C5 Corvette Building The Fifth Generation Corvette VHS Movie

it was the early 50s I lived in a little town with mostly pickups and 4-door sedans one day on Main Street there it was a white two-seater convertible it was a Corvette the first one I'd ever seen four decades ago a dreamy car captured America's heart and wouldn't let go its name Corvette by Chevrolet the first production Corvette rolled off a Chevrolet assembly line in Flint Michigan on June 30th 1953 from day one Corvette has represented the very best of American sports car engineering design ingenuity and advanced technology the 1953 Corvette offered a beautiful glimpse into the future of American design with its sleek contoured fiberglass body and one of the industry's first wraparound windshields it was only the beginning the newest soon to be legendary Chevrolet small-block v8 made its debut in the 1955 edition its creators couldn't have imagined at the time but this superbly designed v8 would go on to power more street cars and more race cars than any other engine ever in fact the 300 horsepower lt1 v8 and today's Corvette is a direct descendant of that classic 55 Chevy v8 then came 1957 with new options like a fuel-injected 283 cubic inch v8 and a four-speed manual transmission Corvette was practically race ready right out of the box 1958 brought quad headlamps larger tail lamps and a new driver oriented interior the refinements kept coming in the late 50s and early 60s and by 1962 Corvette featured cleaner monotone styling and a powerful new 327 v8 the all-new 63 Corvette Stingray was an American design triumph with its hidden headlamps peaked fenders and on the coupe a dramatic fastback roofline with a split rear window four-wheel disc brakes became standard in 65 and a big-block v8 joined the options list the 1967 model last of the second generation Corvettes was a beautiful and brutal sports machine with an option list that included a triple carb 427 v8 and side mounted dual exhausts the mako shark inspired 68 Corvette represented a dramatic departure from the clean line stingray with its wild coke bottle shape and innovative t-top roof panels Corvette celebrated its 25th birthday in 1978 with a special silver anniversary model and a date at the Indianapolis 500 s pace car you upon its introduction the 1984 Corvette was called the most advanced vehicle on the planet rightfully so new aerodynamic styling was wrapped around an advanced chassis structure that provided a level of response never before seen in a production sports car the convertible returned in 1986 and paced Indy also an 86 Corvette was the first American car with standard four-wheel anti-lock brakes a feature that is now standard on even the lowest priced chevrolet cavalier that's the kind of technology rub off that's caused one Chevy enthusiast to declare is a little bit of Corvette lurking in every Chevrolet through the years there has been an unflinching commitment by scores of talented people to make each new Corvette a very best sports car that USA has to offer Corvette is not only an American original but to this day the one dream car that more people fantasize about owning than any other the 1997 Corvette is designed engineered and manufactured to a higher standard than any of its predecessors simply put the car you're about to see is the best vet yet Corvette enthusiasts have a passion that is really unparalleled I know how deeply involved they are with this car and how critical they can be even of the finest points so I don't say this lightly but I'm thoroughly convinced that they are going to be ecstatic when they get their hands on this car but there's another group of customers we want to reach at the same time they're every bit as discerning and even more challenging because these are people who've never owned or maybe never even driven a Corvette in the past these people took an active role in shaping the design we took a lot of early designs out and in that process we got the designers and the engineers really inside the customers heads and hearts to understand how they think and feel about issues and they really do have strong feelings so we took those feelings and made the car just for them we had the advantage of starting from a clean sheet of paper this is a completely new design that makes the very best use of cutting edge technologies and materials as well as significant new innovations in manufacturing techniques that are unique in the industry as a matter of fact this Corvette has more entirely new content than any other Corvette even the 1953 as a result of these efforts the 97 Corvette uses 1/3 fewer parts than its predecessors it's a simpler more elegant design that is lighter and far more rigid in structure than any previous Corvette or any other high-performance sports car in the world that we know of this Corvette is a genuine Chevrolet in the truest sense of the word because even at a price that's significantly higher than any other car in the Chevrolet lineup the 97 Corvette provides the excellent quality refinement and more than expected value that's always been typical of Corvette and it all begins with space when you look at the influences that really came together to form from the look and the feel and the character this car this is a very pure car the Corvette is the Super Bowl of design projects we knew that this car had to be the greatest sports car ever done barn hunt I don't know we you know we started on this thing it's been that's actually been seven seven seven years I really started working on out in California right you were working on it back here in Michigan yeah you know we've both got pretty strong opinions about what a Corvette is based on our own childhood memories and our own understanding of the heritage of cars we grew up Jura sketch vets in art history class sketch them on on my desk on the walls in the books in my math books the team's really worked hard to improve the practicality of the new Corvette you know the rear of the car is a good example that we've reduced the lift over by almost 14 inches we've made it easier to load things like bags of groceries or suitcases into the back which makes it a lot more practical we increase the head clearance where you step in on the new Corvette by close to an inch and reduce the rocker seal height by four inches this dramatically improves entry and egress once you're in the new Corvette you've got more head shoulder and legroom and because we've widened the footwell area by three inches you've got room for a dead pedal we've really added a lot of room in the c5 that a passenger of any size will appreciate we wanted to broaden Corvettes appeal so we perform exhaustive studies to ensure that the car is practical as a primary car for instance shoulder room has been improved by one point four inches the driver and the passengers foot well widths are both wider the driver width is an additional two point eight inches and the passenger footwell width is six inches wider and the step-over height of the door cell is lower by 3.7 inches another practical feature is a return of a lighted lockable glove box on the passenger side instrument panel and a convenient storage unit located in center console that's also lockable with room for things like portable phones CDs cassettes and sunglasses the practicality of this vehicle over anything competitively in the marketplace is so different we've refined places that typically you don't find in sports cars this is a practical user-friendly sports car the structural system is the most revolutionary upgrading the entire car it enables the car to feels solid confident and substantial whether the road surface is smooth or rough whether the roof is in place or stowed we think customers will appreciate the freedom from shake vibration squeaks and rattles from their very first drive team Corvette faced tremendous challenges designing the structure for this car of the voice of the customer was telling us that the car had to be well built to us that meant the car had to be much stiffer than today's car that means in any configuration whether the roofs in the roofs out the car has to feel solid on the road with no cake or vibration there are two key structural elements in the new Corvette structure the first is the perimeter frame which runs full length around the outside of the car it's composed of four parts to hydroformed rails that run the length of the car and they're welded together with high-strength bumper beams that are actually welded instead of bolted as on many cars because the bumper beams themselves are key part of the structure the second element of the structure is the what we call a closed section backbone or structural tunnel most cars have an open backbone because the powertrain comes up from below and is put in the car leaving an open section on this car we've bolted on an extra plate to create a full circumference structural member we've actually got 36 bolts and it actually surrounds the powertrain in the car with the structural tunnel being our primary structural member we needed to move the transmission from the front of the car to the back of the car the reason for that is that you need extremely rigid connections between the tunnel and the rails putting a transmission in here would have forced us to have a big bend in those structural pieces forcing them to be less efficient an added advantage is that in this area is this is where your feet go as a driver or passenger and so we've opened that up dramatically anybody who's been in the current car especially on the passenger side knows that the foot space is extremely limited by moving the transmission to the back we've opened that up and it's almost like a rear-engine car one of the most important local modes with respect to the driver sense of control and precision control of the car is what we call a steering column mode the way we've attached the column to the structure of the car is through a magnesium bracket it ties into the upper structure of the windshield frame as well as a lower structural element that runs all the way across the car and ties directly into the rigid tunnel that I talked about earlier with the way this is tied in it creates a very rigid platform or foundation for the steering column to attach to one of the other local modes were concerned about was what we call windshield shake that affects what the driver sees in the periphery of his vision also affects the shaking of the mirror our solution was to create a weldment of aluminum castings and extrusions that runs from the bottom of the hinge pillar to the top of the windshield these technologies allowed us to tailor the gauge or the thickness of the parts everywhere to optimize both the mass and the stiffness most cars use a single sheet of Steel for their floor pans that can vibrate and shake our solution was to look at a composite floor pin what we have is two sheets of SMC or fiberglass sandwiched with a core of balsa wood the balsa wood was extremely light relatively low cost and good vibration properties and was very very stiff taken together the technologies have talked about have created a structure that is vastly superior to the current car in fact its overall structural stiffness is about four and a half times better than the cars replacing Oh modular assembly means that we take some of the systems that go into the car and we assemble them off the main lines an example of a sub assembly would be the door systems we build up the doors offline allows us to get the doors to the appropriate height that you can work on them you could reach in the door when it's completed you test the door and bring it to the card install the door assembly panel off construction means that we actually assembled the vast majority of the car without the exterior panels on the car that allows the operator to be able to get into the car and under the IP and leaning into the engine compartment wherever they need to be without the panel's in the way and without the panel's having being jeopardized for potential damage before the cars actually painted all panels that are going to go on the car are check for surface blemishes and corrected or replaced or buffed out or whatever is required to ensure the surface that we're going to put the paint on is as perfect as it can be the paint shop at Bowling Green has undergone quite an extensive improvement over the last year and a half the paint shop is now a cleanroom it's it's free of dust it's free of dirt but just in case something gets in there someplace there's an ostrich feather duster that takes place in there to ensure that there's absolutely no dust on the car as it goes through the paint process the paint process is done totally by robotics there is no longer any hand painting in the plant so we're state-of-the-art with robotic painting an additional help to our quest for improved quality in the car really comes from something as simple as simplifying the car we have 34 percent fewer parts in this generation Corvette as we had in the last generation Corvette that really equates to nearly 1500 parts that are that are no longer in the car you can think of that as 1500 opportunities for something to go wrong that aren't there anymore hydroforming is a new method of manufacture we use it to form the perimeter portion of the basic unif rame it's also used in a roof bow and in the IP lower support hydroforming is a one-piece part a piece of normal round tubing has been bent and hydraulically formed into a precise shape frame rails that we're using or the largest hydro form part in the world today primary benefit of hydroforming is we achieve a very precise shape the second benefit is we normally can combine several functions into a single part eliminating multiple stampings and a welding operations associated with multiple stampings mig welding is a less mechanized form of welding than spot welding when we get into hydroforming because we only have access to one side of the well makes MIG welding requirement we've got a system that the operators have to pass a test in order to be qualified to MIG weld on the car and the operators that have passed that test have a certain amount of pride in and having done so and they're going to make the MIG welding BES MIG welding and general motor there's no way that the customer would ever know the kind of things that we're doing here if they don't come visit us as a matter of fact I'd like to say hey come see us in Bowling Green I'm out on the floor every day and hey I'd be glad to hi let them talk to them I do that time time any questions they might have on their new car but I'd also like to tell them that this is the best Corvette that we have ever built in the history of Corvette Corvettes have always been known for their leadership in handling and ride and the 97 Corvette advances that position in a way that's right for today we saw a noticeably higher handling capability at the limit but even more important and more challenging was to achieve better handling for the typical driver someone without special skills or intense concentration the car is a quick learn and becomes a better extension of the driver in Jim Connors around the racetrack the new car turns better lap times in its predecessor but does so more easily but it's in the ride that goes with this handling that the 97 will really exceed expectations enabled by the excellent structure and the very painstaking tire and suspension tuning the ride motions are slow and well controlled impacts are absorbed before they reach the occupants the objective we've met was to achieve a very confident ride that helps keep the driver at his or her best even after hundreds of miles the wheelbase of the c5 vehicle is much longer than the previous Corvette even though the car is about the same size we did that by moving the four wheels to the corners of the car the ride of the vehicles improved because of the longer wheelbase and it also adds stability to abs and traction control operation on slippery surfaces very often when we design a suspension in a car we have the attributes of ride or handling that we're going after or some compromise between the two of them that we think is going to be proper for the car for the new Corvette we really wanted it to have as good a ride as you could get in the car as good at handling as you could get into the car and we made sure that we designed all the geometries in the suspension to do both not just one or the other one of the things we tried to introduce into this car was a softer ride or what's known as a touring ride in a car that is really known for its handling ability the car is equipped with what's called short long arm suspension or SLA suspension it's sometimes also called double wishbone suspension because of the triangular upper control arm and lower control arm you see this type of suspension a lot on race cars and the reason it's appropriate for a vehicle like this is it provides a lot of tuning flexibility you can make the suspension stiff laterally so that provides for a good handling car as well as make it soft for aft and under vertical bump inputs so that it provides a good ride as well the entire suspension is brand-new in this car nothing is carried over from the current Corvette and nothing is borrowed from other GM cars as well the suspension and magna steer were designed to be complimentary on this vehicle specifically it's not a question of taking an existing suspension and in applying Magna steer to it we chose to use Magna Steyr too on the new Corvette because of the extra preciseness and crispness that it gives to the handling of the car especially in high-performance driving now doesn't hurt at all that it also makes it a lot easier to drive your Corvette in everyday situations like parking the car here we're going to be going through a double lane change a double lane change is really designed to test the maneuverability of the car through something like a an evasive maneuver out on the highway if somebody pulls over in front of you quickly and gets in your way where you've really got to get out of the way quickly that's what that maneuver is designed to do and the car really hand predictably it doesn't understeer at all it doesn't oversteer at all so it's very neutral and it's very easy to place the car where you want it to go the bushing placement particularly on the lower control arm is set up to decouple ride from handling the forward bushing is essentially in line with wheel center and it's very stiff so that is high lateral forces come in under cornering maneuvers there's a stiff reaction point the result is good handling the rearward bushing is placed behind wheel Center it's much softer so that as for aft inputs come in from bumps it's reacted through the soft bushing in other words you want the suspension to be soft enough to provide good ride performance yet stiff enough in another direction to provide good handling performance as well this car features a composite leaf spring as does the previous Corvette you can see it attached down here to the lower control arm on the benefit the leaf spring spring provides over a conventional coil spring is that it enables a lower hood height for better styling and it also allows the shock to be pushed closer out towards the wheel to enable better wheel control in damper performance this car also features EMT tires or extended mobility tires by that we mean run flats they can go up to 200 miles with absolutely no air pressure previous Corvette experience with extended mobility tires allowed us to further optimize the tires for the c5 this eliminates the need for a spare tire jack and tools that not only saves weight but it frees up cargo space for better uses the EMTs were first introduced on the previous car but this is an all new technology on this car that enables better handling and better ride performance 10 does the previous generation the rear suspension in concept is very similar to the front suspension again it's an SLA suspension with an upper wishbone and a lower wishbone the bushings are located to decouple ride and handling again we've got a transverse fiberglass leaf spring and a mana tube shock absorber although it's very similar in concept to the front suspension it's a significant departure from the current Corvette rear suspension in that it does have separate upper control arm the rear suspension has to be stiffer than the front suspension it provides the push off point for the beginning of a turning maneuver the rear suspension has to resist the handling loads when that turning maneuver begins and then it has to provide very small controlled tall motions under the influence of those lateral cornering forces even on severe roads like this chatter bump section Corvette stiff structure and good suspension design really keeps you in control the c5 Corvette comes with three levels of suspension there's a standard or base suspension the f45 selective damping suspension and the z51 the standard suspension on the c5 Corvette really is an excellent performing suspension for almost all driving circumstances that you could encounter the f45 incorporates what we call real-time damping in the shocks what real-time damping means is that while the car is driving down the road the suspension is able to sense what the tire is doing and the whole idea is to keep the car 1 when you're going through dips keep the car very flat and smooth and when it hits a bump it adds the proper amount of damping to the shock to smooth the bump out you the z51 suspension is designed to get the absolute most out of the handling of your Corvette if you're going to be spending a significant amount of time running Corvette events like slaloms or doing solo one events on racetracks and its really the suspension that will do the best job for you sports cars typically are known for harsh rides we are still a sports car but I think you'll find that the ride has been softened enough to maintain the performance the ride and handling but still offer two maybe different customers a comfortable car yet a performance oriented car the teamwork creative energy and thoughtfulness that went into the optimization of human factors in harmony is something in which I take great satisfaction the layout is arranged to help the driver perform whether in a competitive driving situation or getting home safely on a snowy night that thoughtfulness of features and their ease of operation reinforces the pride of ownership and the richness of materials and their painstaking execution enhance the overall value we looked very carefully at the visibility instruments of placement of controls the positioning and effort of hand brakes positioning of pedals seat contours and firmness things like that make a car like this feel very natural for someone who's getting into it the first time one of the most obvious new improved features of the Interior that a customer is going to notice as they first get into the car is the overall cockpit feel and roominess combined the parking brake on the new Corvette is now located at the center console a wonderful location that has a angle to it that is easy to activate and easy to put down the washer wiper controls for the new Corvette are located on a stock on the right hand side of the steering column this makes them easy to operate with your hands on steering-wheel the new c5 Corvette is a level above and beyond the c4 in terms of refinement the leather for instance is instead of regular seat leather with a deep grain it's a nuanced leather which has a soft feel and it's soft to the touch and it's more like what you'd have in an armchair along with that the a-pillars and the door panels have a soft touch covering that is much more refined than we've had in the past and another thing that provides level of refinement within the interior is soft touch controls on the buttons easy to touch and feel and not hard plastic the passenger side grab handle on the new c5 interior instrument panel is definitely one of the group's proudest processes that we were able to integrate a single piece handle into an instrument panel it basically is there for aesthetic reasons it's sort of a little bit of a reminiscent throwback but it also performs a valuable function in helping divert the passenger airbag out when the door opens up it positions the bag that are in front of the occupant and it's just a nice feature to have to hold on to going around curves a couple of very very important to the customer features on the new Corvette that you experience from the interior of the car are the easy removal and the relatively easy storage of the tap in the rear compartment another interesting part of developing the c5 interior was providing for the occupant a better vision package than we've had previously this includes a 5 degree down vision over the instrument panel through the windshield which is about 7 inches further forward allowing the driver now to see at least 18 feet closer to the road than before this means that as you're going around a corner and up and down over hills you've got a much better visibility of the road ahead of you and it's a big improvement one of the very important features of an interior package is to help prevent squeak and rattle in the interior and with the new Corvette structure the interior group had a good foundation in order to mount heavy items such as the radio and the heater unit and as a result we have a very solid structure that is very good for isolating squeaks and rattles we're well aware that most customers really enjoy hearing the sound of intake and exhaust and we don't want to muffle everything out of the interior compartment but objectionable noises like tire noise road noise things that are not good noises that's what our insulation package really does the in the challenge of designing the driver interface in a car like the Corvette is to provide optimum comfort and aesthetic appeal at Boulevard speeds but to provide a low stress highly responsive environment at the highly operating limits of a car like this in other words give it the feeling of a touring car but never forget that it's a high-performance sports car the cluster is a focal point of instrumentation it's the first thing that grabs your eye it's very dramatic if you noticed all of our gauges are analog they sweep full 180 degrees they're in different planes analog typically is what we use in sports cars we want to continue the theme with the current Corvette in order for us to light this and have it look even we use black lighting the lighting back from the 60s that gives us a very glowing warm appearance at nighttime first thing you see when you get in the car is the cluster and it says Corvette by Chevrolet the Driver Information Center gives us the ability to present a lot of information in a logical order to the customer you don't want to have their eyes taken off the road unnecessarily so we prioritize information to show the driver keeping safety in mind first we can tell them whether they've got a low tire flat tire as well as having a low fluid warning secure return is a new feature we added for a person returning the car by themselves simply by hitting the key unlock button we turn on lights to give a halo effect around the vehicle to return a more secure environment we turn on the interior lights we turn on the backup lamps the front fog lamps in the front turn signal to light the entire area around the car we've enhanced the security system for the new Corvette with that we've added a rolling code a rolling code is a clock that continues to run with a mathematical algorithm and the password continually changes with time when you return to your car and press the unlock button this rolling code is broadcasted to the car the car also has a receiver with a like rolling code and the two must match what this does is defeats the thief who can sit there with a receiver and capture the old code and play it back to steal your car when you're not around multiplexing is the ability for various modules on the car over one piece of wire to share information instead of having ten wires to share ten pieces of information one wire shares ten pieces of information in this case thousands of pieces of information every second the benefit of being able to share information gives us the ability to eliminate a lot of wiring on the car we took out 20% of the wires of a typical Corvette went from a thousand down to eight hundred and still added in a lot more features and functions our tire pressure monitoring system on the c-4 car we had these very large bands with sensors and all they could tell us is whether or not the tire was low or flat we actually couldn't tell the customer what the pressure was in his tire we've come out with a new more compact design that last eight years and with this device we can actually tell the customer what tire has what pressure in it to within plus or minus one psi we can tell them whether it's overinflated under inflated or if it's flat which is very important for our extended mobility tires we've enhanced the air conditioning system we now have a new automatic system that gives the passenger control over their temperature or comfort settings as well as the driver the radio system has a lot more muscle and you can see by looking at the surface we have a 252 watt system both two woofers and the front doors and a Twitter in each door with the Twitter in the rear and what we do is we take the incoming audio to our radio and send that off to an equalizer the equalizer then goes in and tries to give us a more natural response human factors is very important you need to make sure that all of our buttons and controls are friendly to the customer easy to grab easy to find especially when your eyes are on the road paying attention to what the driver should be controlling the vehicle brand equity alone won't make us competitive in the marketplace it's the level of accommodation the comfort the content and the quality of execution that you see in the car like the new Corvette that will compete effectively in the marketplace who would have thought after 41 years with the Chevy small-block that there would be the possibility of a radical upgrade this new v8 has the simplicity and compact nasaw of the pushrod layout but with porting so efficient and valvetrain so light and stiff that it breeze like an overhead cam motor the rear transaxle shared with no other car helps achieve the great spaciousness we spoke of in the clean sheet design it enables the efficient shape that makes the structural tunnel extremely rigid and it allows the mass distribution to be just about ideal ever since the introduction of the small-block v-8 in the 55 Corvette we've had the performance powertrain in the car to support the racy styling now that we've had 40 years plus of small-block heritage and learning we've taken all those lessons learned and rolled them into the ls1 to expand the envelope of the small-block pushrod technology is an example of the added value in this powertrain the ls1 does not require service until a hundred thousand miles short of normal fluids and filters and another example is we've extended the oil change interval to ten thousand miles under normal usage when I was graduating from high school I wanted to work for one company in the world it was GM one division was Chevrolet so to me this was the dream come true job to be part of this team this is the 1997 ls1 v8 engine it is a remarkable piece set from an engineering perspective we're really proud of it will excel in emissions fuel economy and durable and reliability relative to any previous small-block we've ever produced one of the significant features of this engine is the all-women a block it's basically a lighter weight and more structurally sound component that we've ever produced the engine incorporates a four bolt head design that improves and aids us in head gasket durability as well as reduced friction for improved fuel economy secondly the engine has a deep skirt block which dramatically improves the noise vibration and harshness characteristics of the vehicle precision machinery noise is what you'll hear with the ls1 engine we paid particular detailed attention to the structural design of the engine so no unappropriate noises come forward a powerful song of acceleration is what you'll hear with the ls1 engine in order to handle some of the very significant styling and sight requirements of the vehicle as well as handle the performance aspects we had to basically bring the engine down lower to the ground in order to accomplish this we need a very low profile oil pan and so we developed this pan right here first of all you'll notice has very simple flat gasketing design this gasket design aids us in long-term durability reliability of the part so that we get a good seal secondly it's an all aluminum pan it's a structural member that bolts to the block and helps reduce bending of the actual block and powertrain itself which translates into less vibration of the customer and lastly it has these extended sums the sums basically are reservoirs for oil when a vehicle goes into a high G turn that the new Corvette will be capable of the oil tends to slosh to one side of the pan exposing the pickup screen and the engine basically will suck air but the oil pockets here do is add additional reservoir of oil that will cover up this screen so that the engine never sucks air now even though we do not encourage anyone to take the vehicle into 1g turn effect we strongly advise against it a high-performance vehicle the caliber of a Corvette needs to be capable of such a renewal this baby one of the key initiatives of the ls1 engine was trying to optimize the combustion characteristics which really would be improving fuel economy performance and emissions of the engine in order to try and accomplish this we really wanted to optimize the airflow coming into the engine and airflow going out of the engine we started with looking at the intake manifold we designed this manifold as you see before me basically to be a tuned induction system it has runners here that are tuned from a performance characteristic standpoint as well as replicated each cylinder is identical to the other while we were designing a new manifold we decided to use a composite material you can see this manifold is very very lightweight and designed which is another benefit of the engine once we designed the manifold we looked at the cylinder head itself and tried to make sure that the airflow and going from the intake the head itself were designed as one we designed what we called a replicated head where today we have Siamese port configuration the intake runners are Siamese right next to each other and it limits our capability to have the airflow going in to each port to be identical to the adjacent port this head has the intake port spaced out away from each other this allows us to optimize the air flow going into the combustion chamber and basically allows us to improve the flow characteristics as well as a fuel injection characteristics of the engine once the air exits the cylinder head itself and enters the exhaust manifold the exhaust manifold are designed to try and maintain the heat from the combustion chamber to get to the converter Cayla converters do not actually operate until they reach a certain temperature so what we needed to do is trying to keep the exhaust gas as warm as possible and get it to the converters fast as possible so we designed a exhaust manifold that actually has a dual wall and inner an outer layer of steel and the gap in between is filled with air that air gap acts as a thermos to insulate the exhaust gas so we don't dissipate it to the outside area that allows the converters to heat up quicker and faster which ultimately translates into better engine ality mission numbers for us the bottom line of the ls1 engine is an impressive torque and horsepower curve it's got a nice smooth or fine idle but the thing that really gets you excited is the extension of the torque curve that lets you play out the higher anyone who's ever driven a Corvette knows that the launch feel from a stoplight is the most exhilarating experience the ls1 will not be disappointing in this afternoon our new ls1 engine will ultimately be compared to its predecessor the LT 4 and LT 1 engines the LS 1 is characteristically better in performance from the higher rpm range which translates from the better vehicle performance without losing any of the low-end torque associated with our small-block today the exceptional thing about the LS 1 is its very broad and powerful torque curve that lets you get acceleration basically from the line all the way out to the high-speed operations accelerating on the entrance ramps of freeways or just compassing realism no one will be disappointed with the LS 1 performance another key feature of is utilization of etc' electronic throttle control which integrates the operation of traction control cruise control and throttle all into one electronic throttle control gives a customer more precise control of launch as well as city and highway driving with electronic throttle control there is no mechanical connection between the throttle pedal and the engine gives you a tactical feedback as well as precise control question arises why put the transmission in the rear well it's simple starts with a design concept of the car center backbone extended wheelbase means to get the 50/50 weight balance you need to move the transmission to the rear simple as that this vehicle is going to be available with two transmissions the automatic version which would be the hydra-matic 400 60e manufactured by GM powertrain and the manual option will be the BorgWarner t56 transmission manufactured by BorgWarner the hydra-matic 400 60 e is then modified to meet the needs of this application in several specific areas first we've done some work in the torque converter area to guarantee that we've got a capacity to reach 6,500 rpm in terms of engine capability on the unit we've also done some work in the oil pump to make sure that we have performance beyond a 2,500 rpm in the oil pump range which is critical if we want to make sure that we do have fast aggressive quick shifts on this unit as you see it's mounted in the rear it really allows us to distribute the weight 50/50 and both in the front and the rear to allow for extended performance and handling on the vehicle level as well as give you a better interior room the advantage of having a 50/50 weight distribution is that the car is neutral during cornering turns in faster it's quicker to get under control it's more controllable in a corner we've worked on electronic shifts and we've worked on a number of shift modifications that are electronically controlled for altitude compensation top temperature as well as making sure we have some protection modes in here for what might be considered abuse conditions either in terms of the environment or in terms of the driver I think when you ride the the six-speed manual that is the area where the Corvette comes to life it's the area where you get the absolute control over the vehicle you as the driver to site everything that you want we have triple cones in both the first and second gears so that you get easy shift ability as well as dual cones in the fourth third fourth fifth and sixth gear range again for ease of shift ability the clutches in the front end of the unit is attached to the ls1 engine and it is a self adjusting clutch it does an automatic adjust so that as the friction material wears it will adjust back to the same load level as it was originally so you and I as a customer we will see that as just a consistent pedal effort and longer life in our clutches this rear axle is our first react to produce pega tribe and so it's a new entry into our family line there's actually three axles that are available on this unit there is one base for the manual and one base for the automatic and an uplevel performance axle for the automatic each one has been matched to the vehicles to ensure that we have quick aggressive performance I think the customers expectations are very clearly understood by the platform team and when I look at the team and observe the way they pay attention to the details it's absolutely amazing this is the most tested Corvette ever it is a brand new vehicle totally new from the ground up for those very reasons we had to test the vehicle and test it for practicality and durability for the customer we've conducted approximately half a million on road tests miles with a 1997 Corvette as well as simulation of several million miles and laboratory environments it's a simple engine it's fast it's better than anything before and it's really made a car perform well in January of 1996 we were sent to Alice Springs Australia where it happened to be their summer and our mission was to put 50 thousand miles on each of two Corvettes in high speed driving on the highway rural city traffic and downtown city traffic to validate the system the cars ran very well the whole trip we did have a few problems that we corrected why we were there and the information that we got why we were there they used extensively here in the states to modify and develop the car even further one of the other high performance tests that we run is one tank of gas at wide open throttle which is a speed in excess of 170 miles per hour at our desert proving ground we conducted it in the summertime so we have the the extreme temperature to contend with with the vehicle as well reason for this test knee is to subject the vehicle to the extreme stress that that puts on the driveline of the vehicle and we want to be sure that the vehicle is tested in those conditions and that every Corvette owner will know this vehicle has been designed to withstand that type of operation one of the activities we conduct with the vehicle test activities is a simulated press ride and drive schedule the vehicle goes out for a lap on the track works up quite a bit of energy in the vehicle develops a lot of temperature and comes back in and soaks for several minutes we make sure the car will endure under those situations by conducting testing of those very same conditions Corvettes have always had a stimulating visual impact that's become part of Americana because of the tremendously loyal following Corvette enjoys it was essential that the fifth generation be immediately recognizable as the new Corvette the partnership between design and engineering created a design which includes all the passion expected from a Corvette as well as one which really works for the customer we had a lot of arguing going on on the back of the car inherently when General Motors goes through a design process you've got engineering on one side and design on the other side and they usually meet like this when it came to the back of the car that's exactly how we were meeting there's a lot of great interact just a lot of passion a lot of arguments heated discussions like you couldn't believe but for one reason not for egos or for personal game but was it was for that right there to get it right the rear really Telegraph's the stance of the vehicle the footprint and you know the great cars have great stance and a great footprint great track they have presence when you're behind the first thing you see are the 4 oval taillights you know for round four squares whatever has been really a part of a modern Corvette design particularly in the rear end the Corvette canopy look has been something that's been with us now for you know quite a quite a while and it's it's probably the most functional way to approach a Corvette from both an aerodynamic standpoint and a functional standpoint you know when we started designing this car on the sketch board we were thinking the wind tunnel right off the bat this car had to poke a real slippery hole right through the air and hence forth the extreme design of the rear end of the car the designers early on had a certain shape in mind for the car we in there at an Amex Department had to take that shape and mold it into something functional from an aerodynamic standpoint we had to make the car low drag so it would not only increase its top speed but maintain fuel economy at lower speeds the drag of a car when you increase its speed from 100 to 200 when you double the speed of a car the drag goes up four times we had to make the car load drag so it would not only increase its top speed but maintain fuel economy at lower speeds you look at the rear of the Corvette you're going to see a hard edge across the deck and a hard edge that runs down the sides of the quarters that is there specifically for aerodynamics we spent a lot of time locating that hard edge and what it does is it separates the air cleanly off the car the great thing about this car is that the design of the car is so good everything works so well on the car the customer can really focus on how great it is to drive and how much fun it is at the end for the rear of the car for the old car we had bonded on the quarter panels this car there bolted on and there made it made out of a more flexible SMC material the hatch when you open it makes a huge opening and the easy access into the hatch with the reduced lift over makes it very easy to use it as a storage space when you close the hatch the design of the strut system lets gravity help you close the hatch and the hatch closes practically by itself well I think that the scoop on this car was inspired by great swing panels from the from the 50s with the great looking events it's been a Corvette signature the roof of this car is much easier to remove than the c4 roof is it's not bolted in it's held in by three simple actuated latches the frame is made out of magnesium instead of aluminum to control the weight and it has rain gutters on the side to manage the water the door is a very simple and lightweight design the hardware inside of the door has a very simple construction which improves the reliability and the operating efforts and friendliness are also much improved inside the door is a steel door beam to offer the occupant protection and on the inside surface of the door is energy absorbing foam to augment that protection the outside rearview mirror has a much increased rearward vision with very little operation from the rear quarter panel they're just much bigger the front end of the Corvette I think is one of the really extraordinary packaging achievements I mean packaging a Bushrod aluminum block v8 underneath this low low slung hood and we've got some fantastic sight angles out of the cockpit of this car hidden headlights on the Corvette have been a great tradition I think that was a big innovation in the 60s it's been a Corvette signature then I think if a couple words could sum that sum that up it's smooth integrated total harmony in front end the tandem versus symmetrical wipers improve the vision through the rain the fenders on this car are a soft injection molded material like the rear quarters and with those we've been doing our best to fight those pesky insurance premiums the hood is much smaller far easier to open requiring less than half the effort and no latches required to keep it open the front of car is one of the most important areas one of the things we had going for us early on is the Corvette heritage in that it had hidden headlights the headlights fold down the drag goes down that was one of the good things for us one of the bad things for us is that we had a 345 horsepower motor that we had to cool so we had to breathe a lot of air and every time we breathe a lot of air there's a lot of drag involved there one of the mechanisms that we use to feed the car air and to reduce the drag of the car is an air dam and you'll find air dams on Corvettes are low to the ground that serves two purposes one it keeps air out from underneath the car which produces a lot of drag in a lot of lift it also helps feed the engine the air it needs to cool we use the outboard corners of the air dam to shield the front tires from oncoming flow so we don't develop a lot of high pressure in front of the tire which gives us a lot of drag the average car that you see driving on the road today has a CD of somewhere between point three one and point three five the high sport cars have got higher drag there probably between 0.33 and 0.37 you can see by these numbers that the new Corvette is substantially lower in drag than its competitors the 0.29 CD that the new Corvette produces is the lowest drag car produced in North America other than our own General Motors electric vehicle it is also the lowest drag high sport car in the world bar none why they go one word that describes the Corvette is passion and I think when you describe the people that have been involved with this car I think passionate about the term Corvette is the way to describe all of them being part of the Corvette team is is a fulfillment of a lifetime dream for me this is certainly the highlight of my career it's not very often even in General Motors where a car gets to be redesigned from the ground up starting with everything new it's a boyhood dream come true for me because that's what I've wanted to do since I was in seventh grade represent Chevrolet and the Corvette to the public for all of the tough times we went to run the program we were there and we were laying out the next generation of Corvette suspension and those don't come along very often in anyone's career I was there on one and I was fortunate and privileged to be there I don't know if I'll be on another one but but my efforts on this one were the technical highlight of my career I must tell you that being involved in helping bring the c5 to fruition and bringing it to the public with all the advantages it's going to have all of the interesting features that has all the beauty that it has and how it is going to set the sporty car market right on its ear has been probably one of the most rewarding experiences of my life I only hope I'm around long enough to maybe do the next generation Corvette you don't wake up in the morning and say hey I want to do Corvettes it's something you grow up with you'll live with you drive the car you restore it you love the whole Corvette experience and it's just been great to be a part of it and part of the history of it the cars got a great future it's had a great past long live the Corvette the people you've just heard from our team Corvette all of us on this team including literally hundreds more feel very honored to have had this incredible opportunity for fanatics like us it just doesn't get any better and we're genuinely excited the time has finally come to take the wraps off and share this great new Chevrolet Corvette with the world there's really not much more we can tell you about the passion aspect words don't do it it's really something you have to experience and feel for yourself

Channel: JT

Views: 225,796

Rating: 4.8895168 out of 5

Keywords: Corvette, C5, 1997, Vette, Chevrolet Corvette (C5) (Automobile Generation), Chevrolet Corvette (Automobile Model), training, vhs

Id: 9pMQhADOp7k

Length: 57min 2sec (3422 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 15 2014