First Drive of 2020 Corvette Stingray Convertible Z51 - Jay Leno’s Garage

the first person outside drive [Music] so this is the only Corvette Convertible in the state of California yes let's put the top up you know the nice thing about this car is if you're going under 30 miles an hour yeah you decide you want the top top down or top up out my hair okay okay put it up sixteen seconds and she's done Wow what another episode of Jay Leno's Garage we are very excited today to feature the 2020 Corvette Stingray convertible I know it looks like a hardtop but it's a convertible the whole thing folds into the into the trunk you'll see that in a second you know we were lucky enough to be at the introduction of the new Corvette a while back in Tustin California and got to drive it just for anybody else I mean it was inside a big hangar but you got the feel of a car it is a totally new automobile at an incredible price point which nobody could believe at the time it really makes you proud of American engineering American innovation the fact that they're able to get this much technology in and around the $60,000 price point I mean these guys have done an amazing job and let's meet the man with I think the best job in Detroit chief engineer for Corvette cash dr. by saying that right it's the heart you've got a j8 daddies I'd know Nicky man I keep tripping over it all that stuff it's difficult is I think you have the best job in Detroit working on the most exciting project you know you're not doing door handles for the Chevy Volt or anything that's where I started but it's cool but to move up to this and what you've done is really amazing and I have to say it takes a lot of guts to change a product like a Corvette which has always been front engine and just reading the comments before the car was out it was hysterical people mad about the taillights aren't around or it's not a Corvette with it I will never buy another Corvette you know and it's a problem I think that harley-davidson had and that Porsche has they have a product so popular oh my god you make any change right you know like the 9/11 when the 928 come out of the 944 boo boo people just I mean there were wonderful cars but unfortunately it didn't because people just wanted the 911 and with the Corvette it was the same thing people just furious moving the engine to the back but I mean obviously it's progress and right away you see how dated the earlier Corvettes are and when you get in this and you drive it was there a lot of internal sort of strife and arguments about yes really I mean way back from Dora's day right he was trying to get us to go mid-engine in the 60s right and he encountered a lot of resistance that's company why would you mess with success why would you tamper with a good thing don't fix it if it hasn't broken that kind of thing and he was unsuccessful at convincing the leadership to make the move and so now here we are 66 years later and finally doing it and it was really a confluence of a lot of things but the answer is yes there was a lot of initial resistance to moving the engine to the back we're selling a lot of front engine cars people loved them they raved about them right it was a good business for us so why would you tamper with that ultimately physics forced us to tamper with it we wanted to push the performance envelope out we had to move the engine to the back at the power to the ground because even the base model Corvette the new base model 2020 is fast at a 60 miles an hour than the current top-of-the-line zr1 isn't it not quite but almost so here we have the standard car $60,000 a car it's just about as quick to 60 as $120,000 car yeah that's progress that's real progress and that's pretty amazing i mean i mean i i've got a c5 and c6 i love them because you know you can go to home depot and put some lumber in the back if they want you've got all kinds of trunk space but this has got a pretty good trunk space front and back as well yeah if you're gonna fill it with water yeah it's about the same but it's divided differently in the shapes or difference right right but get really travel well we don't know a lot a lot of people put water sand now correct me if i'm wrong but in previous generation of Corvettes there was always carryover I mean when the c2 came out it was really the c1 chassis with a different body and so consequently you could amortize the cost of yes I remember when I took my 55 Buick apart we're modifying it for SEMA and some GM guys can somebody looked at a piece and went you know we're still using that just a bracket yeah but you realize they've been making back for 60 years they can make up a half a penny at this point you know where is this it's totally this car really is and you looking back over the Corvette generations some of the more clean sheet and others were more evolutionary this one really was clean cheetah had to be when we brought out the coop just a couple months ago we said there was only one carryover part that was a little latch for the removable behind your head so now we're looking at a retracting hardtop there's nothing carryover right and even the coop is really a convertible isn't it what do you call it because you can lift the top off I didn't realize that when it came out I found that out when I was there it's it's technically a convertible if you can take the roof off it is if there's no structure but between the behind you and there's no t-top or anything so in the eyes of the regulator's the government radically in the auto industry it's technically a convertible even though we call it a coupe right and the two cars had to be designed simultaneously because the body structure has to be good with the roof out the retracting hardtop is unusual we usually bring out the convertible quite a bit behind the curb this time we're bringing out bangbang we just we haven't even sold the first coupe yet and we're already introducing the convertible and that's because we really had to design them very tightly together is there it says maybe 175 pounds 100 pounds heavier than the coupe it's about 80 pounds but you know yeah which is pretty amazing it's very good and so there is no more soft top convertible anymore although it's a convertible it's a retracting metal heart that goes kind of yeah it looks like an Egyptian thing two shell pieces that come back yeah so it's all rigid materials magnesium and composites it makes it much more challenging canvas top obviously folds you can bend the exterior material so the kinematic all it it's a lot more flexible for packaging in small spaces so this is a very challenging packaging operation and of course with the hardtop you can you've got the glass piece so you can see the the engines and the internals as well okay tell us about the chassis structure I remember when we went to the unveiling they had kind of the raw chassis they're on display which is just amazing it is that's all the engineers gravitate towards that yeah and that's really literally the backbone of the car so it's all aluminum composites of various kinds of glass base mix of glass and carbon and all carbon so that when you're talking about the technology that is a lot of the technology in the car how do you get those kind of materials properly applied to make this the stiffest open Corvette we've ever done so with the roof up or roof down the car feels the same it feels like a closed roof car you don't even realize you're driving a convertible because it's so stiff well the thing I think that really freaked out most people was the price point I like everyone else assumed they'll continue to build the c7 at the 60 to 80 thousand dollar price point and then oh the mid-engine will be 125 like the Viper is or 150 or 180 or something you know I mean the NSX mid-engine v-sit that's what I tell me out the door was $205,000 yeah I mean how you're able to build it for that like I just assumed the base model would have you know some sort of torque converter transmission with the usual excuse for saving weight you know that kind but the fact that you've engineered really all the top European features I mean cars that cost a quarter million dollars and up this has exactly the same features dual clutch gearbox or a custom cut across a spoke you know okay so everything is almost bespoke in this isn't it it really is a lot of it is perfect completely unique to this car we have a lot of unique suppliers that provide these parts we've developed along with them for the last 60 years on doing Corvettes we do benefit from being part of a very large company drum loader so there's economies of scale and a lot of things we do certainly the engine is one place that we have huge leverage because it's you know it's a very high-performance version of the small-block v8 that we make in large what sea I would think that disadvantage sometimes a big company is you go to them and then go look you know we've got this transmission of used for years it works fine why don't you use this or we've got these other pieces why go bespoke when we've got this sitting on the show I mean is that a hard case you have to make when when you obviously a dual clutch gearbox especially bespoke one is more expensive more complex do you have to sell that to the side of the accountants in the upper echelon or it's just a matter of guys build the best thing you can you know that's part of the whole sales pitch for the whole car we knew when we were going mid-engine we wouldn't be able to take a lot of the traditional components off the shelf and use them the architecture demands a different packaging arrangement and customers honestly have been asking for a DCT for quite some time you really want that continuous torque during a shift and the speed of the shifts for a performance car so we had two reasons to do that so it was a sales pitch sure but it was part of selling the whole car once the car was sold we've had fantastic support from the leadership at GM to do what we need to do to execute this car but I mean there's nothing on this car it's not on any of the European exotics and even if you go to Pagani and some of those those aren't even dual clutch transmission their torque converters in them you know I mean we're really proud with all the content we have all the composites you know it's not a full carbon exterior but we do use carbon and and we've got a lot of Elune there's almost no steel in the car left so allow the people we compete with still use some aluminum some steel right so we're kind of at the top echelon being so far in the composites tell us about the brake the brakes are shared with the coupe of course this one we're looking at is the z51 package so when you get z51 you get larger brakes for the first time we're actually marking z51 on the brakes oh I see there's like the brag that they have that content so we put it right on there you can see 51 come from what what is what is the derivation of 51 we have regular production options RPO so those alphanumeric codes that indicate content on the car and those are have history way back in General Motors Oh gates and decades and decades disease all our Z's are tend to be performance options so z51 0-60 ry that's right so Z denotes a performance option now this retracting a hardtop it seems as if the soft top would be the simplest way to go but obviously for security reasons and what not a hunter how difficult is that I mean just watching this we'll see in a minute but it's it's fascinating to see it go through a toll it's a very complicated mechanism and a hardtop is much more difficult to package because all the panels are rigid right from the beginning we were thinking we would do a soft top but if you look at all those top echelon cars most of them do retracting hard top right and they do it because you get the quiet you get the look right canvas tops are kind of old school when you got a car that's this modern you've got the security for the interior so there's a lot of reasons why folding hardtop makes a lot of sense it's a huge challenge to engineer especially when you fold it into an engine compartment so you have all the thermal issues so you're folding this thing down it's got rubber seals on it it's got nice interior trim suede and everything and now you're putting in an engine compartments just inches above an exhaust manifold right so managing all the thermal on this car was a big challenge on the coupe and it's just as much a challenge on the convertible so we had to really isolate the convertible from the engine with heat shielding and a bulkhead in there and it must be very powerful very compact electric motors that pull this down it almost seems like you can almost do it manually and do it but obviously you want it to be electric right how much I mean you say it's only 80 pound I mean that's what are they about seven pounds apiece their motors there's six motors in there there's a lot there six motors yeah there's a lot of linkages there's new seals you can see the whole construction on the back end of the car is different the nice thing about this car is we don't have to reinforce it because it's a convertible exactly same chassis underneath a lot of folks have to do a lot of reinforcement that's why there's a big difference in mass between their coupes and their convertibles we design it as a convertible from the beginning so we don't have to reinforce the chassis all we have to do is accommodate all the motors the wiring the shielding and so forth for the roof something that's I wouldn't call a controversial but people people really react to is sort of the fighter-pilot sort of cockpit did you look at aircraft or is this just so if you walk through our design studio you'll see posters of aircraft plastered all over the place and everybody has this idea of what a jet fighter interior looks like the reality doesn't actually usually matter you know it's pretty Spartan it's pretty technical functional hard surfaces you know goes back to the early days with Harley Earl and stuff with the World War two and the fins and the vent apart on you know the exhaust of a p38 Mustang I mean so there's a lot of heritage between aeronautical and General Motors design yeah yeah and we've made a big connection between the astronauts the space program we just introduced this convertible last week at Cape Canaveral there was about a dozen astronauts there yeah for that reveal it was really exciting to see that in the rocket garden with all whoa well of course when I was a kid I remember getting my issue of Life magazine with the three astronauts they each got a Corvette for a dollar for a year or two year whatever it was per year yeah and we we got to drive one we track one down awhile back and like our second season on the show it was really exciting I mean they were all silver and they really wanted to you know these guys were American Hero so they wanted to be and what's the closest thing to rock it on four wheels of either Corvette and you know you see the astronauts driving off in there dollar Corvette which seems like a huge bargain they were all lobbying for that same nail today yeah yeah I mean it was pretty amazing and I love the way they've integrated the screen I mean so many modern cars it just sort of stuck in the dash or flips and folds and goes under yeah but nicely done there so you know we try to take advantage of the fact that we have this structural backbone so with the stiffness of the car comes from that big center console so we're leveraging that with the design to make that feel like a glove when you get into the car it just wraps around you and it's all driver folk is this like hey don't even look at my skin you know it's a passenger hey no you can't see anything no it looks that way from here but they've actually set the path it's not that bad no I know but it's fun but I just liked if I said like have my own little area there but no it's it's it's really unique and interesting and different a lot of people think standing outside the car it looks like it might be claustrophobic on the outside but it's really not and there's actual more room than today's car we put an extra inch of seat travel and more recline angle we've had people up to seven feet oh yeah Oh Brad Garrett I think he was actually yeah at the West Coast reveal the convertible he got in the car he's pretty big guy in the other Corvette you would have been maybe here yeah somewhere closer to the front of the car yeah your heels are almost on the front axle yeah yeah which is which is really very cool even the steering wheel you always think of a circle right but it's not but it's not really a wreck if so what what is the name of that she worka ask workhorse corkle is what design you just make that up right now oh no I didn't know escort I give credit to the design team okay okay and it really came from you know and actually being old-school I always thought wheels should be round right both wrote wheels and steering wheels and so we've had round wheels on Corvettes for a long time and for they've actually been cheating up meaning they're round but the center of the wheel isn't the center of the circle so the the wheels actually slightly offset to get a little more thick there into a little more visibility over the you know through the whole the top of the rim and so we did a flat bottom wheel a couple years ago and folks like that you look at race cars you know they have extreme shapes for this one with the widescreen reconfigurable display we really wanted to pooch out the corners a little bit so you got a really good view of that display and create better handhold positions so it's two spoke and either whether you were nine and three or a two and 10 person you have a perfect hand holding position for each one and I like the fact there are very few controls on the wheel I don't like the steering wheel where everything is you know where I'm doing I like I'm driving right now it's a toy I'll Drive the car it's a balance for one you've got radio convenience but yeah it's primarily a driving machine yeah nicely yeah I think it's fantastic and of course the price point is what really freaks people out I think people were just stunned by that as much they were by the styling it was like what yeah I think people how can you make it right because if well that's and you brought it up before if that would have been a different business strategy and would've been a safer business strategy to keep the old car in production right move this one to a higher price point and if you were starting a sports car company from scratch and you wanted to cover all those price points you might do that but as we were developing this car we thought you know what we can we can go all in well see that's what I love about American manufacturing the ability to make things and make them quickly and efficiently and keep a lawyer I mean when we won World War two not just because we had the best soldiers because we we had a plane coming out of Willow Run every hour right I mean we we were manufacturing aircraft faster almost and they could shoot them down it was like where are these planes come I mean every hour another jet came out you know you went to England then you know they kind of did the Spitfires and stuff by hand and it took a while and did have a secret one at a time but it's boom boom every hour another plane left and it's the same thing with this I mean you have it's really manufacturing efficiencies like carbon fiber wheels it's like what like to do a hutch transmission you're able to make it it's such a precise and a precision way that the cost just keeps coming down because it there's nothing on here that a car and the $250,000 a half-a-million dollar range it's the same thing yeah all got the same feature and these are some of the most complicated consumer products in the world yeah so many different pieces and parts that have to fit together and we make one of these in five minutes yeah every high every five minutes that's that's pretty I got John so you got five minutes make a CA god yeah yeah five minutes to make that car I mean that's that's pretty amazing I mean you know I always love it when the Europeans old-world craftsmanship well I'm sorry your thumb is not a laser your thumb is about it well we use quite a mix if you look at our weld chopper we weld the frame together it's a ballet of roll lots there's a very few people so those nasty dirty jobs that have to be super precise robots are the best of those but if you look at our general assembly where you hand assemble the rest of our there's a lot of people they have a lot of assist tools and things but there's a lot of jobs that people need to do and we're also at a point where like in the old days you've got the electric seed and all the adjustments to Safeway you take all that out but oh we're at the point now where these motors are almost not fly weight but yeah very small and and with the integration of electronics yeah every time you had a feature you're not necessarily adding a wire right you're adding a message communicating between computers so it's not necessarily adding mass yeah and I love how secret these guys are you know two years ago I got to show my card this is my right I got to drive the zr1 we you and I went 204 miles an hour yes so they gave me this little card mean it's got Sora's picture on there and everything just to show that we did a Milford I remember said tell me about the mid-engine oh I don't know if we're gonna be doing that oh I don't know if we're gonna make that no no you know you didn't see anything gain I could swear no no there's nothing look at that yeah yeah so hilarious very funny very funny well let's show the top before we go for a drive let's show how the top goes down [Music] I have to admit I I like to come with the coop I just go like this and I put it in the trunk uh-huh do I lose any trunk space because the trunk space is actually about exactly the same okay so the shape of the opening is a little different because of the way the tonneau right bolt but you don't have those provisions in the trunk that hold the removable roof yeah so you get an advantage of that so on paper the numbers the same the shape right slightly different well I just remember the old days like with the old Lincoln's they would say please remove everything we're trying to put the top down the trash come in yeah [Music] everything you don't have to worry about you don't lose any trunk space top up or top down which is the first time we've done that on Corvette let's show the trunk because I believe you have to you have one in the front yes just like the coupe we have one in the front one in the rear and I think this has the most trunk space of any mid-engine car I can think of even if you just count the rear yeah that's true and then we have the front as an extra and that was a goal wasn't it I mean you know we look at the NSX maybe you could get a package of unfiltered cigarettes in there because it felt there adds a little liquor and that's about it whereas this it was that if you have certain mandates like cars yeah all right you can build it but it's got to be able to hold two golf bags you've got to have this you've got to have that we have goals right no we know our customers really well right and like you mentioned the last multiple generations have had the same luggage capacity as a midsize car if you ask people the name why they want a sports car luggage room isn't one of the reasons for purchase but they sure like it when they have it right right and so we didn't want to just do a you know a plaything a weekend toy right kind of Corvette that couldn't be used for all those other things so we said we're gonna make it our mission to put as much trunk room as we can package everything as tightly as we can golf clubs is one thing but we also had the removable roof since 84 we've had a roof that's removed so you had to have a place to that roof the roofs pretty big so that mandate so you can't just have a little cubby up front you have to have something that can take a whole car well even the front one is pretty big let's show that one okay this one we were trying to figure out obviously golf clubs don't fit in this one I know there's a switch right there yeah secret switch front and back there's a switch cool this one we sized around airline roll-aboard right so you can put one in horizontally or we have custom luggage for this car really nice and you can put two of those top and bottom here and two in the back of the did it like that you know are the guys that have these go wings and Aston Martin's I always tell guys your wife's not going to put our stuff in your stupid fitted luggage okay it's just not gonna happen you know and each bag fits generally and it cost you like a gazillion dollars now what is the white button there what is that to sew that button there's one in the front and one in the rear it's mandated by law and it's for child protection oh that's right if a child gets trapped in there you know the older brother puts the younger brother in the trunk right hose that runs away right that glows in the dark and so that's the only thing they'd be able to see if they push it it's always on it's always powered enough oh it opens yeah I watched some movie the other day where they take a guy and they throw him in the trunk of the car I don't know where's a late-model car I'm gone you know there's a little thing right there just pull it in the trouble of the but they don't do that you know hey jerk look here and the guys like this bang bang knocking I got it but they don't tell you that oh yeah that's right I forgot that's mandated I'm so you have that front and back yes front and back and if you have twins you could have one in each you could and actually I've seen three and already Wow okay all right very cool so a soft luggage you can pack as much luggage as you can in today's car and this stays relatively cool that's one thing about prior Corvettes you have the exhaust running underneath the trunk it gets pretty hot back there right plus the Sun coming through the back window right because we've got our radiators on this car outboard the front actually stays pretty cool and so we tell people put your beer here and your pizza in the back oh this a little bit warm right back so like on this model z51 and it probably has an actuator how many radiators total in the car so for a c-51 there be three radiators so in the front we have one in each side and they're surprisingly big if we took off this bodywork you'd see they're quite large there's also a condenser on each side so that's for the air conditioning and then the way the system works is we take the hot coolant from the engine up to the front split it through those two radiators in that very cool coolant runs the length of the car and then on z51 goes through another radiator that's taking air in through the large quarter panel openings and that extra cool coolant immediately goes into water to water or water to oil coolant for both the engine oil and the trans loop and you use a water-based coolant I mean regular yes it's a conventional like any other car right right right so that's what you talked about how do we offer the car for less money general motors buys a lot of coolant for all cars and trucks around the world so that's an example of where we'd have advantages of economies of scale gotcha gotcha well just all the bracketry it's it's it's just it's just amazing let's let's bring this down again talk about this mid window I we didn't talk about that that's kind of a cool feature yeah tell me so this obviously has retracted yeah much like the 1958 mercury Turnpike cruiser with the breeze away that's what we were going for I only mention that because I just found a 58 Continental Mark 3 the heaviest longest car ever built in America post-war and that's saying it's got that rear window they come and the use of the smoking window so it's more the smoker body because it has fourth it has four ashtrays it all goes out the back so this this can you put this up while the windows down that window actually that window has an independent control it had to go up and down to our calculate the top and we decided why not make it independently controllable so it has its own switch on the door oh right next to the convertible switch so even with the top up if you want that little vent extra head open you can put that down so you can hear the engine better run it gives you better cabin ventilation then when the top is down you can move it up or down as well depending on how much recirculating air you want into the cabin and so in combination with the side glass going up and down in that coat there's all sorts of different ways to configure the car top down to give you comfort depending on what the weather is I always wonder what the aftermarket boys do with stuff something like this because you guys have got everything down to a science it's almost there's almost these days no exhaust system that's better than stock I mean it might be louder but you're not gonna do it better because you guys have got it comprised and time than every other thing like that we have our NPP we have an optional exhaust which has valves in it and when the valves are open it's basically like a straight pipe it's hard to do better than a straight pipe in terms of restriction so you can open it from electronically from the - yes you can set up how you want we have the different modes no is opening up like pipes no no no I know okay so that is an option impp it's called very popular it's we have it on today's car so that's our answer to the aftermarket but I have to say the aftermarket folks are super creative right they also don't have to meet noise pass bylaws that we do and so they have an advantage that way but have we passed the point where an aftermarket exhaust with in effect emissions like if you put an aftermarket system on a car like this in California every two years we've got to get it inspected together has a mission most likely it won't pass because it's all it all works together yes truth is you know it depends on the system and whether you're doing just a catback versus you know people aren't put headers on the car right you know it that would definitely affect it yeah pretty amazing and we've got a whole series of buttons there yes I used to LA I've got a 63 split-window and I was behind then when I was 13 in the radio was sideways oh coolest radio goes this way you have to sort of do this when you're tuning in you know just just because it was different you know our radio is still this way yeah I love the fact that all those buttons along the side just + thing in the passenger what are you pressing nevermind well some of those are for the past passengers heating coolant or temperature control so those are all the interior comfort controls HVAC controls so there's really no stripper Corvette is there there's no base model with not really with mechanical seats and you know they're all the starting car is very well equipped and it looks well equipped we don't do what other people do is if you get the base card there's a whole bunch of blanks yeah like this roll ahead of that are you saw I'm going to get the clock and I had this all the numbers but the hands are missing some people had no you're too cheap that was my favorite thing we tool up separate pieces so it looks like a complete car even if you don't get all the content yeah no yeah it's it's it's really amazing because that was another thing I heard people go when I told people with 60 you'll never be able to buy when you know it's gonna be a hundred by the time but no I mean I know a guy just bought one and I think he paid 64 you know with all of the things he's got one unordered yeah and and he won't be disappointed we've shown media some standard cars or maybe the base car just was the 51 for somebody who does want the lightest car for the track it doesn't feel like you've cheaped out at all it feels like a very complete car and and is this a limited production or will they make as many as they can sell I mean well usually when we bring in our new Corvette work capacity constraint right many more people are placing orders than we can build will make as many as we can and what is the normal run of Corvette 25,000 a year 30,000 a 30-ish plus or minus and we bring it out we can sell a little over 30 right and then you know if the cars been out for six seven years and it typically be yeah you know twenties right right that's typical we're hoping that this one sells more we're doing right dry for the first time we're going to Australia we're going to both countries we never been to before yes that's exciting it was a big party in Australia when we announced right-hand drive well you know I would say God I was 20 years ago I guess it was 1999 I drove a Corvette on the Autobahn we took and everywhere I went people ran up to them it's like a Ferrari right it's rare exotic they never saw it before and with all the Mercedes and and BMW is limited to 155 some sort of gentlemen's agreement 155 miles an hour I was were not gentlemen 171 172 I was just flying by people yeah they try to catch me and they could eating McDonald's driving prevent hey Alan American we don't recommend that exactly so yeah we go 194 on the standard car which is pretty darn fast the fastest standard Corvette we've ever had well that's my favorite thing with you and when we went to the zr1 we got out of the car and I said we must do this every day once the last time he went 200 in a car vet you said I never had really so your first time for the comedian on a track he's never seen before it could go wrong yeah what you might see nothing did and I was amazed at how far aerodynamics have come I mean I've got a curved GT and in 2005 when we went to Talladega and we did a hundred laps at like between 100 and 1890 and I was who it was doing this you know it's like just every little input you can feel the car slide yet on the 2017 Corvette it was it was Rocksteady I mean we just went right to 204 kept it there and you and I had a conversation and we talked he slowed down 150 and I felt like we're going 60 miles an hour I mean it's pretty amazing it didn't show up on the show but the only thing that gave me pause because we didn't rehearse that right right as we went to 100-plus all right and then you started slowing down B just slowed down a lot you slowed down to like 190 it's not a call and then you start doing lane changes remember that hey feels like what's this guy doing this might have been a mistake yeah and but you told me later you were kind of come bearing the Aero stability Highway you know if you're asking the steering to do what it needs to do with those pieces they are feel light and it was it was amazing it was it was pretty cool can we take her for a ride absolutely do what it does best do it that open exhaust an hour now I don't know what it's set to actually it's on tour mode so it may just be the bass sound okay it's funny for a Corvette to have noise behind you it is from it sounds familiar but it's coming from a guy [Music] you're not feeling it is the best governor I've ever seen it is torque managed so you're not getting full output and all that's broken in we actually limit the torque and the engine try to break in you know you're obviously not behaving very well you know right it's not you're supposed to do on a brand new car right so we want the gears to all bed in nicely so we limit the torque intentionally right it's still a safe level of performance now obviously this is a pre-production model so it's got some the horsepower is somewhat limited also because it it's not fully broken in yet or even warmed up right yeah we've learned over the years in fact we see people buying Corvettes they do a Burnout right out of the dealership right right and that's not really good for the machinery you really want to break it and easy differential all the gears they want to bed in and smooth polished each other right so they have a nice long quiet life and so for this car it's the first time we've done it for the first five hundred miles we dial back the torque a little bit it's still a very powerful car but we dial back the torque a little bit so you don't damage it people are really going to be surprised how quiet this car is we've had to insulate the accessory drive no behind you because that doesn't sound very good instead we plumb the intake around the outside of the guard briefs or the porter vent so you can hear some of that intake sound behind you and then of course the exhaust behind I like this wheel I like the fact it's not got plenty of room and you've got about five inches behind you right right and you can go from full open like we have now and put the side glass up and then you put my glass up to if you want to be outside open air but just tone it down a little bit in the front and literally just drop some eye drops off past your toes we don't even see it ya know it makes the car feel a little really small on track plus you're not sitting this way no you know that's right some people because the front tires are so far rearward and they consume so much space here and it's easy to put the pedal box that's the easy solutions you put a pedal box towards the important side of the car we have a dead straight column dead straight and straight a nice dead pedal also that's the great thing about the f1 is being in the middle you can be nine feet tall and you have your feet all the way the front da arms and everything oh yeah over here you know it was interesting when we first started taking the camel off the cars didn't have badging on them right because we there's no point labeling a Corvette on that you're gonna try to keep right back then it's a Corvette secret so we were all driving around these cars as they are but no badges and it was amazing the guesses we'd get up when people thought it was almost nobody thought was a Corvette except for the people who followed the mid-engine Corvette sorry so this one right now is not delivering full horsepower no it is not it's a pre-production car so obviously we're it is it governed as well its governed it would if it wasn't governed because we have we have finished our calibrations on performance and we've done that for the coupe and it's shared with a convertible so it will make full horsepower let's dial back about 15 20 percent okay right now just to preserve all the chassis components right during the break-in period but this is about as close to production as you can get correct yes right now most everything comes off from production tools this is an ax Vince or an experimental men this car was built in Bowling Green down the line it's not fully set up yet because we're still building the seventh generation car there but all the operators are getting trained they're living learning to put the parts together and exactly what sequence how much work can be done at each station things like this so this would be a pilot car is that what they call could call it a pilot car yeah now does this get crushed right afterwards is that they used to do that in the old day it will never go to sale it may be crushed nut immediately we'll use it for a variety of running sometimes we use it as a basis for some future model we'll do experiments on it eventually it'll be disposed of it breaks all of our hearts because all of us would love to see one of these in our garage but right Ryan and you're gonna be building as you said right hand drive for Japan and UK UK we've sold in Japan and UK cause it's legal to sell left him cars there and actually were surprised the seventh generation was surprisingly popular in Japan if we sold a lot more than we expected to there but there's Corvette clubs in Australia and we've never sold the car there they can import them when they're old they are or they can spend the whole price of the car maybe two times the price of the car to convert one to right-hand drive and bring it in so people are paying 300 grand for a zo6 to bring it in there Wow and so I've met some of these people they fly over and come to our Corvette events and try to twist our arms into doing a right hand drive yeah obviously it's pretty expensive to tool everything up in a mirror version so but this time we said you know this is gonna be a global car we want to sell it fully representative of the American power at all markets and I've been doing right-hand drive could you sell a right-hand drive car back here or is that illegal that would be illegal yes I did you could import one you can a poor one under certain restrictions right right but we can't run out allowed to build them here right right but they will be built in Bowling Green all of them will be built in Bowling Green and one of the advantages actually have a mid-engine architecture is it's slightly easier to do right right because you don't have all the right brake hardware they're conflicting with each other so it's less complicated to flip everything and what percentage of production would that be 5% of right-hand-drive yeah probably very small we don't know yeah since we've never sold in Australia we got a lot of passionate comers down there we don't know how many people actually step up and buy night right we'll find out you know whatever would it be sold under holden or is it still it's gonna be sold as a chevrolet corvette we will use holden as a distribution network because the i always assumed at some point corvette will become its own brand just be corvette not chevrolet corvette anyway it is you know it's kind of unique in itself it does we don't put the big bowtie on the card never lay its it's a brand unto itself but it's definitely a proud number right Chevrolet family yeah now you've been a Corvette for how many years twenty six plus start on the pitch with Park Royce in there you've got a real car guy as president that's absolutely true and we have more than mark mary is also people performance-oriented versus selling unit oriented you know I mean I'm in the old days there be rows of cars sitting in parking lot just manufactured you just get them out to get them out to hell out there you know whereas now it all seems to be focused on performance and competing with the best in the world yeah it's all about the quality for the segment for our segment it's performance oriented but I think just doing quality cars is a mantra throughout the company and it's funny to me to watch both the English and the Germans grudgingly give Corvette their due which they never really did with you know they always made fun of something an interior or they'd find something that broke her you know whatever was yeah but now they're gone okay we we know we're commanding respect to enumerate whenever Reid introduced a new one they asked to have one borrow one sometimes two of them right and we don't often agree to that was it well when they're for sale you're welcome to buy my right got you know little bar character there and it's interesting because the exhaust is farther away from you you know the occupant department so much farther forward the exhaust tips are 16 17 inches part of their way which doesn't sound like a lot but there's a lot between you and in also with the engine all the hardware and the no driveshaft you're almost gaining horsepower because the engine is going directly to the rear wheels you lose that spin loss right of the prop shaft but the most reason you gain horsepower is intake and exhaust restriction yeah the front-engine car there's not a good way to snorkel out to get to cool air there's a real pinch point and the exhaust gets pinched to get between your feet and down the tunnel on this car there's no pitch points it flows right in through the corners just like a whole school very large oval and then the exhaust routes you know it's got a high like mini headers and right out the back under the trunk so this is the only corvette convertible in the state of California yes it is you know Corvette it's like the hometown team you know people root for the brand in this night it's nice to see we have a lot of passionate customers and we also have a lot of passionate fans who maybe can't afford one but Leafs know about it some some people that's the only Chevy they know is the Corvette yeah but you know it's one of those cars it's aspirational you know if you're a blue-collar guy you got a plumbing business you have reasonably successful this is a real supercar you have a real shot of getting yeah I mean it's attainable for anybody with a decent job you know when we do the Lamborghinis and Ferraris we'll get seven hundred eight hundred thousand hits when we did this short video the last time at the introduction it was five million I mean it was it was like whoa now right now it was out to you is what I think is the coolest feature you know a lot of cars have a list system that brings the front end up and most dude that you have to weigh this pops right up but the coolest thing is its GPS tell us what that is exactly so every car has a GPS system it knows where you are so I just hit the button we lifted the front because we're coming off a steep driveway here out onto the road and every time you do that message comes up on the cluster asking if you want to remember this location right and all you do is hit the button on the steering wheel and it remembers that GPS location so every time you come to that location it automatically lifts for you so if you forget one time you don't scrape the nose it lifts you're coming in fast it'll start lifting sooner and it lifts in two to three seconds oh wow so if you live on a street or you have a driveway and you're you know just distracted it'll automatically it will automatically bring it up it's got to be the coolest feet when we did the reveal just and yeah I think that was one of the biggest applause lines yeah bro system kiss Corvettes and all sports cars are inherently low and so to keep that performance orientation at low center of gravity the low nose on the front for aero engineers have to struggle with that compromise so enabling the front to go up almost two inches really gets people through a lot of the the heartburn but the biggest applause line is the $60,000 I mean we knew that was gonna battle that was a shocking revelation I mean that was like because you just expect things to be yeah everything just goes up and up and up and no matter what field you're in everything costs for hotel rooms restaurants gasoline everything yeah and to get a look in a car with this level everybody says to me how do they do it for that price which you never hear in the car that's wait that's way too much in space right you just don't hear it you don't hear that it's refreshing [Music] all the media rushed up to the stage and that's the question I heard over and over how how how would you do it for 60 and it was the same thing that people are saying well you don't really be able to get one for six right that was the other thing they're gonna advertise that and but you won't be able to buy one of those yeah and for what I hear I know a few people have ordered it and the dealer took the order at the dealer Christ so I was like there's some pressure to not sort of gouge into dealer level I hope and the dealers are all independent businesses they can run it they want but we really have talked to them about not raising the price sell it for sticker that's what we intended that's what we did our business case around so we want people to get it for the price we say it costs and of course if you want to spend more we have ways to spend more there's lots of us you get to know a lot of the magazine guys and this might be one of those rumors are you here but I've heard it too many times that when they do comparisons some of the Italian exotic companies will say if there's going to be a Corvette we don't want to be compared to that because with the price differentiation even if it is faster it's not that much fat as much faster than justifier different but I tell you there's almost every high quality company in the world wants to be in this space every elite company they have a flagship a high-performance sports car right so a lot of their best engineers work on this stuff and so there are a lot of very capable of companies all right let's put the top up yeah nice thing about this cars if you're going under 30 miles an hour yeah you decide you want the top top down or top up out of my hair okay okay put it up 16 seconds and she's done Wow that's pretty amazing you've got all kinds of room all kinds of headroom - yeah I think there's actually for some big people or there's they have the seat all the way back you think it's actually a little bit more Headroom yeah I like admirable done on the coop and of course the window here yeah so that's still open yeah you can choose to have that open or closed and depend on when I lock the car walk away that'll go up and lock correct you have to manually just like any car you up do oh okay close the windows close it up right it does have a feature that a lot of cars have you want to know if it will automatically lock and fold the mirrors in things like yeah it's very comfortable yeah not cramped at all and quiet and smooth and people are gonna be surprised I think when they get it and people have the idea of old Corvettes is being kind of harsh hard to live with and people have the idea of an exotic being on a hot car door this cars cooler more comfortable than any Corvette we've ever done you think you'll sell more convertibles versus hardtops because it's now essentially a hardtop you think so because you're not asking people to sacrifice it right all the looks and the security and you don't lose any luggage room top up or top down I think so I hope so and if you look at the other people who offer attracting hard top spider versions of their cars they sell most of their cars actually that way right right but to me when I take the top off the regular c8 it's almost as openness almost but you do have that standing structure behind you that stuff that comes across the middle that changes the airflow right noisier nice quieter it just has the fairing behind your head so it is quieter is more true in open-air experience why do you like seeing the engine compartment with you know that's the trade-off yeah yeah that is the trade-off and we did look to see if it was possible to do a folding top that would leave the engine exposed it would have been a bad top and a bad little teeny window probably what I had to been a canvas top which would have looked kind of riot and cheap and otherwise very expensive-looking card my all-time favorite thing is there's no Corvette SUV that's your favorite thing is there's because I get that question all the time why don't you do a Corvette SUV I sure doesn't why don't you do it no I know well they have to do it the Corvette has been successful I think as we've stuck to our knit you know we keep focused on what we do and people say oh we've deviated from what we do it's still two passenger cars v8-powered it's the driving experience as I said before we're not experienced the 100% of the power of the c8 Corvette because this is a pre-production model that is somewhat governed I mean it's still pulling really strong but there's probably another 20 or 30% it's not in this one because it's you know it's got the what he called the experimental plate on it yeah he exam yeah experimental venom because it's given sometimes to be driven by Auto Show and boy ease up like that I've been transported around the car around the country yeah they're not doing burnouts with it but it gives you a good idea of how powerful a powerful network the trance responds it down shifts so quality you know that's what I hate about to argue birthday you know that weird kind of where is it's just literally just bang bang bang it feels like quality yeah and even the city driving just creeping around I know creep and stuff it in that it feels like a fluid torque converter is very fluid off the line no a lot of it's essentially a manual transmission with friction clutches they're they're wet friction clutches but it's very smooth off the line and the gear shifts are real smooth at low speeds and you know constantly trying to bring down the demographic is very important you know because for a while there was creeping up yeah older guys getting the young guys weren't injured in Corvette now that you've got the science and the engineering all of a sudden I see a lot of young fields like this oh yeah I think it's fantastic we didn't we didn't do it expressly for that reason but we're really really lucky that both the physics reasons to do it and the demographic reasons to do it lined up so in a way I say we had no choice we really didn't have a choice but to do this well what a thrill this has been I as I said before this is a free production model so we're not getting full impact of horsepower and a few other things but it's 99% there's no yes there this is what the car will look like this is how it will operate the so it'll sound and video it'll sound or feel and boy all those things are just right you know it it's such a leap forward suddenly the c7 just seems a little old-fashioned I have to say that because uh we're not gonna get me to say anything bad I like you sound like my front-engine car but yes you know all I can say is it feels like if your dad thank you very much playing DJ always a thrill to have the chief engineer come by that's when you know they dedicate you know when they send their top guy it's not a marketing guys not the guy with the stripes and this yeah yeah it's just great it's just great so well you are the first person to drive first person outside GM to drive a Corvette Convertible the new oh I wanted to be here for sure well I appreciate you and I have a history and doing these things and carve that so let's do it again let's do it again and watch this space folks because there's gonna be a lot more exciting stuff coming home Corvette there's an American I must say it does make me proud to know it's manufactured right here in the United State and just great so because again thank you my friend thank you and we'll see you guys next week [Music]

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 4,729,993

Rating: 4.8634381 out of 5

Keywords: Corvette, C8, mid-engine, convertible, first drive, Tadge Juechter, General Motors, GM, Z51, performance, supercar, V8, 6.2L, LT2, road test, prototype, Detroit, Bowling Green Assembly, Mark Reuss, Mary Barra, UAW, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, compares cars, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, car gear, McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, Camaro Z28, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, episode, motorcycle, ford, corvette, tour, dodge, lexus

Id: nvTzcNtaSLU

Length: 55min 58sec (3358 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 17 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/themikesem]

I understand maybe 10% of Leno's references.

[u/sanguinor40k]

Got mine on order in Zeus Bronze. Coupe though. Still can't bring myself to trust a convertible long term, by any manufacturer. But I do like that it's a hard top versus cloth.