SanibelSpeed

I asked my Porsche salesman if I could take a factory tour and see my car during production but was told that's not possible. But to be able to actually take an active role in the engine assembly is truly awesome! Hats off to Corvette.

Noah Fect

Neat. $6000 to personally install and inspect my Z06's rocker-arm assemblies (the Corvette world's answer to Porsche's IMS debacle) sounds like a bargain.

In all seriousness, that is really cool of them, and I'd definitely get that option if I were buying one.

Suzy991

I don't know what to say... Out of words for the first time in my life.

Suzy991

GSIRM3

There are plenty of buyers that both cars appeal to.

SanibelSpeed

Indeed: 1.5 million Corvettes and 500,000 911s in the past 50 years.

Carrera GT

That's a lot of Vettes. Is this a published number by GM or a market statistics report from a third party? I just heard some "claims" about Mercedes sales in the US versus GM sales and I'm looking for a reference site to verify current sales, month over month for the last year or so at least.

Carrera GT

Hot Rod mag has a better written "first drive" review.
http://www.hotrod.com/featuredvehicl...#ixzz2aIHhqO8U
Some comments from Peter Brock (penned early Vette body) and comments on no-lift-upshift ... could go some way to negating the PDK advantage.

SanibelSpeed

AutoWeek 6/28/2013:

"With about 1.5 million Corvettes being produced since 1953, the American sports car is still going strong."

http://www.autoweek.com/article/2013...#ixzz2aM9eFb1b

SanibelSpeed

Excellent article. Thanks for sharing.

kosmo

Raised ctr console on a rear engined car i dislike

kosmo

Interesting read . The TTS sounds interesting. I never heard of such a system.
Im sure P will offer it next year - PTTS for $4995

JohnnyBahamas

Another review by driving dynamics reviewers who do not mention driving dynamics but focus heavily on electronic gizmos.

How is the steering feel? Do you get an idea about what the contact patches are doing? Does it shift weight like a sports car? Does it feel balanced or does it feel like a shopping cart? Are the peddles in the right place to heel/toe? Etc., etc., etc..

I hope I'm reading too much into the lack of this information but, right now, it is disconcerting as heck.

As a first run 2006 C6 Z06 purchaser, sight unseen foolishly, who was stunned by that car's lack of most everything but awesome speed (this was when only Goodyear made run flats for the Z06) with each of these reviews on the new Corvette I hear warnings in the silence.

Carrera GT

Early days. These are "first drive" reviews. A press event. Show up on day one, get the press kit and the embargo date. Day two, drive around a bit, try not to miss your flight back, pocket your per diem and avoid eating junk food at the airport. : ) They want to milk this Stingray (possible?) for months and months of articles. I'm just keen to have Motor Trend get Randy Pobst in the thing, let him fang around Laguna and give whatever candid insight he can within the limits of propriety. It will do 1:35's, match or better the 12C and RS 3.8/4.0 on Sport Cup ZP's and that's interesting, but it will be reading between the lines and seeing the car in skilled hands that will mean something.

After reading the flurry of reviews and watching the videos this week, no two ways about it, the Stingray is head and shoulders above the "Can I have a lot of fun, challenge my driving skills, and not get bored with this car at the track in the first day or two" bar. For reference: the 991S is not above that bar.

To their credit, they didn't try to pontificate with the sum knowledge of two calendar days and maybe 12 hours with the car. Hot Rod mag writers wear their hearts on their sleeves; their opening remarks set the tone of their "first drive" review:

For the purposes of a chance passerby on Rennlist, I think it's interesting to read from the perspective of the hot rod driver; and it was difficult to find even one articulate review. They seem to be positively sentient. : )

Carrera GT

It's a bit like the "boost" gauge of the 993 turbo -- not actually boost pressure, just an "interpolation" of what it "should" have been developing over the last for revolutions based on other sensors.

I can certainly see Porsche putting this on as a way to ask for another dollar. No doubt.

But can it possibly be anything more than a gizmo gimmick?

I think "no, but yes." "No," it's almost certainly not anything more than a blinking light on the dash for Corvette to "gee whiz" it with the GTR crowd. GM had a stated objective to exceed expectations for technology content. And,"Yes," if they really threw some bright engineers at it and really dived deep into R&D with a lot of real world proving and calibration, yes, it could work.

Unless that temp sensor on the TPMS sensor has depth probes inserted into the carcass of the tire, it's reading only tire air temperature. That's a combination of wheel temperature (transferred from brakes and hub, as well as tire) and it's a normalized value that's the sum of the mass of the air and the sum of the components (all of the interior surface of the tire, the wheel communicated by the spokes from the hub, the wheel barrel from brake caliper and rotor radiated heat and it would be thrown off by things like raising and lowering tire pressure through the valve, which would variously boil or freeze for a while as air either compressed or expanded through it.) So traction management and e-diff are getting the newspaper from last Monday and trying to play tennis with that information. I guess it's saying that after a bit of a drive, tires are probably good. If it's really chilly out and you've just gotten going, or it's raining, tires are probably a bit iffy.

I want to know a lot more about how GM made this more than a gimmick to give someone another thing to look at on the dash and go "wow" in blissful ignorance.

All that scoffing done, I think it's a brilliant idea. : ) But it must be done properly, not just an extra signal off the tpms (not to say that's not a clever bit of work, so full credit to whomever had that brainwave, I like it!) "Properly" means effectively and usefully. So, it has to have a tire temp reading that's consistent, timely and obviously correct. Maybe GM has developed this sensor to the point that it reads air temp, rim temp, air pressure, then combines that with other known vehicle data, say a transmission sensor and diff cooler temp, with ambient air temp and some data points out of the brake history (pressure, duration, speed before/during/after) then says "the tires are near enough to operating temp" or simply too hot, or too cold. For me, that's about as good as I get even when probing in/mid/out on all four during a hot pit stop -- other than alignment decisions -- so if they've got that and made it efficacious, then bravo. Obviously with GM resources, you can put on real time probes and calibrate the thing for a specific set of tires (I think it's on run-flats necessarily) and dial it in for most conditions. To set lower goals, if it can do an "out lap, hot lap, in-lap" or it can handle a 30 minute sprint, under very controlled conditions, it would be a useful tool.

It was only two weeks ago that Winding Road published a great (great) piece on the basics of tire temps. This is the kind of mythbuster stuff that leads to some heated (sorry) debates in the paddock, usually involving a couple of guys with not a shred of fact between the lot of them.

http://www.windingroad.com/articles/...y-to-the-grid/

In short, what you might think heats a tire is wrong, and what's really happening where the rubber literally meets the road is a complex play of technologies from chemistry and physics classes that you dozed through while daydreaming of driving cars that rely upon aforementioned sciences. : )

MJBird993

I'm not going to read through 187 pages of posts to make sure that this hasn't already been said, but:

I bought a C6 Corvette a few years ago from a dealer in New Hampshire (I live in NC). He was professional, gave me the best price in the country and it was totally pain-free. That particular car was ordered, so it was shipped directly to a local dealer here, which only cost me a few extra hundred bucks.

Now the Corvette is the most bang for your buck that you can get in a sports car, but it still ain't no Porsche. If all you care about is out-of-pocket money and 0-60 times, then that's the car for you. Or if you simply cannot afford (or choose not to spend a ridiculous amount of money on) a 911, then the new Corvette is probably a good alternative.

I wouldn't buy a first year GM product though. They are worlds better than they used to be, but a first year product from anyone is likely going to have issues.

PM me if you want contact information for the dealership if you decide to order or buy one off of the lot.