SanibelSpeed

The Z06 will likely sell for around $76K, not $150K. When it was first introduced, dealers charged "market adjustment fees" of up to $25K due to high demand and scarcity. A 2013 Z06 base MSRP is $75,600. Maybe you're referring to the ZR1 which sells today for $112K but I would be very surprised if it came anywhere near $150K.

jmbgt3

I totally agree re PDK. While looking at the cars at Bloomington Gold I was speaking to one of the chief engineers (forget his name) and brought up availability of PDK. He said in their focus groups of Corvette owners that wasn't viewed as important. As he said that I was watching a 70+ plus year old guy weighing more than 275# trying to get out of a C7 (took him a long time). I felt like suggesting that he might want to query something other than current owners.
Having said that I am still very impressed with the car but if Corvette cannot attract younger buyers it will kill the model.

bccars

Demographics :-)

Carrera GT

That cabin design is borderline. It's "okay." But not as good as a 997. I think the 991 is a step backwards from the 997.
Then again, the cabin of Ferrari has gone backwards. I really like the 430 Scuderia. Can't fault it. Can't find a fault. But the 458 Italia and the California are both really weak. You have to throw money at the cabin to get rid of the painted silver plastic. The switches are cheap, wobbly, flimsy junk. The California relies upon elastic bands and bits of wire to fix problems with the roof design. It's a shambles.
The 2014 Range Rover "Autobiography" ( ... what the ... ?) is very nice, but still cramped and some cheap, hard plastic and things like the door pockets are squeaky, rattly, cheap and flimsy. That's $150K.
So if the Vette cabin is a bit "ordinary" I can deal with it.
I think it would be best to do something like early RS door panels, swap out the factory seats for race shells, "delete" the cabin trim, just a transmission tunnel, a shifter and pedals, nothing but seats and a bolt-in cage.

And just keep the HUD. Why doesn't Porsche put in a HUD? I guess with PDK, you don't need to know when to shift any more. Still, track data in a HUD would be sweet. Somebody should kickstarter a microprojector and HUD reflector film as a retrofit. Just pick up data from OBD or any aftermarket data acquisition product (or Harry's Lap Timer) and project it into a head-up display. Bingo.

Carrera GT

I'm going to have to quit explaining the Corvette raison d'etre or at least start getting a consulting fee from GM ...

So long as kids see and hear and smell and feel sports cars, especially the great sports cars like the 911 and the Corvette, they will always find a way to get in something with wheels and go too fast; and love it.

Around the world, as night falls on this day, millions of young minds will entertain the fantasy of one day driving the Corvette or a car like it. I'll show you the images racing around in their imagination. They are "serious" dreams. They really intend to own a Vette; or a Stang or a Viper. Some of them will even make that dream come true. Whether it's the reward of their first real job or an achievement of a career goal or a gold watch retirement gift to themselves, they'll get their dream Vette.

It won't be a new Vette, it will be the car they saw as a child. That dream car. It will be an old "classic" by the time they can afford it. They'll explain every square inch of it to anyone who'll stand around long enough to listen. They'll cast their mind back to when they were in their early teens and fell in love with motorsport and cars, way back in 2013 or was it 2015, anyway, it was just a few years before oil ran out and the whole world was caught by a surprise that took most of a century to happen.

The inevitability of exponential growth, like the fabled seeds of wheat on the squares of a chessboard, grew to such large numbers "overnight" and there was no more. In the blink of an eye. A shocking crisis; and it was all over. No more oil.

But love will find a way and motorsport is one of those thing that young people love. Whether it's a gas engine barking flames on the downshift into a challenging turn, or the ear-piercing whine of an electric turbine, history will repeat.

Adolescent boys and girls today might not have the close relationship we had with our parents, as they had with their parents; but kids today still look at the car dad drove to the track every weekend, or the car mum drove to school every day and their natural tendency to fantasize without bounds carries them away.

That's where I started ... steering a Holden HK Monaro 327 GTS while my mum kept her foot lightly on the brake ... just the power of the engine at idle would spool up the torque convertor and 1st gear would carry us up to fair pace. We were idling through the school parking lot, round and round the trees, making my own course, tempting fate at fifteen miles per hour, getting closer and closer to the limits with each lap, and my imagine was wheel to wheel racing with Jack Brabham in an F1.



I have no doubt in the future of the Corvette as a legitimate continuation of the original car (and still, the original engine design, too.) GM can show wild concepts and explore radical changes, but so long as they build a "sports car muscle car" with a V8, a manual box and rear drive, there will be future generations growing up with a dream car in mind for "one day ..."

So that brings me back to the car show. Why did that 70 year old guy willing to put himself in the driver's seat, knowing he would then struggle to get back up to his feet? Idle curiosity; or the irresistible passion of a lifelong dream?

Noah Fect

In a Ferrari?! Noooo! Say it ain't so, Joe!



Add-on OBD2 HUDs do exist (google 'aftermarket HUD') but the reviews seem mixed at best. I don't know if it's financially feasible to do it right. It would be better if Porsche developed one specifically for their cars, IMO.

Frankly, even the Vette's HUD is not that impressive. If the budget is unlimited, I would be tempted to make the whole windshield out of curved LCD panels. You'd see everything through redundant IR and visible-light cameras. You'd get better visibility at night and in bad weather, and obviously the HUD possibilities would be unlimited. As would the weight penalties and regulatory nightmares, obviously.

That, on the other hand, is just crazy talk!

sid_vicious

I for one say you've earned both the "wordsmith" title in your avatar and the consulting fee from GM. Really well written.

Carrera GT

I have one of each at present. The 991 has some advantages, but mostly, it's a step back. The generic elbow height console taking up the middle of the car is a junk idea that should have been thrown out. The 911 cabin has some signature elements like the key location and the single kneebar from door to door, and a shifter straight into the transmission tunnel. These are not things to "improve" they're things to leave perfectly well alone.

As for HUD, I like the way you think without limitations. Indeed, by now, cars shouldn't have much of a "dash" at all, it should be free, safe space to keep away from the occupants. It also shouldn't be plastics "out gassing" all kinds of solvents and industrial death potions.

Mercedes, as it does, leads the way with some nice displays in the next S class, but even that is "incremental" at best. I agree the whole of the windshield should be some sort of protection surface or optically correct transparent display panel. Years ago there was talk of micro-displays and micro-projectors replacing the whole dash. The wing mirrors would appear in peripheral vision and automatically enlarge and increase contrast and opacity as the driver's eyes turned to their location. The same with the interior rear view mirror. Important gauges would become larger as the driver did a "correct" scan. According to pilot training, a correct scan is to focus on the actual horizon while in straight and level flight, then glance instantly and directly at one gauge, then immediately return to watching "outside" and let memory serve to take a moment to digest what was seen on the gauge (be it the airspeed, vertical speed, or artificial horizon or compass, etc.) each in turn, continuously updating a mental "picture" of the gauges. Of course a fighter pilot has a better working environment and that is technology that was in use last century, so why we can't put a couple of handy things in front of a driver today, well, I think it's all to do with profit.

Mercedes has had things like distant keeping cruise control and collision avoidance, pedestrian detectors, night vision assist ... all for years and many models of cars, yet it's not even an option on a Porsche to get basic nightvision. If Porsche can charge $10K for brake rotor upgrades, why not offer a FLIR HUD?

Sheesh. I like driving in blizzards; what can I say?

Carrera GT

Right, ZR1. Sorry, I think I had a bit of an unfinished thought in that sentence. Still, the ZR1, in 3ZR pack is another $8K, plus $1500 (ish?) for the close ratio gearbox option. If you opt to build your own engine at the factory, it's maybe $130-135K for the outgoing model and it looks like about a 2% price increase evident in the Stingray. Even with California sales tax (10%) and an obscenely luxurious clicking of checkboxes on the order sheet, it will be about $150K max for the C7 ZR1. That's barely enough to get the entry level 991 GT3 and yet delivering performance that will exceed all RS variant, including a future 2RS and probably exceed anything from Ferrari and rival the F12.

I was thinking of the C7 Z06 at "half" of the 991 GT3 and the ZR1 at half of the 2RS. The C7 ZR1 could be just a phenomenal monster -- not that the C6 ZR1 isn't -- and the F12 suggests 730hp is now "in play" for production road cars with power train warranties.

I think somewhere around 750hp, road cars around 3000lb begin to exceed "human scale" performance. Some so-called hypercars will be 900 or 1000hp, but they're not to be driven, just to be owned.

It also looks like the Vette experiences about the same depreciation curve as a Porsche -- roughly 40-50% over 3 years (just browsing a few ZR1s for sale.)

Aside from the still substandard cabin trim and some of the exterior details, so far, the only thing I "want" that the Vette doesn't deliver, is redline. I like the sound of some aftermarket engine builders that promise 7000rpm, but when you're used to the advantages of 8500 and soon 9000 rpm, the idea of going back to the redline of a 90's turbo is the one sour topic. I wonder if someone could just do roller rockers, decent conrods, turn off the AFM, put a light, single mass flywheel and stout pressure plate and clutch (these are all easy modifications) in the existing LT1 and dial up the electronics to say 8000 rpm. If it would hold together and breath energetically to 8000 rpm, surely it would make a lot more power and sound pretty good, too. Ferrari does it with a 6.2 V12, surely GM can offer a "special" donk to do those sorts of revs.

bccars

Disagree. 991 interior is a huge step forward. The raised middle console and shifter placement is briljant !



Porsche Adaptive Cruise Control ?!
And those gizmos in the outgoing S-class aren't perfect. Tests have shown they don't work as advertised, and don't avoid collission.

rocklegend

The C7 appeals to a much younger audience from exterior design than say a Porsche 991. You might not like the design of the new C7 and that's fine. But, plenty love that design looks fresh looking and not boring and outdated like Porsche. The C5 to C6 was not much of a change in design exterior and interior, now with the C7 both the exterior and interior are up to par.

bccars

Oh my, vette fresh looking, 991 boring and outdated, we clearly have opposite views. And thats perfectly fine.
I'm happy with my 991. I suggest you go buy the vette and be happy too. To each his own.

To me the 991 is the high class swimsuit model, and the vette the worn out pornstar with bleached hair, facelift, way too big Botox lips and massive boobjob. Granted yours might have some tricks up her sleeve in/on the sack/track :-)
But I wouldn't want to be seen with or married to her.

Noah Fect

Wait, what? An option that lets you clock in at the factory and build your own engine? That would be insanely cool. What exactly do you mean? I've never heard of anything like that.

rocklegend

Both great cars just appeal to different buyers.

Carrera GT

It's been around since the C6 Z06 and ZR1, I think. It's quite a real experience. Your engine for your car, by serial number, is on a stand and you watch a pro put it together. You do some manual labor, some assembly, drop in some pistons, even turn the torque on some bolts here and there. I think if they decide you're not a knucklehead, they'll let you get involved to a greater extent. It's $5800. Here's the factory blurb. I'm sure there's many videos and personal posts about this experience, it looks like it's been around since '09, but Corvette is such an enormous topic, sprawling across the Web, even Google seems to have trouble with such, let's say, "scattered" contributions; It's hard to sift through the pages of blather to find one articulate person with firsthand facts.


http://www.chevrolet.com/content/dam..._eBrochure.pdf

Here's another excerpt from the PDF, only the text is a bit quirky.
Suffice to say, just as a tourist experience, if I get a Vette, I'd have to go build my own engine! : )