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PART 2A:
Index of topics:
Weekly Newsletter – Contents
PART 1:
1) 2004 C5 Interesting Facts
2) 2005 Corvette Pricing, Color Combinations Available, Color Change
3) 2005 Corvette Color Change
PART 2A:
4) 2005 Production Dates – UPDATED
5) The latest C6 News, Talking With Tadge Juechter, Corvette Assistant Chief Designer
PART 2B:
5) The latest C6 News – Continued from PART 2A
PART 3A:
6) 2005 Corvette Accessories - New
7) 2005 Corvette Pre-Delivery Process - New
PART 3B:
8) 2004 Corvette Recall
PART 4A:
9) 2005 SSR
10) Parts Department Offerings
PART 4B:
11) GM Rebates/Special Finance Rates - UPDATED
PART 5:
12) GMPP Details, MajorGuard – UPDATED
13) GM Employee and Supplier Eligibility - UPDATED
14) Weekly Constraint/Production News – NEW
4) 2005 Production Dates - UPDATED
The plant is on track with 2005 Corvettes production having started on July 26, 2004. Dealers have already consensed to and approved order requests for startup production.
Dealers were able to begin consense for 2005 Corvettes on June 4, 2004 with a consensus closing date of June 10, 2004 for production in August.
Dealers were able to consense for 2005 Corvettes again on July 16, 2004 thru July 22, 2004 for production in September.
Dealers began consensing for production in October on August 6, 2004
2005 Corvette allocations approved on June 11 will be produced as follows:
August 2 thru August 22, 2004
2005 Corvette allocations approved on July 23 will be produced as follows:
August 23 thru September 19, 2004
2005 Corvette allocations approved on August 13 will be produced as follows:
September 20 thru October 17, 2004
Dealers will earn allocations for 2005 production based on the dealer’s actual Corvette sales May 1, 2003 thru April 30, 2004.
5) The latest C6 News, Talking With Tadge Juechter, Corvette Assistant Chief Designer
Talking With Tadge Juechter, Assistant Chief Engineer
The following is an edited transcript of a recent interview with Tadge Juechter, assistant chief engineer for the Corvette.
CL: Do you think you've exceeded customer expectations in regard to the performance package and the engine of the 2005 Corvette?
TJ: I think people are going to be stunned -- not only in the absolute level of performance, but the way the car goes about it. The car has an ease to it -- a real elasticity to the powertrain where it feels like the car’s a lot lighter than it is. The engine is very "torquey," and goes about its business in a very unstressed way. The engine feels very refined, very sophisticated and it slingshots the car with very little prompting from the driver.
CL: What is behind the improved performance numbers for Corvette 2005?
TJ: The challenge we faced was to bring the Z06 level of performance to the base Coupe and Convertible. That’s what customers had been asking for since we brought out the Z06. They love the 400-horsepower engine, but they wish they could get it in an open roof configuration, either with the removable hardtop or the convertible. There’s a reason no other manufacturer has a 400- horsepower car that’s not considered a gas guzzler by the U.S. government. That's because it's very difficult to achieve that kind of performance level and not consume a lot of fuel. We brought out the first non-gas-guzzler 400-horsepower car in 2002 with the Z06 -- a car with only a manual transmission and limited option content. One of the things we wanted to do right from the start was to determine how we could get that kind of performance -- 400 horsepower -- in a car that had all the options that people expect plus some new ones, put it in both the Coupe and the Convertible body styles and offer it with an automatic transmission. Again, we brought out the Z06 in 2002 with 400 horsepower and to this day nobody can match that power output and not be considered a gas guzzler. We’re now bringing out the 2005 -- both the Coupe and the Convertible -- with any option combinations you want with no gas-guzzler tax and no stigma from the government about driving a guzzler.
CL: Can you please elaborate on the term "energy balance" and its relation to Corvette?
TJ: Energy balance means taking the vehicle attributes that contribute to fuel economy and performance and balancing them in such a way that you get the performance you want as well as the fuel efficiency you want. There are a great number of factors that affect fuel economy and performance. Obviously, the engine output is a substantial one. But the engine efficiency also contributes greatly to the fuel economy. Then the rest of the car -- the aerodynamic drag of the car, the frontal area of the car, chassis losses, which means rolling resistance both in the driveline and the tires -- all contribute very importantly to the fuel economy. Things like tires, which you normally wouldn’t think of as a big deal, are important. We had discussions with Goodyear very early to make sure they understood what we had to do in the next generation EMT tire and that it had to meet very specific rolling resistance requirements in order to enable the whole car to meet its objectives.
CL: What has been done to improve Noise, Vibration and Harshness (NVH) on the 2005 Corvette?
TJ: There are two broad categories of noise and vibration. The first one is powertrain noise and vibration. The biggest thing we did there was move to a four-point powertrain mounting system. This was initiated by the work done for the Cadillac XLR because the Cadillac needed more powertrain isolation. We elected to share that engine mounting system on the Corvette because we wanted to move the Corvette to a more premium status in terms of isolating the driver from the bad side of powertrain vibration. You want to hear the powerful performance sounds, but you don’t necessarily want to feel the engine working or feel the vibration translating through the car.
In addition to that, we wanted to reduce the noise coming from the road. If you ask a driver of a fifth-generation Corvette how you could improve the car, they’ll tell you that it's a little noisy on coarse roads. That noise makes it difficult to hear the radio without turning it up louder than people would like and conversation in the car is a little strained. So we really wanted to bring down the level of road noise substantially, which in turn also makes the car less fatiguing on a long drive. It makes the stereo sound quite a bit better when that background noise is dropped, and we focused on vocal speech frequencies around 800 hertz to make sure that the conversation within the car would occur a lot more easily. We really looked at a sum, a portion of the frequency spectrum, and tried to drive down the noise in that area.
CL: Speaking of passenger comfort, magnetic ride control seems to be a new and very impressive technology. Can you explain the technology and benefits of magnetic ride control and can you finish by explaining the two choices -- tour and sport?
TJ: Magnetic ride control was introduced with the anniversary edition two years ago. Basically, it's a computer that looks at what’s happening at all four corners of the car a thousand times per second and adjusts the damping -- in other words the applied pressure that the shock absorbers are putting on that suspension corner -- every thousandth of a second. That enables the car to understand what kind of road surface it's traveling on and to tailor the responses differently at all four corners to optimize ride quality.
As you said, there are two positions on the switch -- tour and sport. Set the switch to tour when you want to isolate yourself from the road, maximizing ride comfort. Think of it as the computer trying to keep road imperfections from the ride experience. It's almost like a magic carpet ride where you float over the road -- we call it sky hook -- where it feels as though the car is tied to the sky and not to the ground. When you throw the switch to sport, that implies that the driver wants to be more tied into the road -- he or she wants to feel what the road is doing and wants the car to follow the terrain more precisely. Sport mode also takes out some of the road imperfections to give you a decent ride quality, but it provides a sporty feel to the driving experience.
CL: How does active handling work, and what will customers notice on a vehicle with active handling?
TJ: Active handling is what we call our yaw stability system. It was introduced in 1998 and became standard in 2001. It’s been praised by the press as being the leading system of its type. It's really liked by automotive enthusiasts because it retains a very good safety net around the car while not unnecessarily intervening. We continued to refine the system during the fifth- generation time frame, and now for the 2005 Corvette we’ve retuned it entirely based on the 2005 Corvette chassis characteristic. The new tires, the new magnetic ride system and the additional suspension travel we have in this car enable us to do things we couldn’t previously do with the active handling system. Active handling senses what the driver’s asking the car to do based on steering inputs and the way that the car is actually moving. If the car starts to slide -- in other words, the driver’s asking for the car to go in a direction different than what it's actually going -- the system intervenes. It can apply brakes to any one of four corners to try to bring the car around through the braking forces to put it in the direction that the driver's really asking it to go.
CL: Talk a little about the new Z51 package.
TJ: The Z51 has been offered on Corvette for many years, going all the way back to the fourth generation. What’s new for this year is that it’s a substantially upgraded package in terms of overall performance. Traditionally, Z51 meant you got stiffer springs, bigger stabilizer bars and unique shock tuning along with some other minor coolers. It was designed to give people a sportier ride, and made the car feel a little more comfortable on the track. One thing it did not do was make the car significantly faster on the racetrack. That’s no longer true. For the 2005 Corvette, the Z51 package is a substantial upgrade. In addition to all those things I talked about on the previous package, this generation Z51 gets specific tires, and these tires combine what we learned on the Z06 supercar tire, which is not a run-flat tire. It combines that technology with the third generation of run-flat technology to create a supercar run flat. This tire has tremendously increased capability on the track. It’s a very specific tire for people who want to spend time maximizing the vehicle's performance on the track.
In addition to the tires, there is a substantial improvement in the brakes. The rotors are quite a bit larger in diameter, they're heavier and they’re cross-drilled for a performance look. They also have competition pads.
The last element of the Z51 package that’s unique for the 2005 Corvette is the manual transmission. We took the more aggressive transmission gear ratios out of the Z06 with the exception of fifth gear. We optimized fifth gear for top speed. We tooled new gear set specifically for this application that optimizes top speed at the power peak of the engine.
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Kens Weekly News-Sept 25, 2004-Part 2A
