jvp

..rather, it was knocked clear into the next county!

I spent 2 days at the fair grounds in Carlisle (Fri/Sat) soaking up as much of the C7 stuff as I could. I've been completely in awe of the car since I saw the reveal on YouTube in January. Utterly shocked at it's stunning beauty, is probably a good way to put it. And then over time, as I absorbed all of the technical and engineering details of the car, I became more and more interested. Unfortunately, I had to wait till this past weekend to finally see one in person.

IMHO: the wait was worth it! God what a shockingly beautiful car in person. From all angles, from all directions, and in all lighting: it is clearly a Corvette. You hear it time and time again, and it holds true for this car as with any other: pictures just don't do it justice. You really have to see one in person to finally have it all driven home.

I got to the Engineer Tent early on Friday morning and Ryan Vaughan was the first guy I spotted. Mainly because he's fairly tall, and his red baseball cap helped him stick out even easier. I spent a lot of time bending his ear about the fantastic work he did with the interior. There's no question: he's quite proud of what he's accomplished. In my opinion: he has every right to be.

Among the things he validated and shared:

• The suede used in the options has to be suede and not Alcantara, specifically due to licensing issues. The name "Alcantara" is actually a registered trademark.
• They were kicking around the idea of having the rev-matching activation button sit on top of the shift ****, under a flip-up cover. It got shot down pretty quickly due to the issues with wiring and whatnot.
• The door pockets have a felt-like material inside of them, so that anything in them won't move around or rattle.
• The bottom of the inside of the doors is made of a material that should resists scuffs a lot better than what's available in previous cars.
• Removing the need for the CD player did, in fact, free them up to do a bunch of other things. He's looking to the future and seeing a time when we stop bringing music on a "thing" with us at all. He's probably right.
• Folks that are in shape will find the Competition seats perfectly comfortable in his opinion. Folks that are larger around will not, and should consider the GT seats.

Each of the GM engineers on station had a C7 they'd driven in from MI and other places. That's where all of the display units came from. The only seats available in these units were the GT seats. And the first thing I noticed when sitting into them was how supportive they are. Even for a "comfortable" seat, it has a lot of bolster support. I sank right into the seat back, and didn't move. Incredibly impressive.

Further: no more floppy seat backs! The mechanical latch that operates the seat back actually locks the back in place, either fully back or fully forward. In either position, the seat back is solid and does not move. At all.

GM had one Competition seat on display as part of their rolling chassis. They specifically requested that people stay out of that seat because of all of the bare aluminum surrounding it; they didn't want anyone getting hurt. Ryan and other engineers assured me that the Comp seat on display was not the final version anyway, so it made no sense to let people sit in it. That said, its side bolstering is significant. Again, if you're on the larger side, skip it. You won't like it. Smaller folks won't have an issue at all, specially since it's still fully adjustable.

Every hour on the hour in the Engineer Tent, another engineer would get up and do a quick 5 minute blurb about his or her responsibility and then do a quick 5 minute Q&A. I've seen this in recordings of other presentations (like at the NCM) and it still makes me laugh at the utter stupidity of some folks. For instance: the validation engineer gets up and talks about all of the systems he has work with and perform validation tests on. His area of expertise: clearly vehicular validation. What kinds of questions does he get asked from the peanut gallery? "When does the line start?" "Where's the convertible?" Things he has no control over, and more than likely no view into.

That wasn't the only example. While hanging around with Ryan, he too was asked performance questions, fuel mileage questions, exterior styling questions, etc.

Duh.

I also got to spend 15-20 minutes bending Kirk Benion's ear. Like Ryan, he's very proud of what he's accomplished with his part of the Corvette. When asked what he's happiest or most proud of: the fact that it is a new design, but it still tells you it's a Corvette. You won't mistake this for another car when you see one on the road. Coming at you, along side of you, or driving away from you.

One interesting point he brought up that no one's covered yet: when the main beam on the bi-Xenons is activated, it's insanely bright in his opinion. Folks will need to be excessively careful not to blind on-coming drivers with them. Huh... main beams that actually work right. Go fig!

Tadge, Kirk, Ryan, and Harlan did a ~1 hour presentation on both Friday and Saturday afternoons at 2PM. It was the same preso both days, but I attended them both. Afterward, the engineers were bum-rushed so that folks could get autographs and have their questions answered without shouting them down from the grand stands. After Saturday's presentation, I overheard Tadge explain, once again, why the rear is shaped the way it is. It was kind of amusing how it unfolded...

A woman with something of a scowl on her face approached him and said, "I heard that you explained yesterday why you ruined the rear end of the Corvette, and I was wondering if you'd tell me that story?" Nice set up. Clearly she approached the topic with an open mind and was truly curious about the reasons for the change.

Tadge explained (if you've studied up on aero, this'll bore you) - A lot of it had to do with the cooling requirements for the diff and transmission. Since they decided to put the heat exchangers in the rear of the car, they needed air flow through the rear quarter panels and out... somewhere. But out where? As it turns out, a car creates a vacuum right behind itself as it's driving down the road. And in fact, the vacuum is most strong right along the outer edges of the rear end of the car. Given that bit of aerodynamic information, it makes sense to allow the cooling air that's sucked in through the quarter panels to exit out right along the side edges of the rear of the car. In other words: right along side of the tail lights.

Once the decision was made to have the cooling configured like that, Kirk and team tried to work it in with round tail lights. It looked like a mess, pure and simple. As he described it: the rear end looked like it was polka-dotted. It just couldn't work right.

Whether he convinced her or not, I'm sure I'll never know. But what a saint he was for fielding the question like he did.

I've liked every new generation of Corvette since I started driving them, and this one is no different. It has a presence to it, just sitting there parked. The engineering under the covers is stunning and spectacular, and I'm quite sure the folks that start buying these up will be exceptionally happy. As for me, I'll be waiting for... whatever. My ZR1 is still a monster, but if they produce a C7 that can match or beat it, I'm all in. No questions asked!

TRAKCAR

Thanks posting.
Great read.

You have to feel for these guys to put up with crowds and respect the time they are willing to spend with"us".

These are not marketing guys after all. Engineers..

CJJ

Great great story thanks!

JudgeNjury

Thank you for sharing your experiences and insights..

I believe the entire corvette team are to be admired for their fine efforts. I for one am an avid corvette enthusiast and love what has been accomplished and I am also grateful I can chose a 1LT with z51, MRC and NPP for 58 grand..

Its an amazing car at an affordable price.

Bill17601

Curious about your title" not knocked out of the park". I read your report and was totally impressed. Your observations are well thought out and expressed. After reading I thought , " what wasn't knocked out of the park" Until Friday I was conservatively excited. After sitting in the C7 and reading what you wrote I am very excited about my new C7.

Thank you..
Bill

NSC5

Great info, this is the sort of post that really makes this forum worthwhile.

The only downside is now I am thinking maybe the competition seats are something to consider Thanks for the additional information about them.

khoeysr

Great stuff. Thanks.

VETJAZZ

Blancpain

That was a great writeup! Whew, I was worried about that seat flop in this generation too. Nothing says "cheap" when the seat flops around during hard breaking.

rcooper

Wonderful post! I enjoyed the read very much. Thank you for your insights. I wish all post on the forum were this good.

jvp

It's a baseball reference, and I tried to clarify what I meant in the first sentence of the post. Sorry if it was confusing.

Sin City

It's not real suede. Its still artificial.

"Real" suede is leather. Suede gets dirty too easily and is too difficult to clean.

The report you gave is awesome -- everyday we learn new tidbits.

KBow_Photo

I agree, they had 6 or so at the Road America ALMS/GA weekend and they looked spectacular. I got to sit in one, im a big guy, 6'2, 290 and I loved the way it fit me, with GT seats.

GOLD72

Great report. Thanks for sharing.

VRMMMM

Thanks for taking the time to post this. Well done sir.

mpuzach

This is one of the best posts I've read here in a long time. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and experiences.

tractman

Great write up....I agree with everything you said. Thanks for taking the time to write and post.

george vee

Nice write up. I love the rear look and now I know why they did it this way.

jvp

Here are some bits and pieces that slipped my mind while I was putting the original post together.

My contact at GM gave me a quick walk around the car. A specific question I had for him: chassis welds. When the C5's hydroformed rails were created, one of the many benefits of them was that: with no welds, there would be fewer potential weakness points and places where chassis squeaks and groans could come from. How did they address that with the C7's multi-piece chassis? His answer: laser welding, metal adhesive, and other attachment tech (like bolts, rivets, etc). He note that they put the chassis through a brutal test to the point of failure, which is far more than a car would really see in its life time. The C7's chassis has, thus far, outlasted even the C6's steel one in said tests.

I asked him to explain the tech behind the pedestrian protection (PedPro) fangs on the front of the car. Basically: the sides of the front have to have a 30º (or greater) angle from the furthest point in the front of the car. The C7's fangs are slightly greater than 30º. The idea is that the person's legs are swept away from the car, and the person then lands on the hood. To soften the blow of landing on the hood, GM added collapsible hood supports in the engine bay. These PedPro laws are coming out of Europe, and GM wants to sell the car there, obviously. They assume that our gov't will start adopting the same (silly?) laws, therefore the car is protected for both markets.

Suspension tech: They're still using those accursed eccentric bolts on the lower control arms to help with camber adjustments. I actually didn't expect them to do anything else, because eccentrics do allow easy adjustments by any alignment person. They're just a pain in the *** for those of us that track our cars, specially if they come loose and the car re-aligns itself. Based on what I saw, though, it should be relatively easy for any of the aftermarket folks to whip up a camber plate kit like they have for previous gen cars.

More suspension tech: the sway bar mounting brackets are actually part of the cradle. Usually, a sway bar attaches to the cradle with a U-shaped brackets that holds it in place. With the C7, the cradle is actually sunken in a bit where the sways mount, allowing the bars to sit closer to (actually, inside) the cradle. It's hard to describe properly, but once you see it, it'll click. It means the sways will have a much more solid connection to the car.

A closer examination of all of the places where suspension pieces mount to the chassis shows a much more robust system. A lot of the engineers who were driving the car were basically saying the same thing: driving the car just feels different. It's immediately noticeable that the car is way more solid than the C6 is. The work Mike Bailey, et al did on those mounting points is the reason for that. With the points being thicker and tougher, suspension deflection will be significantly reduced.

The exhaust note was demonstrated a few times, while the engineer at the wheel changed the driver mode. As noted in a few pieces of literature, in Track mode, the NPP flaps are all open. Harlan pointed out during the afternoon presentation, "No more pulling a fuse to get the louder exhaust." All you have to do is dial it up.

More interior bits: As I mentioned previously, I found the GT seats to be very comfortable and supportive. I'm a reasonably thin person, so it was easy to get comfortable in them. The cabin is definitely a lot more cozy-feeling than the C5 and C6 cars. That's not to say it's small, it just feels that way. Everything is way easy to grab, activate, touch, turn on or off, etc. It's clear they tried to build the cabin around the driver, making the passenger a second class citizen. And IMHO: that's exactly as it should be.

When the car is locked, the glove box and the radio panel both lock. The center console does not. As has been discussed previously, the car does have an intrusion detection system if you leave the roof off (or the top down on a 'vert). If something breaks the plane of the windshield's top frame, it'll set the alarm off. That might be interesting, and it might get annoying; not sure about that one yet.

Some other unofficial observations and thoughts:

• There's a LOT of room up front. The cavity that the radiator is sitting in has a bunch more room in front of it. And behind it. I know we've seen spy photos of a supercharged LT1, but even if we hadn't: it's clear they've package-protected the car for... something else. There's way more room than there is under the C6's hood, no questions asked.
• I can see a time when AFM becomes the default mode on the manuals. I'll bet that in coming years, GM will change the programming such that in Weather, Eco, and Touring mode, the AFM is on when you shift into 7th and start cruising. It'll be more aggressive in the Eco mode, but available on the other 2. I have no inside knowledge of that, it's just a prediction. Were I them, I'd certainly do that. It wouldn't hurt anything.

If I think of anything else, I'll add more to this thread.

NoOne

I realize no one here wants to hear any criticism at all thinking the Corvette is the best thing on 4 wheels...but...

Now that the new interior luster has worn off, yes its a massive improvement over the C6.

There are 2 items which look cheap. The surface materials. The leather is thin and I bet will shine up like glass in a year of ownership.

The Napa leather hardly looks/feels any different at all. The Brownstone seems to suffer the least from it.

It was my biggest disappointment in the entire car. I sat in a '14 Impala and the leather material quality was much higher. It is not so much the look but the long term durability.

Second is the IP. Plastic or CF it just doesn't look like a higher quality piece.

Still cars are built to as close to a list of project goals as cheaply as possible. So the IP thing is not a big deal but at least call it what it is.

The seats though even though they are better, the surfaces are dirt cheap. 3LT is a waste of money IMO and you'd be better off taking your money and going after market which is what I plan on doing.

I'll bet this view will be shared once people get cars in hand.