Del Rey Customs

2014 Corvette Stingray C7 Z51 LA Auto Show Interview with Heather Rocket Bunny, Hennessey HPE-700, Phadt Racing

Saturn on the loose with the new Looxcie 3 and meets Heather in the Corvette booth. The main thing is her favorite color is black and she the product specialist for the 2014 Corvette Sting Ray. The Looxcie 3 is great for candid interviews and can go where most camera can't. The Corvette Stingray was one of the hottest cars of the show. Heather was a great sport and she was very protective of the new Corvette. I tried to bring up the Cadillac Elmiraj and she shut that down very quickly. I really bonded with her over her passion for the American Muscle Car and and her beautiful eyes. I could tell she was not feeling me and we broke up when the camera went off. I would have loved to buy her a nice adult beverage and then convince her to let me borrow the Corvette for the night and dip that whip hard but she was too much into herself. We could of had it all rolling in the deep, but it was not meant to last. She could tell I was looking to play with Magic, and you should know what you're falling for, and we was all in. I look her straight in the eyes and said " do you dare to do this cause I'm coming at you like a Dark Horse! Heather then reminded me that the Corvette was a Stingrey Not a Ford Mustang and That this Was General Motors and not FORD!!!!

That whiff of smoked Michelin you Now that my heart was broken and I fell in and out of love with Heather in about 37 seconds lets now. But damn she was about as hot as the Corvette and I think the primary purpose of this blog is to share video and information about car audio and automotive news. 

That whiff of smoked Michelin you smell and the bawl of tortured rear tires you hear confirm that we’ve popped the clutch on the Corvette’s seventh generation. We uncorked it at GM’s Milford, Michigan, proving grounds, where we strapped our testing gear to the thing and came away feeling sorry for almost any car that meets it at a stoplight, the track, or a winding road.

But before we tell you about what it can do, here’s a primer on what makes the C7 worthy of bearing the ­Corvette flame and the Stingray name. The new LT1 V-8 c­arries over a 6.2-liter displacement and pushrod architecture but nothing else. Direct injection and optimized combustion hike the power to 460 horses while fluffing the torque curve by 50 pound-feet between 2000 and 3500 rpm. Cylinder shutdown and a mega-tall seventh gear in the Tremec manual transmission push EPA highway mileage to 30 mpg (in eco mode). A stout aluminum frame and Michelin tires are now standard for all Corvettes. The C7’s tech arsenal includes an electronically controlled limited-slip differential, aerodynamic lessons learned from racing, manual-transmission rev matching, and a patented means of sensing tire temperature to fine-tune the chassis. Inside, the cockpit is comprehensively upgraded, and the sorry C6 buckets have been replaced with world-class, eight-way-adjustable driver and passenger thrones.

Modeled after Porsche 911 buckets, these seats don’t hinder your slide into a cockpit that’s aggressively driver oriented. An instrument cluster to make Nintendo jealous, an eight-inch central touch screen, and a sensible mix of control knobs and buttons reside on the action side of a vertical partition. The passenger gets a comfy place to sit, a couple of grab handles, and temperature-control buttons by the right-side vent. While you can splurge for an $8005 full-leather interior package, the $51,995 base Stingray’s dashtop is wrapped with a stitched and grained “protein” vinyl (a blend of  vinyl and silk) good enough to fool a cowhide inspector. Real carbon-fiber accents and a stitched-suede dash-wrap are available options, each of which adds $995 to the sticker. The center half of the instrument cluster is a reconfig­urable screen offering a choice of three tach motifs, navigation pointers, g reports, and other essential information. Even the cheapest surface material inside, a sort of powder-coat black paint, feels upscale.

Our test day’s biggest surprise was a curb weight higher than expected. The Z51 Stingray we weighed at Milford crossed the scales at 3444 pounds, about 100 heavier than a C6 Grand Sport (steel space frame, 436 horsepower, Z06 chassis hardware). Offsetting its comprehensive weight-saving meas­ures, the new Corvette is slightly larger, structurally stiffer, and better equipped than its predecessor. The harsh reality is that every feature and function—heated and vented seats, for instance—adds pounds. The saving grace is that this is the first Corvette with a rearward weight bias (49.4 percent front, 50.6 percent rear).

Triggering the clutch at 3700 rpm drops a torque bomb on the rear tires. It produces beneficial wheelspin as the clairvoyant e-differential balances left- and right-side thrust. Without exploiting launch control, which is handy but beatable, we clocked a best sprint to 60 mph of 3.9 seconds and 12.2 seconds at 117 mph in the quarter-mile. In case you’ve fallen behind on your stat-keeping, this is elite territory: about the same as Corvette Z06 . The foes to avoid at stoplights are the new Jaguar F-type Supercharded V8  and the Porsche 991S, both of which smoke the Stingray to 60 and through the quarter-mile by 0.2 to 0.3 second.

Direct fuel injection and new combustion chambers not only give new life to the small block, they also make the thing sound like the Battle of Gettysburg. With the two-way mufflers in low-restriction mode and the tach needle crowding the 6500-rpm redline, the new Stingray V-8 blasts out shock and awe. One flat-out run through the gears will convince the Corvette faithful that American-engineered V-8s are still the way and the truth.

Thanks to the move to Michelin Pilot Super Sport radials, the Stingray is world-class in terms of braking and cornering. Stopping from 70 mph in 146 feet without fade matches the Grand Sport as well as recent Cayman and 911 performances. Brembo calipers and grooved rotors provide decisive bite, linear response, and easy modulation. But where the Stingray really excels is in cornering tests. Posting a 1.08-g score on GM’s black-lake circle puts the C7 in league with the Z06 and ZR-1 on track tires and well beyond the reach of the current Porsche crowd.

The Michelins don’t deserve all the credit for the Corvette’s superhero grip, though. The rear weight bias, twist-resistant structure, and 19- and 20-inch forged-aluminum wheels (an inch larger in diameter and part of the Z51 package) also help. Add to that a secret weapon: coordinated chassis controls. Turning the center-console mode selector to the track setting arms the chassis militia—stability control, ­limited-slip diff, magnetic dampers, and traction management—for combat. After sensing inflation pressure, wheel speeds, lateral g, and engine torque, a new tire-temperature algorithm tells the troops that the tires are hot and ready. The limited-slip differential decouples the rear wheels to enhance steering response and stability while minimizing understeer. With the application of throttle at a corner’s apex, the differential progressively locks as the demand for lateral traction diminishes and forward thrust surges.

The traction-management system’s role is to astutely trim engine output with micro ignition-timing and fuel-delivery adjustments that ensure that the rear tires receive all the torque they can handle—but not so much that they slip and allow the tail to scurry wide. Most of this work is intangible and inaudible. All the driver knows is that the Stingray sticks and the exhaust note flattens when the powertrain and the chassis collaborate.

Lapping a black-lake gymkhana and the Milford road course provided the opportunity to test this cross-car coordination. What the new electrically assisted steering lacks in feedback from the pavement, it makes up with crisp response and reassuring, progressive effort. A five-fold increase in rigidity between the smaller (14.1-inch) wheel rim and the steering rack eliminates any chance of lost motion between your fingertips and the front wheels. The shift knob is a short hand-flight from the small wheel, and no gear-change grunting is required this time around thanks to improved synchros, a dual-mass flywheel, and a new ­rev-matching system. Resisting the urge to heel-and-toe your way into a tight bend is the toughest part of letting this technology help you attack a track or two-lane.

Out here on the Milford road course, driven hard, there’s a bit of body roll, but, thanks to authoritative damping, the chassis always plays nice, never disrupting the mission with feints or funny business. The Z06 tail twitch that challenged even seasoned racers has left this building.

Those with track aspirations should definitely wait for the competition seat—which will be available by the end of the year—because the touring bucket’s outside bolster delegates the job of restraining the driver’s left leg to the door panel, an unfriendly surface that’s ill-suited to the task. One long lapping day will wear out that trim, your knee, or both of those vital components.

On the road, the car is just as predictable and friendly. The 60-percent-stiffer structure provides an excellent foundation for more-supple damper settings, eliminating the C6’s trash-can comportment over broken pavement. Tread noise still penetrates the thin composite skin, and the ride is firm even in touring mode, but there is nothing to complain about in the comfort category.

So... With all that being said now I will offer my Opinion on the Z51 Corvette Stingray and the C7.

1. The Base Corvette C7 price is right around $51,000 your driving a Corvette. It's actually$5000 cheaper than the Camaro ZL-1. The ZL-1 is 530 stock supercharged horsepower with the 3.2 quarter mile time the C7 is 460 HP and a 3.8 0-60 time.  Now like most auto manufactures Base price is a Base Price. Most of the time to find a true base model your going have to special order it. The Z51 Stingray Performance package and the 3LT interior package is where most of these are going start and that is around the $61,810 starting price point. Once again the Base model with the top level interior package and standard features and the Z51 50 HP upgraded horsepower package. We Build one online at Corvette Build and Price and we wern't to bad around $72,410 full rocking and rolling with lots of carbon fiber. 

2. Its fun to drive. It's a race car. It's not the most practical car if you in traffic for 2-5 hours a day, but it the best bang for the money to drive on the weekends. It can hold it own on the track. Hennessey will have a performance upgrade anywhere for 500-1000 hp HPE700 in my opinion is the way to go to keep the factory 3yr/36k powertrain warranty for around 18k it will be limited to 100 2014 models. 

On The HPE700 the Mods work out to be 700bhp @6300 rpm on the dyno

HPE 700 includes TVS2300 Supercharger

High Flow Cylinder Heads with Long-tube Stainless Steel Headers

Custom HPE Camshaft

HPE Air Induction System and HPE Engine Management

Serial-Number Dash and Engine Vin 

Hennesey Exterior HPE700 badging , HPE Floormats and Carbon Fiber Door Sills 

Optional Hennessey CarbonAreo Real Lip Spoiler, Side Skirts and Front Lip Splitter

Optional Brembo Carbon Ceramic Brake Upgrade

Optional Penske Adjustable Suspension 

Limited Production of 100.   

 Forgiato has already done a customs wide body conversion on the car the featured at the 2013 LA Auto Show that just disrespected the everything else there. No rocket bunny on that car, sleek and sex on some 22 inch Forgiato wheels. Regardless if you approve or disapprove of the styling choices made by the teams that worked TS Designs and Forgiato on the 2013 LA Auto Show C7 Wide Body Stingray you must admit that their creation doesn't go by unnoticed.

Finished in what Forgiato describes as an "Aston Martin blue paint job", the C7 parade car is fitted with a wide body kit that adds several inches on both ends of the ride to make space for the deep-dish Forgiato Maglia-ECL cut-spoke wheels (21-inches at the front and 22-inches at the back) in a two-tone shade that matches the rest of the build.

Other touches include the Carbon Fiber rear diffuser and the completely new front grille that works together with a carbon fiber lip spoiler.

Also Pfadt has the version on how the C7 should be customized

The Corvette C7 Stingray comes from the factory as an ultra-high performance sports car. But who couldn't use a little more? Or better yet: a lot more? The Pfadt P/Spec Packages deliver exactly that. Our C7 Corvette horse power package options will boost your Engine HP @ the crank to approximately 580 and more importantly boost your driving experience to an unparalleled height. Included in the package options:

If you are looking for a complete solution to boost the horse power of your C7 Corvette up to 580, then the P58 package will get you to that goal…faster. Our C7 Corvette performance packages install easily and deliver OEM-fit quality and show-winning appearance. Up for a game-changing upgrade? Install the frighteningly-fast P58 package that throws you against the seat and puts the Corvette's supercar compeition in the rearview. Not all C7 Stingray Engine Packages are created equal, and Pfadt has crafted the most powerful and reliable solution available.