, I wouldn't say you get rid of it.
Speaker 1: I just mean when you see it on the road, now,
Speaker 1: are you gonna think, well, that's the old Corvette. I'm
Speaker 1: waiting to see the new one. I'm still so impressed though,
Speaker 1: you know what to the C seven is still a
Speaker 1: beautiful car to me. Yeah. Yeah, And I can't believe
Speaker 1: you're gonna buy a C eight. Let's not spread a
Speaker 1: rumor here, but I but I, oh, man, if I
Speaker 1: if I just had that that extra cash laying around,
Speaker 1: you know, if I, if I did, I think that
Speaker 1: at this moment, that would be the one that I
Speaker 1: would get. Should our pal and fearless leader Scott Benjamin
Speaker 1: purchase a Corvette C eight. Let us know. You can
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Speaker 1: single episode of car stuff that we have ever done
Speaker 1: on our website or on the podcast platform of choice.
Speaker 1: I was actually thinking, you guys, you know Apple podcast
Speaker 1: now it doesn't have all of our episodes because I
Speaker 1: think we're over three hundred. Yeah, so where are gonna go?
Speaker 1: I mean wherever wherever you want to go? Okay, somewhere else,
Speaker 1: just not on Apple podcast. Yeah Radio still has Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right. So if you go to Apple Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: just be warned that you're getting like a third of
Speaker 1: the category catalog brother um, but if you go somewhere else,
Speaker 1: you'll be able to access all the way back to
Speaker 1: what two thousand eight, I think it is, maybe late
Speaker 1: two thousand eight. So we've got we've got a significant
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Speaker 1: interested in. You know, if you do a search word search,
Speaker 1: you're likely to find something that you you know, would
Speaker 1: find fascinating for a road trip or just a cruising
Speaker 1: on top of him. Thanks for listening everyone. Car Stuff
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