Tag Archives: Corvette

Vintage Corvettes with Jay Leno

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GM’s Vice-President of Design, Ed Welburn, drops by Jay Leno’s garage with four vintage Corvettes from the General Motors Heritage Center. They start with the first Corvette ever made, the 1953 with the Blue Flame inline 6. Next they move to the chairman of GM’s personal hardtop 1958 Corvette with the dual four-barrel carburetor 283 cubic inch V8. The third car they look at is the rarest Corvette in existence, the 1959 Corvette Stingray Racer. It’s a tube-frame race car that raced here in America winning some national championships. Welburn had the car restored when he became the VP of design but kept the interior original since it had a lot of history including a drive by Elvis. The last car they look at is a fully loaded split window 1963 Corvette Stingray loaded with fuel injection and knock-off wheels. The episode is a very cool look into some very special Corvettes that could only be brought to you by Jay Leno’s special relationship with GM.


Source: Jay Leno’s Garage on YouTube

The Bondurant School of High Performance Driving – Hot Rod Magazine

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The staff of Hot Rod Magazine brings us the story of their adventures taking the 2-day course at the Bondurant School of High Performance Driving. The fact that the 6 staffers have varying levels of road racing experience makes for interesting stories of where each person had some breakthroughs. After a classroom session at the start, the staffers tour the course in a van and then start working on basic skills behind the wheels of C6 Corvette Grand Sports. At first, they practiced fundamental skills like high speed lane changes, heel-toe downshifting and skid control in a Cadillac CTS that had trolleys that would lift each end of the car off the ground to make the front and rear axles lose traction. The lessons then culminated with some full fledged track racing and a timed autocross to see who could set the fastest time.


Source: Motor Trend on YouTube

2013 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 and ZR-1

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GM is rumored to be debuting the all-new 2014 C7 Chevrolet Corvette at the Detroit Auto Show in January to be on sale summer or fall 2013. To celebrate the end of the C6 dynasty, Car and Driver’s Technical Editor, Michael Austin, rounds up the best of the special editions for a fond tribute. He rounds up the 505 horsepower Z06 and the 628 horsepower ZR-1 for some exercise around the track while talking about what makes each car so special.


Source: Car and Driver on YouTube

GM Announces the LT1 – Motor Trend

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Big news out of General Motors today with the announcement of the new LT1 V8 that will be replacing the venerable LSx family of engines in the next Corvette. The 6.2 liter V8 makes 450 horsepower and 450 ft-lbs of torque and is projected to get 26 mpg in the C7 thanks to cylinder deactivation and direct injection. Interestingly enough, GM was able to improve the gas mileage by increasing the displacement, not reducing it. The larger 6.2 liter engine means a 3.1 liter V4 when the engine is running in cylinder deactivation mode. The V4 makes enough power that it can be used more often in the engine’s duty cycle which reduced the overall consumption of the engine. V8 power only when you need it. Very clever. Head over to Motor Trend’s article to read up on all of the details with pictures and dyno videos of the new engine.