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The new Corvette is designed to be “your everyday sports car”
TG grills the man in charge of setting up the mid-engined 'Vette
Ollie KewRVETTE STINGRAY
Meet Alex MacDonald. Official title: Vehicle Performance Manager, Chevrolet Performance Cars. In real-talk, he’s the man in charge of the team ensuring the first-ever mid-engined Corvette doesn’t upset every sports car fan from Central Park to San Francisco. No pressure.
TG questioned Alex while he was in the final stages of set-up tuning with the new ‘Vette at Germany’s Nürburgring.
Top Gear: Alex, what’s been going down at the ‘Ring with all the prototypes?
Alex MacDonald: We have a group of 20-25 people based in Milford Proving Grounds in Michigan, which takes the car from the first one you see in camouflage all the way through to production. We start in simulators in the early days but the core work is done in physical vehicles. We have NVH, ride and handling, chassis controls, and powertrain integration. It’s where the rubber meets the road, and a privilege to be here.
TG: So the car’s just about finished, right now?
AM: We’re right towards the development finish line and this is a great place to wrap up. We’re not changing steel parts on the car any more, but we’re wrapping up the half-dozen or more control modules that define the experience of the car and what the experience is going to be like for the owner. The ‘Ring and the autobahn is obviously a great place to tie that all up.
TG: How many laps do you complete during a shakedown phase like this?
AM: I think we have five track cars here and six drivers and engineers, and each driver is doing maybe 20-25 laps per day, so we’re well into the hundreds of laps as a group, and this is our second trip in the [Corvette] programme., We come early on to change metal parts like springs and stabiliser bars and come later on for calibration work.
TG: How’s it been dealing with the constant speculation? There have been a lot of rumours, perhaps more than any sports car in history. Tell us about the car’s true spec.
AM: We watched all those rumours with some pleasure! The tech spec is pretty straightforward. It’s gonna maintain a pushrod smalblock 6.2-litre LT2 designation V8. The domestic spec is 495bhp, a little more than the outgoing car. The torque curve is shifted a little higher to alter the sports car character.
It’s been such an outstanding engine for so long and it’s a huge advantage to combine that with the new mid-engine layout and exotic flavour of the chassis. We do a lot of development.
What people are picking out when they hear the engine and predict it’s a V6 or a turbo is hearing all the different steps we’re taking to try to find the character of the car.
We might have had eight or even ten exhaust systems on a car and they’ll be running around streets and on track producing a very different noise character. To see that in the media is kinda fun because we realise we’re tuning something that people are sensitive to, but in the end it’s familiar engine architecture, with new tech, like a dry sump oil system as standard.
TG: Was there any truth in the most infamous mid-engined Vette rumour: that it was twisting the chassis because it had too much power?
AM: That was a complete red herring, and a big joke around the office. Every time somebody was late to a meeting we asked if they were late because they’d twisted a frame on their way to the office [laughs]. There was no basis to that whatsoever.
The interesting thing about the hype around the car is an indicator of the passionate customer base and Corvette’s history. We feel that we’re stewards of a very important nameplate, going since 1953. 40-50k a people a year will buy this product and be so excited about it and that’s what’s so exciting for us.
TG: Why not go to a carbon tub, like a McLaren 570S?
AM: In the end we wound up with a car with significantly more torsional stiffness than the outgoing model and our competitors, and a cost ratio that works for the volumes of cars that we’re going to be producing, and a pretty extraordinary history of crash tests that have gone very well. It’s not carbon for a lot of reasons – mainly, we need to keep the car ‘approachable.’
[ there is more. I'll stop the post here. ss/SheepDog]
https://www.topgear.com/car-news/sup...day-sports-car
TG grills the man in charge of setting up the mid-engined 'Vette
Ollie KewRVETTE STINGRAY
Meet Alex MacDonald. Official title: Vehicle Performance Manager, Chevrolet Performance Cars. In real-talk, he’s the man in charge of the team ensuring the first-ever mid-engined Corvette doesn’t upset every sports car fan from Central Park to San Francisco. No pressure.
TG questioned Alex while he was in the final stages of set-up tuning with the new ‘Vette at Germany’s Nürburgring.
Top Gear: Alex, what’s been going down at the ‘Ring with all the prototypes?
Alex MacDonald: We have a group of 20-25 people based in Milford Proving Grounds in Michigan, which takes the car from the first one you see in camouflage all the way through to production. We start in simulators in the early days but the core work is done in physical vehicles. We have NVH, ride and handling, chassis controls, and powertrain integration. It’s where the rubber meets the road, and a privilege to be here.
TG: So the car’s just about finished, right now?
AM: We’re right towards the development finish line and this is a great place to wrap up. We’re not changing steel parts on the car any more, but we’re wrapping up the half-dozen or more control modules that define the experience of the car and what the experience is going to be like for the owner. The ‘Ring and the autobahn is obviously a great place to tie that all up.
TG: How many laps do you complete during a shakedown phase like this?
AM: I think we have five track cars here and six drivers and engineers, and each driver is doing maybe 20-25 laps per day, so we’re well into the hundreds of laps as a group, and this is our second trip in the [Corvette] programme., We come early on to change metal parts like springs and stabiliser bars and come later on for calibration work.
TG: How’s it been dealing with the constant speculation? There have been a lot of rumours, perhaps more than any sports car in history. Tell us about the car’s true spec.
AM: We watched all those rumours with some pleasure! The tech spec is pretty straightforward. It’s gonna maintain a pushrod smalblock 6.2-litre LT2 designation V8. The domestic spec is 495bhp, a little more than the outgoing car. The torque curve is shifted a little higher to alter the sports car character.
It’s been such an outstanding engine for so long and it’s a huge advantage to combine that with the new mid-engine layout and exotic flavour of the chassis. We do a lot of development.
What people are picking out when they hear the engine and predict it’s a V6 or a turbo is hearing all the different steps we’re taking to try to find the character of the car.
We might have had eight or even ten exhaust systems on a car and they’ll be running around streets and on track producing a very different noise character. To see that in the media is kinda fun because we realise we’re tuning something that people are sensitive to, but in the end it’s familiar engine architecture, with new tech, like a dry sump oil system as standard.
TG: Was there any truth in the most infamous mid-engined Vette rumour: that it was twisting the chassis because it had too much power?
AM: That was a complete red herring, and a big joke around the office. Every time somebody was late to a meeting we asked if they were late because they’d twisted a frame on their way to the office [laughs]. There was no basis to that whatsoever.
The interesting thing about the hype around the car is an indicator of the passionate customer base and Corvette’s history. We feel that we’re stewards of a very important nameplate, going since 1953. 40-50k a people a year will buy this product and be so excited about it and that’s what’s so exciting for us.
TG: Why not go to a carbon tub, like a McLaren 570S?
AM: In the end we wound up with a car with significantly more torsional stiffness than the outgoing model and our competitors, and a cost ratio that works for the volumes of cars that we’re going to be producing, and a pretty extraordinary history of crash tests that have gone very well. It’s not carbon for a lot of reasons – mainly, we need to keep the car ‘approachable.’
[ there is more. I'll stop the post here. ss/SheepDog]
https://www.topgear.com/car-news/sup...day-sports-car