^ Dipshit.
Should have backed it into the wall.
carANDdriver article / in depth interview:
http://www.caranddriver.com/features/2014-chevrolet-corvette-stingray-in-depth-with-the-people-who-made-it-happen-feature
The shit I found most interesting:
What should people notice looking at the car?
Kirk Bennion, Design Manager:
It starts at the front, because it’s not a bottom-breather [with a horizontal cooling air intake under the nose] anymore. We found that bottom-breathers don’t really work all that well when you start to see the speeds that our cars are seeing on tracks. Before we even started the rest of the program, we were having offline meetings about changing the CRFM [condenser/radiator/fan module] position. Instead of leaning the radiator back, we leaned it forward, taking a cue from our race team. Leaning it forward allows us to force-feed the air in, and then dump it out over the top of the hood. This enables the front-end architecture to have more downforce inherently. Now, half the air goes over the top and less than half is spilling out through the sides. That is a big win for us in moving this car to the next level.John Bednarchik, Aerodynamics Performance Engineer:
Also coming from the way the race team does it, we have coolers for the transmission and differential mounted at the rear. Each is located in a lower outboard corner, with exits in the rear fascia. The air goes in through the inlet that you can see on the top of the quarter-panel and is ducted directly to a cooler. On the driver’s side is the trans oil cooler; the passenger side is the differential cooler.Bennion:
They’re not just aesthetic things that we bolt on. The hood air extractor’s vanes are shaped and angled to manage airflow, and they tip down as they go back. Another example: Starting with the ’56 model, the Corvette always had side coves, and we can’t imagine not having those. But even there, we’ve made them functional. John and I have measured air coming through there, and it is relieving underhood pressure and lowering the Cd of the car.
Why do you need a dry-sump in the Z51 Performance package?
Juechter:
We’ve got a lot of testing under our belt and we know we’re going to be under 4.0 seconds, 0 to 60. We’ve got improved braking distances, with the base car approaching today’s Z06, and more than 1.0 g in cornering. There’s a lot of g-loading, so a top-flight lubrication system is required.John Rydzewski, Assistant Chief Engineer, Small-Block Engines:
We built a tilt-rig up in Pontiac that’s kind of wild to watch. It creates the same g-loadings you get on a track by tilting the engine side to side and forward and back, all while it’s turning at 6600 rpm. We use a variable-displacement oil pump because a lot of the engine’s technology [AFM, variable valve timing, etc.] runs on hydraulics. There’s more oil flow through the engine and we want to minimize variation in the pressure. The usual pump might flow too much at high speed, too little, maybe, at low revs with a high cornering load. The new engine has a vane pump, not new technology, but it maintains the same pressure whether the oil is cold and thick or hot and less viscous. There’s feedback from the main bearing cap, so it knows exactly what the number-one main bearing is reading and adjusts to maintain that pressure.
How did you manage to keep the 50/50 weight balance?
Bennion:
The new engine is a little longer, with the variable-valve-timing hardware at the front, which is why the wheelbase is an inch longer. These cars have always been considered by chassis guys to be front/mid-engine cars and now the engine is fully behind the front axle. Moving the coolers and the battery to the back helps.Juechter:
We’re actually better than 50/50, we’re a little rear-biased, getting closer to the race car’s 48/52 front-rear balance.
What’s with your devotion to the transverse leaf springs?
Bailey:
We try not to say leaf. It makes people think of pickup trucks, and it’s not like that at all. It’s an engineered composite spring. It’s got a low CG [center of gravity], it’s light, it provides some anti-roll contribution, and it packages well, enabling a low hoodline. We know there are a lot of aftermarket suppliers for coil-overs for our car, but there’s a difference between that and an actual, true production car when it runs through a validation process.
Variable effort for the steering is something the driver selects?
Juechter:
It’s one of up to 12 variables, so we decided to integrate these controls with the Driver Mode Selector on the console. You choose the mode: weather for snow or rain, eco that will maximize use of AFM, sport for fast road driving, and a setup for track use.
ALLOY THERE: Stiffer than today’s steel hydroformed rails, C7’s frame joins aluminum extrusions (A) engineered to absorb crash energy; castings (B) for firm, precise suspension and steering mounts; and hydroformed tubes (C) for weight savings.
I like it!
I saw the new vette up close at the Toronto auto show, hideous in my opinion, especially the exhaust, a little overkill
Oh my lord. That should never be released…
Also announced, there will be a level under the stingray that will be sub $50k
I personally think this is fucking awesome
Bringing back the Pontiac Grand Prix Aerocoupe?
lol:
… the wheels are spinning the wrong frickin’ way on the passenger side!
I suspect that computer assisted rendering makes left/right directional wheels an easier cost to stomach, but The General still forks over big cash for extra work on the production/inventory management side. But these (according to Corvetteblogger) are optional, not part of the appealing, easy-to-market base price.
So what is the incremental cost for two different castings? An extra $50 per car, MSRP? Even if it was quadruple, don’t you think Corvette buyers–folks that gladly pay extra for Museum delivery–would fork that cheddar over in…wait for it…a heartbeat?
^ LoL They have made plenty of directional wheels. Some idiot probably just ordered the wrong stuff. If I was in charge of a car line heads would roll for this.
Yeah I don’t like aero coupes.
I’d rock that thing in a heart beat.
saw about 8 of the coupes up in the mountains yesterday outside san diego, looked really good.
The base MSRP for the 450-horsepower Stingray Coupe will be $51,995, while the Stingray Convertible will go for $56,995 (*both prices include a $995 destination fee). This means that the price increase from 2013 to 2014 is just $1,400 for the coupe and $2,395 for the convertible
Not too bad really
The sports car’s 6.2-liter V8 can crank out up to 460 horsepower at 6,000 rpm and 465 pound-feet of torque at 4,000 rpm. Most of the torque, up to 316 lb-ft, is available from just 1,000 rpm, and wide open the LT1 V8 produces just 5 lb-ft less than the outgoing LS7 in the Z06.
