2020 Corvette C8 | Knock Off Super Car?

The

corvette

has a long history full of triumphs and failures. He has been a working class hero to millions in the era of spec sheet racing and Internet clickbait. The

2020

. The C8 is now a mid-engine reboot of an iconic. sports car is the vet a

super

car or just another imitation wow making a c8

corvette

video is complicated this would not be possible without the help of autobahn country club in joliet illinois extreme experience in chicago and omaze.com if you are even remotely interested in owning A

2020

Chevrolet C8 Corvette with a Z51 package may be hard to come by, but you may have a better chance of winning one by visiting Omaze.com.

Savage geese. Part of his donation will help fund the emergency services department at UCLA Medical Center, which he helped. to save the life of omaze founder and donut media editor in chief now visit omaze.com again to potentially win the z51 chevrolet corvette c8 package enjoy the video the 2020 corvette c8 now if you come from a c7 like me, this cabin will will leave you speechless. Hell, if you're coming from any car, this cabin will blow you away. It is extremely impressive. GM has reached the top of the mountain in many ways. This is the best.

Interior that they have done in the last 30 years. Now let's talk about the engineering before getting into the ergonomics and electronics. So what GM has achieved with the C8 is that they have increased the cabin size compared to the C7. translates directly to the end user - you now have an extra inch of legroom and an extra nine-degree recline angle, so it's no pun intended to broaden the purchasing demographic of who can afford this vehicle when There is talk about the interior electronics of the C8, it is worth it once. Again I mention that they have effectively lowered the entire belt line of this vehicle, dramatically increasing outward/forward visibility;

However, due to the giant V8 engine sitting back there, you don't have much visibility to the rear, so what have they done to remedy that? The 2LT trim levels and above have added a digital backup camera, the diagonal dash digital display in front of you can still be configured based on the driving mode you're in, and you still have a head-up display. Both have been updated as you expect to have a higher resolution and the seats react quicker when talking about interior comfort, they are a big step up from what you found in the c7, these are the gt2 seats so they are the equivalent of the touring seats of the previous model. generation car and they are a dramatic improvement, they still have heating and cooling, but they hold you up much better, they don't have weird lumps and they don't break down after long trips, so with that, let's head to the shop. and I talk turkey about the technical aspect of this vehicle under the corvette c8 and from someone who is not a corvette person and I know a lot of people are not.

This is such a big difference, this is a brand new car so Jack comes from a c7. on the c8 tell me what they tried to do here what was the mission for doing this, so the design goals of this car were completely different than this c7, the c7 was really an architecture that started in 1997 with a c5. It was a double wishbone car front and rear with transverse leaf springs front and rear. What they tried to do with that car is turn a street car into basically their racing program, they weakened a race car and turned it into a street car.

Very different design goal - this was supposed to be a private jet for the road, so they made a very capable tram that can also work on the runway, so it's supposed to be more refined, more complete, they also went from front to middle engine. The engine and the body structure are completely different, completely different, how then, how did they take and make all of this, a lot of money, and this wouldn't exist without GM's money and this wouldn't exist if they weren't planning to use what they factory? This car with the C8 architecture it is safe to say that this will be around for a million years, which is a good thing nowadays in 2020.

So before we talk about the suspension brand, let's talk about the chassis architecture, the chassis of this car . it's basically all aluminum, it's an aluminum monocoque that looks a lot like you, it would look like a 458, essentially it has its passenger compartment that is 25 to 30 times stiffer than the c7, then it has a separate structure where the engine is located lt2. is sitting, so the engine base is also completely aluminum, a separate structure and uses a different technology for stampings and everything that involves rigidity. This is the largest amount of die-cast aluminum components GM has ever used.

There are 20 die-cast parts separate and in place. they are basically riveted with mig welding this is how the c7's are put together they used adhesive on this car they use about 20 or 80 meters of adhesive on this vehicle so they are joining aluminum and this is something I had been starting This it was used a long time ago and now it's becoming more common so it's lighter, less materials and when you look at the front of this car now the suspension like you mentioned on double wishbone wheels now has coil springs and just the design of the knuckles.

The control arm design compared to some of these larger cars we're looking at looks like it would come out of a Honda Civic and I'm not kidding, it's so small and compact they were clearly designing this to save weight while maintaining integrity. structural of all the suspension parts, they used a mix of cast and forged parts for the front suspension, but what they got by using a coil suspension compared to a transverse leaf spring was greater adjustability; basically, you can adjust the front end infinitely. a coil over y system is true so if you get the z51 package with or without mag adjustment I mean these cars come adjustable from the factory which means you can balance a car in corners from day one for towing with inclined wheels. and ride height adjustability, so if this isn't supposed to be a track car yet, but all the fundamental pieces are here to build over the course of probably, like you said, a 20-year life cycle or any SUV they convert into this type. the limit with this and you're going to and that's what the chevy equinox c8 has well, that's the point, from a business perspective, they're not going to spend probably a billion dollars.

I've heard rumors that this is the most expensive architecture a GM has ever built in the history of his entire company, so you'll see a chevy trax corvette, it's the point where accountants will want to repurpose it no matter how they can and did build it. flexibility. To reuse certain things, the next big change from the C7 is the steering rack jack, so it's now column mounted. The EPS unit is shorter. The steering linkage is much shorter than what was found on the C7 because, again, being mid-engined. It is easier to work with the restrictions of the packaging and is 50 more rigid.

Well, next is the arrow, as you can take a look at the underside, there is not much to see, there is nothing to see, but this is of course if you are building a sports car.

super

car you want this to be covered so even the front control arms have a panel on top of them to help divert airflow from the front and you can see these little pieces here this is the lowest point of the car and they are already broken and anything lower than these panels will drag on the ground with how low this car is, there is now an optional front lift, yes and it is very impressive and as I'm sure GM Marketing has already told the people boys and girls watching this.

It'll remember something like a thousand locations, so when you plug it in here's where I'm lifting my car, it'll let you save it so it'll automatically lift when you get there. It's a pretty affordable option, which is very impressive. How much is like 1500 dollars? The rest of the bottom here we have airflow for the brakes, you know, there's no dust protection on the brakes and even the rotors and brake calipers don't look as big as you might think. Again, this is about heat weight management, where you need to take weight from and where you need to add it back, so when we look at the center support, tell me a little bit about those that look so similar to the c7, the center structure of the chassis comes from this giant beam in the center, so unlike what you would find on a Ferrari or the aluminum monocoque, you have giant side sills because all the force comes from the center of this car, the sills on this car could be Lower for easier entry and exit and that's really important because you look at cars like McLaren that use a carbon monocoque.

Ferrari uses aluminum and you talked about how it's technically stronger to move those sills up because you're creating this 360 support, so GM knew that. that the customer base getting in and out of this car doesn't want to trip over a huge window sill, that's a major sales detractor for supercars, so it's interesting that they looked at that and met their customer normally when we got to the back I want to get in and get out not with the cat c8 there's enough here to spend an hour talking about it i'm not even kidding so let's start with the suspension they made some big changes here coil spring design no more leaf springs they have They also changed the way it adjusts alignment, so they got rid of the eccentric bolts and now have a threaded design.

They listen to the owners of the C7. If they track your C7 like I do, that's a particularly big point of failure. The other thing to keep in mind. mention suspension layout when you're rear engined set your weights at the rear as we're about to find out it's a 40-60 split and typically when your engine is mid engined or you know in the back rear of the The car has a fairly large oversteer characteristic and the typical owner, let's call it C8, is a little older. This could be their first sports car, so they try to inherently neutralize the supervisor characteristic by adding a bit of understeer which we'll talk about. when we get into the track segment, but it's a very neutral feeling car and the car moves around you because the center of gravity is where you're sitting, you're not basically on the back of the horse or in the front. you are in the middle of the object and this was by design, at least in this first generation car they wanted it to be very accessible for the owners, that we will get behind the wheel of this confidence, comfort and technology.

It goes into a rear seat now we're talking about that, but most owners are not going to notice all of this, everything that went into it now in the rear suspension to cover that, you notice one thing right away, it's much bigger in the rear, the knuckles, the upper control arms and that's because you have a lot of weight in the rear, you normally see all of that in the front, so these are just little things. Same thing with the keel underneath, we have this huge aluminum skid plate. rear diffuser and you'll notice that you can get right to the oil filter here.

This is a great thing about this car's oil filter and drain plug. There is only one drain plug, unlike mclarens and ferraris where you have to take out three bolts and drain. the crankcase you just have to take out a drain plug now the only thing is this owner does his own oil changes it can get a little dirty getting caught in this bottom guard and then spraying oil out the back so this is just one of those things it's still useful, the overall purpose of this car is they still wanted to make it moderately accessible to the key demographic of Corvette buyers and then potentially introduce new ones, as I mentioned in the front branding, this is a car equipped with z51. so this means it has a similar build to what you would find in the c7, it has ptm, it has corvo, its performance traction management, the way it works, it's a clutch based differential, so depending on the mode of steering, you are in driving mode.

We're on the steering angle, the throttle position, the wipers are on heat and the tires are legitimately, yes, it takes all these different calculations and opening and closing the differential in the rear to maximize traction. This is not hell because of the way this car is tuned. It's not about sliding and doing big slides, a sad day for me, it's about putting power down, maximizing lap times and trying to get that sub 3 second 0-60 time, that's what they've done. achieved largely due to the gear ratios at the rear and us. I'll talk about that when we get under the hood, I guess in the trunk, and the trunk iscorrect.

This has double clutch. This is a first for GM. This is also the first GM mid-engine car since the Fiero that I will get into. before you start driving so tell me about the pdk i mean dual clutch sorry brand yes tremec and gm basically redesigned a pdk and found out that the porsche style dual clutch can't maintain the torque they expected from their future. engines so they had Tremec design this or modify it from an existing dual clutch that was on the market and the gt500 so how is it different from the gt500? It has the same transmission architecture, but they made some adjustments, it has eight speeds versus seven, so the way this car is geared in the z51 package is the first gear is really very short, so you can get off the line very quickly. .

Second through six are your years on the track and six through eight are your overdrives. Now, before we talk about that cat, we just received this. Off the Bendpak lift and I was a little surprised at how easy it was to put it on the lift, other than the ride height, which is this car is so low it's crazy, let's put the weight chart.and the weight chart. balance above this is the heaviest variant currently available now this is the 3lt which is the top of the line the top of the line with the z51 package has all the details that add weight but in the base model of the car it is supposed to only it's 80 to 90 pounds heavier than the C7, so we have this, we have these SMC sheet molding compounds, which are primarily fiberglass and a proprietary resin that they use and polyurethane to bond to the panels, now they use this to reduce weight.

They also have a floating smc in the back and it is floating because the smcs they have developed have a density that allows them to float in water to be honest we are trying not to go to two dungeons and dragons with you but we are We will see this car for a long time and we will talk about this in more depth when we have more of these vehicles. Let's get to the engine, what are the highlights of this cat. This is the lt2, which is based on the lt1. What's unique about the lt is that the top end has been revised from the lt1, the bottom end is still largely the same, it still has the same compression ratio, it has the same forged components as the same birth stroke, but Because it is now mid-engined, I didn't have to worry about the packaging limitations of the LT1, so the intake manifold is a great example of that again on the C7 with the LT1, they had to compact the intake manifold.

Runners can be longer, they can be taller. It doesn't have any of those limitations that help add horsepower to the exhaust technology on this one, plus it's a four into one style, equal length runners, which is something you'd see on a hyper exotic car, it helps with the exhaust that it cleans the oil system on this car and that's really what has been dramatically improved over the lt1, it now has three scavenge pumps instead of one and the dry sump is not remote so if you look at an lt1 on a c7, has a remote reservoir into which the oil must then be fed. the engine is connected directly to the lt2 which is one of the reasons it has a drain plug in the oil pan yes and its design goal was to be able to hold more than a g without losing oil pressure in 360 degrees of movement.

Compared to just forward and reverse in either direction, in theory you could drive this car backwards. Well, also in regards to the lubrication system, because there are three pumps, it is much more effective and the heads of this engine, the valve train, do not have any of the blown from before, so the head has its system of lubrication separate from the rest of the engine when they developed this engine, they only had one engine failure compared to the c7 where the lt1s were blowing up left and right when they were developing it, okay? What about cooling?

How do you handle that? That has to be more difficult here. Yes, your oil cooler is much larger than it used to be and is 25% more thermally effective. I don't know how they are going to handle the four variants of seduction. of this car, but as of now it has the same efficiency on the track as the previous generation or you know it is at the same level, you can run your full race sessions and in theory not run with oil temperature problems, it is well, that's a positive sign and before we get there. This on the road I'm only going to say one thing and before I made a joke about it.

The last mid-engine car was a Fiero and I think as great as it is this is a supercar. You really crash it. damage it, it will cost you a fortune to fix and the other part is reliability, we may fall in love with the low price. GM doesn't have the best history for having the most reliable things, it doesn't matter what the equinox trucks are. The original c7s were a disaster, so if you want to be an early adopter, get the longest warranty you can afford. Yeah, okay, let's take this out on the road or track and see how it performs compared to the c7 connector.

Well, I'm looking forward to it. to that c8 street drive jack is this the miracle car we are about to discover brand is fast is fast i wouldn't say this is like the fastest thing i've been reading but it doesn't look anything like a corvette, i will tell you no It reminds me of no Corvette I've ever been in and I don't mean that in a negative way, it's like a discounted McLaren 570. It's fine, it drives extraordinarily well, it does, it's the best to race. Corvette will never, not only in the firmness modes but also in the comfort or the street settings, you will be impressed by the ride quality, yes, and this is really where this car excels, as we talked about in the workshop, they designed this to that it is basically a private.

Jet on the road, so it has a low interior volume, it drives well, there are no strange vibrations or harshness, this is a GT car first and that's where this thing really excels, it's not scary anymore, it's not scary at all, I mean, it only has one rod. or the right amount of noise, although it does have this amazing exhaust system that was custom made so it's unfair to judge the sound entirely, but in terms of the gearbox this is the most important discussion about getting rid of a manual for an automatic one, so let's talk about that. on the street, so the reason they couldn't put the manual in the car is largely due to the packaging and the fact that we didn't present a strong enough business case for General Motors, only 13 of the total sales of the C7 were manuals and they just said Basically, screw it, no one is going to buy it anyway, so what they've done here is take the lineage of what you find in the treme's gt500 dct, which can be put in this car like a normal automatic.

Actually, it's kind of what you want. We expect it to feel almost identical to the gt5 basically with one gear less it's very quick to react there's basically no difference with a pdk and the way it feels and that's the highest praise possible and the shift speed and everything that is. It's not incredibly fast, but it's super smooth, it's so smooth for the street that there's minimal impact on the gearing and it just responds very quickly to your inputs. I don't want to say it's a complaint, but it's something to mention again that we forgot to mention.

This job breaks with a cable that you don't really notice on the street, right? No, and when we take this to the track here in a couple of minutes, I think that's where you're going to see something. of the problems with a brake by wire system, but it's a streetcar, something you're going to drive every day, yes there is some understeer in the street alignment, but again, for the demographic that buys this car, I feel like in a lot of ways I'm just here, looking at the interior and now experiencing it on the street, this reminds me that it's more like a Mercedes GT car, like a Mercedes coupe, the AMG cars, that's the character with a little more refinement and I agree with you 100 This feels more luxurious than a real sports car, although if you close your eyes and ignore the cabin, that's what it feels like, yes, and unfortunately or fortunately for most people You'll never be able to push the limits of this car and find its true handling characteristics on the street, so I think Mark is now about as good of a time as you could ask for heading to Audubon.

Well, Jack just finished the C7 on the track. This is a very different feeling in the CA. It's a completely different driving experience in comparison, obviously the dynamics of this car are very different being mid-engined versus front-engined, but from an engagement standpoint, you and I have said this many times off camera on Hint, to me this looks a lot like a discount. mclaren mp412fc technically brilliant, incredibly fast for eight c8 bases, this is the initial mark of what they are going to do with this platform, but it is a bit numb, it is numb and lacks a lot of character.

I'll be honest, it has the same thing for me, it feels like the mp412c and the nsx, it has that cable break feel, it's very synthetic, it doesn't have much road noise or connectivity, there's no harshness to it, just all the bits have been refined. edges, but there are some advantages: the front end doesn't feel as big and cumbersome anymore, you know, there's understeer here, which is because you know by design, this car has a track alignment that we're on now. from the extreme before anyone mentions that, yes, so "It's about better brake pads, gyro disc rotors for better thermal capacity, so it's a little closer in some aspects to your big sports corvette, but while gm has had 15-20 years to perfect the c7 or ce6 c5, this is a first try and i think it's okay, it's a great street car, but it doesn't do much for me at the moment as a fun connected machine. drive.

You can't take away what they did here was a great achievement for the subsidized price they are trying. to sell it if you can get it so this is an amazing car it's just not a driver's car right now it's not a track car and I'm going to take it out on the track now and go a little deeper on the southern highway and walk through dynamically what I feel when you are carrying a little more speed than what we are doing here, so we go down the c8 on the southern highway and the extreme experience c8 this is just a reconnaissance lap and the first thing you notice about it is that it definitely has a soft front end and you have to set up the front end because it's mid-engined and use it to work with you versus against you and it just has a very soft and compliant feel, it's not a car that has very sharp reflexes and It is tuned this way on purpose, its first tendency is to understeer and with the brake pads they put on.

It's quite competent here, it feels really controlled, you can press the pedal quite deep and it's not going to lock up your abs, it still feels quite synthetic because the cable drive doesn't have as strong a feel as the hydraulic one. Which is a little strange if you're used to driving every other car on the planet, but the transmission makes it super easy to drive, it doesn't have the rub like a GT350, but it still feels like you want to wind it up. it goes off effortlessly, which is really nice, but yeah, this thing has terminal understeer and you can't escape that and that's what makes it a much better street car than a track car.

Okay, I'm in the freshly released C7 Grand Sport. Of the C8, the first thing you'll notice about this car is that it's much more direct, the front end is much more planted and feels more connected, it's much quicker overall, you can brake deeper, the front end can't. It washes out as much as the tighter stuff, especially, you can just get this thing in and out and the tail wants to move a lot more, so you have to be a little more careful with the throttle, but it's not that big. try this is a great pleasure to drive it is more refined it is finer as good as the c7 can be as a driver's car the inputs are simple just a simple input it just works with you there is much more confidence to drive this the car gets tougher as you go instant, it gets better, I can increase speed more easily, the brakes respond better and I'm not even going 10 10 here, this is like eight or nine tenths, the main thing is in the tight stuff, that's where it's done.

The biggest difference is that you can get this thing stuck and it doesn't like to be washed, you're not constantly fighting the car and that's why it's a lot more fun, so I guess the moral of the story is if you want more of a clue. At this point, the C7 is cheaper, available, has a manual transmission, and is more fun to drive on the track. Final thoughts on the C8, while others have had the opportunity and gift of attending press events to drive it or get manufacturer support. We've had to be a lot more creative, which is why there are so many moving parts here, but here are the pros and cons.

This is a great tram. It's one of GM's best efforts. Interior, exterior and engineering. Is one of the best. GT Cars, it is a touring car, it is super comfortableand it's first generation, it's the first attempt at a new mid-engine architecture and that's where the pros are because you know it has an extreme overload of what this car could be compared to the Over the course of 10 years, in Compared to the C7 level, it will be much better. It's a lot better than most companies that design new sports cars from scratch, like the new NSX for example, it costs a lot less money, but this just goes to show what it is.

The largest organizations in the world have access to a lot of cash and capital to invest in the Corvette, so the best part is that it really is a subsidized price if you could get it for what the sticker says, between $60 and $80,000. . We are going to love this car and that is why the owner loves it and so many people have promoted it, but at this point the car is too soft, it is not a driver's car, the front end just has no grip. It's too soft and I know at this point if I had to have a track car like we talked about, the C7 Grand Sport was much faster and more fun to drive, you wouldn't have to fight as much and you had a manual transmission. a little rougher there, there's a little more connectivity that the c8 has lost in the refinement process for the target demographic GM knew would buy it, those buyers wanted more flash, more style, more quality and more smoothness . and that's how I would sum up the c8 now.

Many thanks to the audubon country club who we are working with to improve our videos. If you want to get a sports car, it is one of the best places to take it and become a member there to experience. All those extreme experience offers in Chicago are a traveling circus of exotic and sports cars. If you are looking for a car and you like this GT500 and want to go full speed in it, it is difficult to do it on a test drive or even get your hands on it. They buy these cars so you can go out and drive them and experience them, and for me. that's a big plus so check them out and last but not least if you would like to win a c8 corvette all you have to do is donate at omaze.com savagegeese it will help us it will help them and will help them non-profit organization representing UCLA Medical Center.

Thanks for watching, see you in the next video.