Chevrolet Corvette documentary: Developing the C8 mid-engine
Transcript[MUSIC PLAYING]
MICHAEL PETRUCCI: This is a once in a lifetime chance. The expectation is so high for this car. And the excitement level is so high for this car. A Corvette has to be a very good Grand Touring vehicle. You have to be able to go get groceries at the grocery store and then go conquer the Nurburgring as well.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
KEN MORRIS: We dreamed about it for years. But I would say, 30 years ago, no one in a million years would have dreamed about us developing this at the Nurburgring. Being at the Nurburgring is the toughest test for a vehicle, period. And the reason for that is we have all sorts of events during one lap.
STEVE PADILLA: So one lap with this, you're going to reach the top speed of the vehicle. You're going to reach maximum [INAUDIBLE] acceleration and very high speeds.
BRIAN WALLACE: I think it's something like 15 corners on this track. Your max lap acceleration at over 90 miles an hour, and of those 15, 12 from are over 120. You can't find in North America.
KEN MORRIS: If the car is just slightly not dialed in, it exacerbates it tremendously here. It's a small problem on normal tracks or on a highway. It seems like a big problem here. I mean, and it's good for development engineers because it points out very clearly, very quickly this is something we need to improve.
- Friday, what else do we have to throw on the pile?
OLIVER GAVIN: But also wanted to see if I could get that same steering with [INAUDIBLE]. [INAUDIBLE] just to see exactly what happened.
KEN MORRIS: So you were turning the corner, and the entire time you were staying away from center in the corner, you had higher effort than you expected?
OLIVER GAVIN: Rather than being linear, it was just it was sort of increasing and then dropping off. It fell unusual and didn't feel as it had. And it was like I had confused the car somehow.
- Which run [INAUDIBLE]?
OLIVER GAVIN: This was my first run on the [INAUDIBLE]. When you look at the group of guys who have come here, it's a great team of people who've all sort of coming together. And we've all got this one goal of getting that car better, getting it faster here on the racetrack at the Nurburgring.
KEN MORRIS: We bring it to the Nurburgring because it exercises everything from a track perspective. But we also take the cars on the Autobahn while we're here because we want it to be very comfortable. At any speed on the Autobahn, we want it to be very comfortable on the kind of roads that you see in Europe.
I was just saying Brian, I did a Z51 versus the C8 here on the country roads. And so some of the roads that are windy, and really quick, and I mean I loved it on the track and everything yesterday. But that'll jump out at anybody that drives a car anywhere. You don't have to be on rubber.
- Yeah. We're quickly learning we don't have to look backwards anymore.
MICHAEL PETRUCCI: Prior generation Corvettes with front engine have achieved such high levels of performance. And we feel like we've gotten to where physics demand us to move to the new architecture. And we're seeing the results with the mid-engine in what we're able to achieve in the car.
KEN MORRIS: It behaves exactly like we wanted a mid-engine car to behave. It's just fundamentally different how it changes direction versus the front wheel drive cars that we have.
STEVE PADILLA: The location of the center of gravity is different. So your perception of how the car rotates and translates is different. You've got a lot more weight in the back now. So you can start to use a lot more of the acceleration. You can ramp up some of the engine parameters to get more torque to the ground.
BRIAN WALLACE: From mid corner to corner, actually you're able to apply much more throttle than your front engine Corvette where the balance is 50-50 as opposed to 60-40.
CHRIS BARBER: The way that this car gets off corners, how it accelerates when you get on the throttle and shift the load onto the rear, it's just it's amazingly improved over anything we've done before.
KEN MORRIS: It's so much easier to place in the corners and the precision of where you can put the car is different.
TADGE JUECHTER: When you're sitting on the center of gravity of a car, the car is rotating about you. You're not sitting out in the periphery and the car rotates about a point distant from you. Because ultimately, the Corvette is about providing a driving experience. And so we're trying to take that to the next level.
OLIVER GAVIN: To me, the driving experience is excellent. The way that you-- the feedback you're getting from both ends of the car, the way that the car is driving into the corner, why the car is turning around you, you feel like you are the focal point inside the vehicle, which there's definitely been a unique characteristic about driving every Corvette, whether that's been a C5, a C6, a C7. Now this mid-engine car is really quite a step change. But I feel that they've really nailed it.
They've nailed the concept and the feel of the car particularly on track. And that's really where my experience is.
KEN MORRIS: I think people will see the benefits of why we moved to mid-engine very quickly when they drive the car.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MICHAEL PETRUCCI: There's a lot more technology in the car than we've ever had in a Corvette. The development of that technology and how everything works together and integrates to enhance that driver experience, that's really what the team's kind of focused. ELSD development, steering, ABS, transmission, engine team members, everything the driver experiences, feels, touches, is affected. And we're able to tune all of those things on the fly to enhance that driver experience.
ALEX MACDONALD: The approach was to get everybody together at the track, which typically our run handling group, and our controls group, and our energy group sort of doing each of their own thing. And then we would come together and put the car back together. With this car, we're all at the track at the same time.
- So that change has been in for a little bit because I don't think you guys have updated it. OK. OK.
- Because you're getting a lot of, like, low decel. So we just crank that guy up.
CHRIS BARBER: Yeah, we had the opposite where that situation was actually under braked because it was holding it [INAUDIBLE].
- Right.
TADGE JUECHTER: The team synergy using kind of different parameters and new ideas, new technology, and that's really part of the teamwork. That's part of the chemistry that makes things happen. Everything is integrated. Everything is so tightly packaged. You can't move one thing in the inside of the car without affecting a whole bunch of other things.
ALEX MACDONALD: Those people sharing ideas about all the different technologies we have on the car, and how they can all come together, and every time you get in the car it was a little bit better. It was a big data to step back from that and say, OK, we're there. And now we've got this bandwidth we can work in to get the car just right.
CHRIS BARBER: There's so many components, the integration level, the level of detail where traction control is interacting with the transmission, with the suspension, it's coming together with such smoothness and refinement that I think it's unlike anything else we've done.
KEN MORRIS: This team is one of the most high powered teams I think we've ever had during development of a vehicle. So congrats to you guys. A brand new transmission, a mid-engine new architecture, and for all those things to come together and be able to have that proof of the pudding at the hardest track in the whole world yesterday, says a lot about the whole team and how hard you guys have worked to get to this point.
MICHAEL PETRUCCI: All the work that we're doing right now is very fine tuning to make sure that at that very edge of the envelope, the car is very well refined, very drivable. So we are almost done.
BRIAN WALLACE: After the first few days here, it's kind of become clear to me that there's no question the C8 is going to be a revolutionary jump from the C7. It's going to open a lot of people's eyes on how well General Motors can make a exotic sports car and actually perform at a extremely high level. There's no question in my mind. This car is not evolutionary. It's revolutionary. And you only get one chance to do it right.
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