Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. You're listening to the old talk car podcast. I've kept this quiet, it's a taste, a little entree for me as I'm heading to America in a couple of days' time, hosted by Peter Ronas. We have a listener that reached out to me, Paul and Paul brought something special.
It's a Corvette, Stingray, C8, Australian delivered. Carbon edition. Carbon edition. First customer delivered, what in the country?
The first one in the country, keep going. What do you mean? 20, 20, 24 years for it. And I've been waiting for this day.
I don't talk about what's coming up on the podcast because whenever I do it always falls apart and it's been effing fucking raining. And we've took two or boarded attempts and we've done it and I'm glad I'm doing it for the States. So we're going to go on a live drive. We're just sitting in here, promoting, just looking and talking and just talking about the build quality in one of these things.
I've been in a Corvette before, not even C8. I was taking it for a hot lap at Cimmer a couple of years ago, Paul, in we're going to see seven. And was it one of the standard ones or Z06? No, I would have been a standard one.
So back General Motors had a track at the back. So Cimmer is a convention in Vegas. The second Vegas convention there. The first ones at CES, electronic show.
And this is the big one. And the car parks are converting to tracks. So Ford at the front has got jumps and they take you on hot laps in whatever car or the moment where there was a Ford Focus coming up and F-150, what's the big one? The rear-side track or?
Yeah, so this is a car park. So they didn't do forward drive. Ford do tire jumps. So they probably put their movement.
At the back of another car park was his Continental tires with that drift in threes. And then another car park, General Motors has been there for a couple of years. But when the Camaro first came out, they, you could drive a Camaro around their track that they put with comas, et cetera. And then you queue up and then they take you on a hot lap.
So that was my first day to look over there. You don't have a run around in the Camaro? Yeah, I drove the Camaro. What did you think of that?
That was a nice car. It was one of the first Camaro's that would be the place in the Australian architecture. The Australian's designed the Camaro. Yes, that was the first one.
So you took the platform or something? Correct, it was one of those ones. And it was a great, the firm car, nice. I didn't really push it because we didn't have a track.
And we're free to do whatever we wanted for one and a half laps. And then you queue up and then we went into the Corvette and there are a piece of machinery in these cars. And we're now sitting inside the CA. And it's like two cockpits.
You've got your own. We're going to put up some photos on Instagram. So effectively what you've got is everything sort of towards you, almost all big W-school style. Where everything sort of comes to a year.
It's usually put me in mind at the Super at the first and super day now to have that sort of wrap around and feel. I think they called it a bit more of an aeronautic or sort of pilot focused position. A lot of the journalists made some initial comments that they didn't like, the sort of divided between the driver and the passenger with the rail buttons up that panel. I'm sitting as a passenger.
I've got to go to the thing that I found was interesting was the buttons that you use there, they're not really regular buttons. You'll set your climate control to a particular temperature and leave it. And then all the buttons that are driver focused are basically the top of where your hand reaches next to your drive mode selector. So you've got your climate control, heated seats, cooled seats, and the rest of the econ stuff is synced out.
So you'll never really have to reach any lower. And then you've got the passenger side that has. That's my seat. I can see that's all in the bottom.
So basically just so I can explain it, it's a long thin strip, it's about what? Half 47 meters? Yeah. Yeah, 50 half a meter of strip of buttons.
That divides me. So from your center screen all the way to say where my seat block goes in is a row of buttons. And the top half is sort of driver centric. So they're for more for you.
And it sits sort of arms like next to your economic, where the buttons are for the gear shift. And then you've got like your rotary controller next to the buttons for the gear. So it's all ergonomically fine. This is a car that I've already put almost 6,500 kms on.
So it's not one that sat in the shed and hasn't been used. It's been driven around. And you enjoy using it because it's probably it's designed to be driven and to be used. There's nothing quirky.
And it's factory converted right hand drive. So unlike the Camaros with HSB and the Ram Euts and all the other American cars that are coming to Australia. Strip them out, rebuild them, swap them. This is cool.
This is cool. This is cool. It comes off from production line. From the following bring Kentucky.
It comes right hand drive. We're going to go for a drive in a minute. We're still sitting here in the chat. I mean, this is the first one that came in Australia and Australia delivered.
How was the deposit process? Because it was that funny period where Holden switched and Nature's vehicle got over. Was there any issues that they keep you in the loop? There was no driver.
The communication was very average. There were some people who were on that queue to buy cars that actually had more information coming through Facebook groups and small connected groups of individuals that had info coming from America that was actually keeping us more up to date than the dealer network. So the dealer network was predominantly the old HSB network. I think they call it General Motors Specialty Vickers.
They changed the name. All the deposits, or at least the deposits for probably the cars that have come for the next three or four years, were taken originally by that Holden slash HSB dealer network. Some people, the dealer principles moved. I've heard of people that had deposits down and then the dealership basically said, we didn't have enough information.
Therefore, we're just going to refund everyone their money back. I was pretty lucky I had a couple of dealerships. Sorry, that's me, rookie era. So I had a couple of dealerships where I had deposits in and that I'd done business with before.
So I was lucky and I was on the queue from early on in the piece. Probably my only cheeky little thing that I did was I basically said to the dealers, would you prefer it if I lease the car or buy the car out? Okay. And most of them make a little bit extra quantity.
Yeah, makes a difference. With the lease, they said yes to that. My basically said, yeah, no problem. But four years later when they do anything arrive, they're like, do you want to still do the lease?
I go, no, save the money. There's a little bank account sitting in the shop for it. So professional tip. Always going to lease it.
They like you more if you're going to take a lease out. And then you aren't gave you that money that she promised you for the inheritance. If only that was the case. So, yeah, so it was a funny time in the Australian so the car industry would hold them and nature is very promising.
And it's got the General Motors that stuck to their guards because at the end of the day, the factory could turn around and say, if you, you're colonialist, we're not building right? Exactly. But I think this particular car, I've got a lot of friends and I've had a lot of interesting cars in the past, including things like I've done a lot of time on racetracks and Ferraris and McLarens and some really interesting toys. And to me, my experience of owning it and my feel from the guys that I race with and the guys that we catch up with and we'll go for a drive together.
And it's almost like this is the General Motors, basically, the FU to the rest of the European Supercar world. And basically say, look what we can do when we put our minds to it. So basically, for those of us who aren't familiar with the Corvette range, C8 means it's like the eight series since the 1950s. But it's the first one to be a mid-engine car.
So they took the original architecture. I think right from the concept at the beginning, Zora, the guy who basically penned the original Corvette, wanted the mid-engine. But it wasn't until this eighth generation that they basically were able to do it. For those who read American car magazines from the 70s and 80s, every new series that's announced, they keep predicting mid-engine mid-engine mid-engine.
And some of them finally said, we've got it right after that. It's a promising. What was interesting, I've had a few in the HSB vehicles. And I was very close to getting one of the ZL1 Camaras.
And I remember driving that car. And they really, really wanted me to. They were trying to push me to take one of these cars. And I think at the time, that was that sort of period when HSV and Holden had basically said they were exiting the market.
It was probably about 2017, 2018. And they still had to dock some of those vehicles around. And I like cars, but I like to drive them. And I can remember driving that ZL1 platform.
And it was an amazing engine. I test drove it in the manual. I test drove it in the auto. And I can remember just at New Sutherland, that sort of loop around where the bike track is up there.
Good section of road. In both the manual and the auto, just to launch it on a dry road on a warm day, flat stick to 100. I must have corrected both those cars at least three or four times to keep them going. So that was great.
I don't know whether it was the spec of the Australian tyres. It was different to the ones they were allowed to use in America. But it was a car where your feel was it is an amazing engine, amazing gearbox in manual and auto. But the platform is no longer at the point where it can deal with that quality power.
So I was like, there's no way. I want to enjoy it. It gets to the point where you're losing performance because the chassis doesn't keep up. And I think that's the problem the Corvette had with the C7.
They reached the end of the rear drive traction with the front engine. And they had no choice but. And they did. And they've done a fantastic job.
This chassis, I think the last iteration of this chassis is designed for a thousand horsepower combination petrol and electric vehicle. And this one's about 390 kilowatts. What's that 500 horsepower? Yeah, about that.
I trust my grandmother driving this car. It's that easy to drive. The car doesn't straight line acceleration. I think the quickest zero to 100 I've managed to pull out of it is 2.6 with launch control.
I don't know what comfortably do two eight, two eight, two nine. I think the slowest I get just on a normal launch without launch control. It's like three seconds. So basically I don't even bother using launch control.
You know what? And this is the base. What I got to do with the six comes out. That's right.
That's exactly right. And you've ordered one? Yes. And they've just been released in the state side.
So they're getting good reviews. And I think from a collectability point of view, the one thing that I think is really potentially going to be really special about that car is every manufacturer of the eight engines across the world are basically building equipment in an environment where the emissions legislation is probably going to leave that as one of the moment it took the top spot from the 4.5 eight italian as the highest capacity output per kilowatt for normally aspirated engine. That was the previous V8 top that on top of the tree. So this one is not that off out of its position.
I don't think there's going to be any manufacturers building V8 engines in this new environment of that sort of emission control stuff. So to me, I look at that as a collectible product, not just for a Corvette or an American super car enthusiast. I'd say that across the board will have collectability for anyone who loves naturally aspirated internal combustion engines that are really driving. We haven't read the class, but you commented earlier, which is quite funny.
So I've got the Tesla part next to the Corvette. You said you're some kind of a rock product. You're the Tesla. Instead of the Corvette.
Instead of the Tesla instead of this, he doesn't like this. So Paul, I'm happy to swap overnight if you want to impress your son, but I'll look after the Corvette. Mate, I'm telling you, that's the funny thing. I actually had this conversation with a friend over lunch yesterday and we're talking about how nostalgia shapes our view of what we love.
And my ability to try and pick what I think is going to be collectible is look at it's a combination of what you said, which wasn't correct about my great auntie, but it's interesting because if you sort of track back to people and you go, what was the poster car that they had on their wall when they were 17 years old? And then you follow that person to 55, 60 years old, they've educated their kids, they're paid off a few properties, they're comfortable in their business. And then their 90 year old relative's pass on, and all of a sudden there's this cash injection to the 65 year old male or female going through that point in their life where they go, you know what? I loved.
For me it was a 44 hour. For some other people it may have been, you know the Sierra Cosworth, there's just something that tickles your face. One of my best mates, he's incredibly successful. Super old, super like the 80s, the square ones.
He loves those cars, that's his dream. He loves those cars. But you're right, and then if you bought, when we were in our 30s with no money, that's when they were bought a car. No, it's 20 years old, they were bought a doubt, but you had no money or kids or family, because I mean this is a top two seat though, you can't put kids in this, and then when you get to your right to the 50s and 60s and you're going to be responsible.
And that's when those cars come back up and they're like, damn, we made a board. Life. Very true. I think we're gonna have to press one of those buttons.
Is that deep for drag or deep for drive? Deep for drive. Let's give it a go. Which mode do you want?
I actually was really impressed about this car. From an ownership of this sort of category of car, there's not many cars like this that you can actually take your wife and go for holiday. So this one, I'm taking the Hunter Valley, two carry on bags in the front, which is the front boot slash moment, two duffel bags full of clothes, including a couple of dresses laid flat behind the engine. That one gets a little bit more.
And that's part of the Corvette mantra. Yeah, they're twoers. They want to think they like to do that. There's usually two golf clubs, but I don't know.
I think they reckon they can do that. So you gotta pop up that. No, no, they can do it. They can do it.
They can do it. They show it on the video. Those buttons you can choose, but the one thing that I actually think sort of plays into that grand touring concept that the Americans really, really love is it's a very distinct car in the fact that it has quite distinct modes. So you can make this quite comfortable.
You've got magnetic wide control. It's quite a compliant, usable car that you can actually use every day. If you flick it across into race mode and you know how to play with a few of the settings, all of a sudden everything changes from the field of steering. You've got a hydraulic booster cylinder on the brakes.
So not only does it stop you boiling your brake fluid, but you actually have the ability to change the feel of the brake pedal. So in normal mode or around the city, you can have it nice and smooth and soft like you toy out a camera or any other in a normal car. And then you can flick it across to race. And when you're in race mode, the pedal feel is actually like a pedal box in a race car.
So one of my good mates, we've done quite a bit of racing in his McLaren 720S, and that's one of my absolute hatreds of that car on the street. So you take them a McLaren 720S on the racetrack, the adrenaline's there, you're hitting corners at really high velocity. There's so much adrenaline, you brake, you brake hard, you don't notice how much force you've got to put into the brake pedal. The first time you drive it to a T intersection on the street and you pull up like you'd expect to pull up in a normal car, you're thinking you're going to go through the intersection of the rock.
Because you've actually got to grab the steering and you've got to push it that hard that you're bracing yourself. So some of those sort of really track focus things, you can dial in or you can dial out, which is one of the things I want. What do you want to try and cut? It's all quiet.
And then we can build up. You know the captain? Now we're, so what do you mean, wife mode, is that what you called it? This one, this one is, the moment in my mode.
So my mode, I've got it set where you've got a little bit of the exhaust now. Steering's still quite sharp. Rake pedals reasonably soft. So suspension is at the softer settings.
Do you tell everyone in your podcast where about we are? Because they might have some concepts of how rough the roads are around here. Well, sometimes we go very fast, we go to Mexico, but not in Mexico. Not in Mexico, not in Mexico.
But somewhere with pothars it'll swallow off the pass. That's, yeah, that's city four way after the rate. Really, so yes we go. The human way is that way.
So we're going to hit towards open road. Yeah, so you're right. You can just put them along, just take it off with cruising along. I mean, you can feel the bumps, but you can feel these bumps in any car.
Oh, he's an under feature. So come on up to speed bump. Press that front raises. I drive this about 30 miles.
I'm going to press that button. It remembers it because I've never been across that speed bump. So now remember is that there's a speed hub there? It feeds it back into the GPS.
Yeah. Next time we come. Yep. We're going to get that speed bump.
It'll remember where it is in about 40 minutes before it will start. It'll get ready. It'll start at least front of the car. One of the interesting things that help when probably spending a day market around with launch control.
The best launch I got out of this car was two, six. And the way I did was spending literally half an hour of warm tires up. And then I got all the settings that I thought would work with this particular patch of bitumen. And then I lifted the hydraulic lift up.
So there's an extra 30 mil of lift on the front. It'll be a bit extra weight over the rear wheels. And I think that helped me stay. Very early fast time.
I haven't seen anyone else go through that level of fanaticism to have it go at it. But it was one day of mucking around. So the nose leaf will give it some better traction. I think it throws a bit more weight.
And by this time you get to about 50 Ks an hour and automatically starts to drop down. But yeah. That's funny. There's a ramp in front of us now.
But that's the big ASV logo. So that's called Australian Special Beacons. Could be. Maybe this is a confirm.
Yeah. And the brake. Is any pretty low? That's exhausted staring at our faces.
But you don't realise how wide this car is. It's actually. There's a lot of room. I mean, for all these you're in regular, your medium, junior size and wide night.
And we've got heaps of room between us. And I'm sitting really far back. I've got my feet at Harley touching the front foot where I got to leave some room. I might say it's quite back.
I think you've all seen forward a bit. I did pull a forward a bit. I did pull a forward a bit. I'm still sitting way back.
So we just out of the open road, just cruising along in full mode. And it's very comfortable. It's a cruiser. It doesn't feel like cameras are there.
I was going to show you another camera. OK. So that is just one of the hardest-speed camera. I looked up one of the big problems with this sort of two-door mid-engine cars.
It's usually visibility out the rear of the cars. And this one has a camera mounted on the roof. So your roof mounted camera serves a little LED or LCD screen. Yep.
So the rear view mirror is the actual camera view. The camera view is quite clear. It's almost clear. It is looking like a rear view mirror.
It's maybe like an earlier display. Yeah, it's a really high resolution. That is very clear. In the night time, it's absolutely gorgeous, because you don't end up getting, you know, blinding lights in your face.
So you can flick it like a normal rear view mirror. And it's really great. It's got something to complain about not having things like plane departure warnings and autonomous braking and stuff like that. I think people have to go behind this kind of category car.
Happy to do all the work themselves. You're not sitting on your phone. No, you're not. You're missing your mind.
You're enjoying it. And they're talking about when you said side alerts, the rear has got the senses. The lightness. You're sitting on your blind spot?
Yeah. But the actual mirror is way out. It's got the big ass. You see the air scoops at the back and the rear tires.
It does come out at the back, the front. So the rear mirror, the side view mirrors do go that extra distance across to get that full view from behind. In terms of width, I can't remember the number. But I was, it was a gentleman.
My brother would be out at the was Googling while we were driving somewhere and it's 100mm wider than the Ford Ranger. Oh, I'll help track it back. Yeah. And I think it's about 60 or 70mm narrower than the Ranger Raptor.
And like when you see those cars on the street, they're pretty big. It's the white two. They're white two. You can't even hear what we are.
You don't realise how white the track on the car is to actually see. Something in front of you. That's that white and how much the lane it takes. You can go down the guys.
Yeah. I'll take it back and get a run on to the infighting. Yeah. And basically, in the front corner, it slopes away, I have that same sort of sensation with Tesla.
Of course, there's no engine at the front. You've got a view of the road in front of you. The front body just drops away. So you can't really see the front of the car.
You've got a full road view, which is typical of a mening at all. Yeah. Oh. Sorry, Andy.
We're in the Turbo S earlier. And you can't substitute for your QV. And I'm still about the driver of the 911 that we're in. The previous live drive, Andy's Turbo S.
That got up a boogie. That was only a 2.0. It's a V8. That's not a 2.0.
That's not a bad thing. That's the sound. And that's in the most gentle gear settings. That's a...
Yeah, you... Hey, we're going to be saying sound moving forward. I think the other thing that they've done really, really well in this car is they've understood their buyer. Their buyer wants to feel that engagement.
Their buyer wants to do, you know, like the way the sound comes back into the cabin, feel of it, the feel of the gear change. Sometimes you can get in cars like, we used to race an M3CSL. And in the gear settings on that car, in most of the gear shift, you're actually talking about something breaking in the car. It was that loud.
It was that loud. It was that loud. It was almost not as uncomfortable as it felt like you were doing damage. This thing in the most ferocious gear settings will still give you that lightning gear change.
There's the audible snap between the gears that it's more an inch and sound. But it doesn't feel like a mechanical damaging equipment. Yeah. What's the gearbox?
Is it a dual clutch? It's a dual clutch. It's an 8-speed and it changes the same gearbox as the brand in Maserati. The AFC20.
Yeah. So it's a pretty sophisticated gearbox for an American car, obviously. And I've noticed on the cage, which has dropped to force the one that's here. So it's got the cylinder shut off.
So you can't override that, but you don't actually notice it. Yeah. It's now back to forward. You don't feel any change in the gearbox or the sound.
I think General Motors have got that sort of deactivation stuff down there. I think they needed to do that for emissions. I think in the States they do have a gas belt. Yeah.
It makes a big difference as well. So surprisingly, the fuel economy on this car has blown me away. I don't know whether it's because it's such a light car, where it's slippery through the air. On average city driving, and I'm not like I'll accelerate pretty hard all the time.
I've never got Western 17 litres per 100k. And the city average on a country trip, this drops down to about 8.9 litres per 100k. That's less than the 845 that I had. I've still got 12s, 13s, and the city which is better than the highway would be like 10-11.
I've got a little Renault, Renault, Renault, and Macan trophy that I use as a running wheel for city appointments. And that thing I never ever got less than 17 litres per 100k at that little 2-litre turbo. Because they're working hard. This thing is that the American V8 doesn't talk about torque, it's endless driving, it's not all about revving, it's too tough to get the most out of it, but I can.
But this red light is about 6.5. The yellow is about 5.5. So it's not really your sort of 9,000 RPM type Ferrari V8. We're rolling in third gear at 22k now.
Yeah. That's the notice. So surprises, did you, did you, I mean, you love it. Did you think it'd be this good?
Did you expect any compromises? No. I honestly thought it would be quick. Yeah.
I thought it would handle reasonably well and actually handle what there's not a thought. I was waiting for another set of tyres. The wheels that are on it are forged like racing wheels and I'm waiting for another set of tyres, getting a bit of a bit of a problem in terms of supply and Australian. So I'll take it out and do some track days of these on Creek.
But the thing that I was really impressed with, there was a few articles that came out that talked about slight understeer in these cars. Yep. And I think what people don't realise is, if you're used to really powerful truck engine, rear wheel drive cars, they're like a big happy engine. They're like a big happy, happy dog flapping their tail around.
And it's fun. And you get used to it. Well, I might throw the things sideways and having the mirror in the car out and you're waiting to feather it back. It's part of what you just become second nature.
The grip levels on the mid-engine cars are so far above what you're getting from those front-engine cars that the small amount of understeer that you can detect in these things is great because it's almost a warning sign. It's letting you know that you're at the edge, back off a touch, and you'll stay and you'll keep your toy in one place. The problem with getting rid of all that understeer and having no understeer is that the grip level of sound height, when they do break away, often you're going to find it very challenging to pull it back. And the one thing that this thing impressed me with, like I was looking at some of the sounds one of the highest, that put the cars on the circuit and it's giving them the lateral G.
The GT-3 RS is 1.24G cornering. Yeah. It's bloody impressive. Oh, yeah.
This thing pulls 1.2G cornering, but that's on run flat tyres. They're doing a 1.2G out of this on the shitter's tyres that you could put. You could put a really good set of tyres that were equivalent to what you've got on your stock GT-3 RS, I think the initial on pilot. Yeah, yeah.
The super sport. The super sport. Exactly. So, to me, the characteristics and the handling that you're getting out of something with very, very average tyres on it, compared to what you put on if you were really doing some dedicated track work, I'm blown away by it.
I think that slight bit of understeer is really an investment from keeping the safe. The tyres play a big role, people underestimate the role tyres play especially when you get to this level. If tyres play a massive role, you're in. And then when you get to those extreme level tyres, and then you can also rather, you can't just jump in and start driving at the 10th, 20th, you've been really in the solving trouble without realising in these types of all the tyres.
Where you think you're getting 1.2 in just your normal run flats. That's amazing. That's wild everywhere. We're in a traffic jam, the road is covered in flood waters, and they've got to speak out of you.
We just went forward driving, so I was like, what was I saying? I was like, what was I saying? I thought we'd drive before we go to the front. I'm going to jump to the front.
We didn't leave the instance. I was looking to pick it up. What we can do, I'm waiting. Do you want me to flick through some of these screens?
Yes, let's talk about these two. We had the stereo cranks as well. A Bose dire system, which is just amazing. We haven't paid enough money for the copyright we're using for this.
Let me just say, it was great. It was amazing. But you've got it. It was a surprise.
It was a surprise. I'm going to just build from that music kind of person, but I was really impressed by that. It was a twin digital cluster. You've got your central screen straight at you.
We sent it only like that BMW SQD-A, the BMW's that sort of console pointing to the driver. You've got your screen with your car plate. It's got a PDR. Which stands for Performance Vardo Recorder, which I have on all the time.
It's still recording now. That's like a dash cam. So you've got video and audio as well. I knew Mikey shit.
I couldn't get your recording from you. Yeah, including the video of the drive, which is making it a familiar. It's actually really cool. It's a good question to know.
Yeah. Radio, all the settings are actually quite easy to hear. Yeah, so you've got a standard design. It's got all your different icons and recordings in your touchscreen.
But now you go to the drive mode. It's all you've got. Obviously from the US, the drive mode. So effectively we've got a taco in the middle.
It's just one screen. You've got a taco in the middle. And then the left side, you've got some information where you're fitted to your weather mode. And tire pressures.
And the right side at the moment is your trip and gear. So you've opened the center screen and if you touch one of those, you know, can steer in the suspension. Under each weather mode. Yeah.
What do you want that car to feel like? So steering, suspension, brake feel. Yes, it's got like a horizontal lever and you go from low to high into how you want it to see the touchscreen with a touchscreen. So it's pretty idiot-prejudice.
Yep. You've got a little cut button on your steering-caused end mode. So you can have all your settings of what you want in terms of what you choose to go to, race, performance, snow, my mode, etc. Yep.
And then you can have one that's like, okay, someone pulls up next to me and goes straight away and hit the Z mode. That's your, that's your, like, your ready to hit. And the dash has got red. Dash has got red.
And then I've got the coil pressure, G force. You've got a cross to the sport and you're running through the track. It starts to get things like, like I said, now with the track mode, we've got the horizontal taco bar from left to right. It's not pressure.
And your gear is bigger than your speedo. So it's only a good gear. And it comes up to the head up. It's way.
And interestingly, the head up to the front is actually got two bars. And as you accelerate and get to the right, we have range from the next gear, it goes to what's set up. Yeah. So it's almost like a shift line up.
Yeah. It's got to shift up in the car. Yeah. But the Z mode's good one.
That's, that's, that's your thing to take straight away. The other thing that I think is pretty clever feature when you're on the motorway, if you want to really launch past someone. Yep. You can actually pull the downshift lever and hold it in for a couple of seconds.
And then it will automatically tilt the engine to shift down to the last gear possible to set up. So instead of flicking down, it just goes straight to the, it knows because you're holding it back on the, on the downshift paddle. It knows to go, oh, you don't want the lower one, you'll want the lowest one, I can give you. Yeah.
And then you just got it. All right, here we go. Can't go that fast. I know, I know.
Just about to, we're at the road that makes it go shortly. And then we can have some sound effects. Surprisingly, it's actually much, much louder with roof off. Yeah.
So it's also got, so now we can look up and it's, it's got a, I think what, it's not a good one. No, no, no, no, no. So it's a coop with a hard top. That's a hard top.
Yeah, it's got a T bar, like, yeah, it has some of it at that team. This comes off, is it room at the back to, it goes straight into the boot, there's two clips to hold the position. So it's just all indicating to go inside the boot. And it came, these carbon additions, some, there was a few of them that came with a, like, a perspex clean roof as well.
Like a, yeah. It's like a panoramic one. Yeah, I've got the clear top at home as well. Oh, so it's got two, it's two kind of things if we call it.
So you've got the carbon monotubes to fill out earlier, so. And I've got the clear one, which is like, almost like blue, blue, so it comes. Yeah, it's, it's just keeps on the heat, yeah, I'm guessing. So that's, and it's, it's got a nice, it's a brown caramel.
It's, it's, it's, it's called natural dipped. Yeah, it's not. It's not. It's not.
It's like a maroni red. You know what the colors called as a red mist. Red mist, red mist. Red mist, try cut.
So I'm assuming there's three coats of, three particular colors that make it that particular red mist because it's called a red mist. And did you have a choice? Like, did you spec this out? No.
So you basically, this is one of the 50 carbon additions. Yes. There was no choice. If you got lucky, you've got an allocation, you've got an allocation.
You've got a blue one, you've got a white one, you've got a red one. So that's how. Yeah. I think you don't.
Well, I know it's allocation. You set the photo and then when you actually turned up, it actually, it's, it's quite a Ferrari vibe. It's got that deep red Ferrari color, the outside's more of a maroni red. But the interior, it's a classic interior.
It's, it's not your black. It's basically, no, no, no, these ones are on there. It's, it's a classy interior. This is quite great.
It's beautiful. All right. We're about to exit the plane. So there's no delays with the key changes.
They can give you that. That's three obvious, that's really awesome. But there was no let up and just keep knowing. It's a nice search.
That's actually in terms of on-reams. It's poorly caved. There's two lumps about halfway down the on-ream. Yeah.
And I didn't have to do any adjustment to the steering. I didn't have to throttle it. I didn't have to back off the lumps. If I took you through that same acceleration in my GTSR, which is really cool.
Yeah. I would have corrected it twice. So to keep it going straight, we're going to have you on the show to talk about some of the other cars, but you've got a GTSR as well. Hell, it's got one.
So I'm going to have to hook you guys up and put the next podcast. But I'm going to have to do that. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that.
Hell, it's got one. Hell, it's got one, so I'm going to have to hook you guys up and put the next podcast. And it could be a note. But, yeah.
I think this is like chassis. Yeah. In terms of dynamics, something as single as a run like that, that feels endless. You don't notice.
There was no fighting with the steering skaters. But the numbers. You actually look at the numbers that come up and how quickly that comes up. How quickly that shoots through the gears.
It's almost like it feels too if it was. And that to me is a really, really good bit of feedback in terms of how well they've done in terms of the dynamics of the car, because that's a very different experience than a lot of other cars, simply because they need more work to keep them going straight. Yeah, this thing just seems to track so simply. That's what we said at the start, it's effortless.
It really does what it says on the box with these cars. It's a big engine, I can be lazy, I can tour, go listen to music, go sit back relax, but then I can make you get up and dance and drive and still without raising a sweat. And big and little things we've pulled up now, we've just pulled up in the centre lights. And it's a very advanced dual clutch key box.
One of the things that's like one of my pet haters, my good mates has got a LP640 limbo. Yep, it's an earlier model, but it's still a common feature in some of the newer ones. You're getting those cars and those dual clutch boxes are meant for a race track. The simple act of pulling up like this at a set of lights, we're coming to around about 30 or 40k an hour and going through that and not having it go clunky and feel confused and search for the wrong gear.
It does those little things at the average mum and dad car does really well, which is actually not something that people buying this spare car expect. You actually expect it to feel different, you expect it to feel like a track car all the time and you get used to those compromises, but this one doesn't seem to... No, I don't get that. I don't feel like something that...
I mean, it's obvious that we're in something sporty because of the way the gear is set out. But at no stage, as I've ever felt, there's... You know, like a double shuffle or you've got some weird thing that you need to do to change the gear or... It's just...
it's easy enough of us. What about the steering? Square for the square, circle, circle. I don't know.
I've had a lot of cars to do. I haven't got... I'm not in love with it. I sort of still...
I think I prefer the traditional round. I sort of get why they do it because you haven't got any dead spots in your instrument panel. Okay. That's going to say to you, like you said.
I must admit, occasionally, if you're driving, you end up on the sort of corners of the square. It's not that hard. Yeah. You're back at sort of 9-3.
Yeah. You don't think about it, but physically, you don't leave your hands on the floor as you always end up. Yeah. It's really funny.
Yeah. But I like flat bottom. Staring. I miss a flat bottom because...
...when you get out, you don't get your nose. Yeah. It sort of makes sense. Yeah.
It's designed 9-3. Your paddleships are quite large. They're not lads that are either large. They're almost like...
...when they're actually moving with the wheel. It's about an hour to a minute. No. You've got a steering...
There are a lot of varieties where they have six quads. Oh, they're fixed to the... Yeah. Yeah.
...but the wheel moves, but the actual shift is that. So you actually need to be that size. It's a grab. Whereas the ones that move with the steering...
...and still there's some throwback things to the HSVs and the GM stuff like the handbrake button. So you're not going to get the GTSR. A lot of these buttons and stuff feel very familiar. Yeah.
Next question. It's an American car with a couple of holds. Here. Big ones.
So in a set of console, you fit that open. Yeah, you can fit them in. The ones with the pipsies, you know, they've got... The big goss.
So that's... ...and then you've got your... Yeah, we put your console on. It's actually very close to volume C7-Z06.
Yeah. But they're all converted and the thing with the converted, the one thing that they could never change... ...that swapped the hinge over to this side. Yeah.
Sorry. They would never be able to swap the hinge over because this one always had this shape, but it was opposite. So when you went to put your stuff in the center console, you had to lift it this way. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it's still set for the American... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. ...let's end right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it was just like, we'd do your head in every time. You wanted to get in from the center console. Well, that's what they were saying. They were compromised.
There's no compromise with us. It's been built for Australia. When we were talking before about European cars, and one of the things that I think the reason the Americans did at Right Hand Drive, they wanted to get into that market. This is the base model of this in America.
It was a $60,000 car. And one of my good mates who's a Ferrari collector, and he's a really real... ...he collects them because he loves them, but he also collects them because he's a driver. He actually drives and races a lot of these collectable cars that he's got.
And his reaction to experiencing this was, he goes, you know we get screwed only in terms of the price. But it's not until you drive something like this that's built on a production line, like a normal car. And the concept that you can create this for $60,000, really makes your turn around and go, well, there's a million dollar supercar that much more special. When you can get all this feeling off a production line for $60,000, where the parts basically cheap or shit can be, your European parts.
It's a mass-produced car. There'll be parts available for the next 50 years. You're never going to have a driver to get the platform. True.
It's almost... I don't know. And it's still half price. I mean, you can tell me much about it, but compared to a Ferrari buying a Ferrari in Australia.
They raised the retail when they were released were about 190 to 200. On the second hand mark, the carbon additions are selling between $3.54. The base, $2.00 and $3.00, $3.00, $3.00, $300 mark. So they're already double.
They do most of those people who paid 160 for the bottom one. It's probably transacting at close to $300 or $100. Wow. So they did, well, COVID's probably helped that.
But when you think about the allocation, there's 50 dealers that are selling them. When I got the allocation of this, I remember talking to one of the GMXXs, and they had like 150 orders out of every dealer, and these 50 dealers. So 100 times 50. And it's about cars.