News – Page 21 of 63 – Gran Touring Motorsports

Nine Times to Le Mans: An Evening with Mario Andretti

September 3, 2024

In the pantheon of motorsport legends, few names evoke as much reverence as Mario Andretti. From the dirt tracks of Pennsylvania to the glitz of Formula One, Andretti’s career spans five decades, six continents, and nearly every racing discipline imaginable. But among his many triumphs—the Indy 500, Daytona 500, and a Formula One World Championship – there’s one race that kept calling him back: the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

In a recent installment of Evening with a Legend, Mario Andretti shared stories from his nine entries at Le Mans. What unfolded was a masterclass in endurance, humility, and the relentless pursuit of speed.

Born in Italy and raised in the U.S., Andretti’s journey to Le Mans began in 1966 with Ford’s GT40 program. Paired with Lucien Bianchi, he tackled the legendary circuit with a mix of awe and determination. Though mechanical issues cut their race short, Andretti’s speed and adaptability were already turning heads. “Any new experience is daunting, no question. But I embraced it in the most positive way,” said Mario.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Andretti’s second Le Mans outing in 1967 ended in a dramatic crash- caused by a brake pad installed backward during a pit stop. The incident not only wrecked the car but left Andretti with broken ribs and a bitter taste of endurance racing’s unforgiving nature. “The car just turned to the right… I busted some ribs and whatever. That was the race that was unfortunate,” he said.

Spotlight

Synopsis

This Evening With A Legend episode highlights the legendary career of Mario Andretti. The discussion spans Andretti’s early career, his various racing experiences, and his nine entries in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Andretti shares stories from his first race in 1966 to his return in 2000 at the age of 60. The talk covers technical aspects, racing strategies, and personal anecdotes, providing a deep dive into the endurance racing world and the evolution of Le Mans over the decades. Andretti also touches on the physical and mental challenges faced by drivers, as well as the technological advancements in racing. The episode concludes with reflections on Andretti’s lasting impact on motorsport and his involvement in future endeavors with Andretti Autosport and Le Mans.

Mario, let’s start off by talking about your “Road to LeMans” – your first visit was in 1966, with a Holman Moody Ford GT40 MkII, with co-driver Lucien Bianchi. Tell us about that first trip to LeMans. How did racing at LeMans compare to everything you’d done up to that point? And what was it like driving the GT40?
You returned to LeMans in 1967, this time in another GT40 (MkIV), and unfortunately in the middle of the night there was a bit of a mistake made in the pits… what happened?
After the incident in 1967, you didn’t return to LeMans until after completing your seasons in Formula 1. How had LeMans changed by 1982.
You were also racing with Michael in a Mirage M12 Ford. Was this one of the earlier/maybe earliest events where you and Micheal co-drove together? What was that like?
In 1988 you returned, with Michael and your nephew John, this time in a Porsche 962. Compared to the open wheel cars you’d been driving; how did the 962 differ? Describe what it was like?
You returned 3 more times back-to-back from 1995-1997 with the Courage Team – How had LeMans changed by the ‘90s?
And finally in 2006, at the age of 60, you attempted the race one more time driving for Panoz in the LMP-1 Roadster S – again, we have huge jumps in technology and changes to the circuit – your thoughts?
What do you feel is the most challenging part of driving at the 24 hours of LeMans?
What’s next for Mario Andretti? And Andretti Autosport as part of the future of LeMans?

Transcript

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Evening with the Legend is a series of presentations exclusive to Legends of the Famous 24 Hours of Le Mans, giving us an opportunity to bring a piece of Le Mans to you. By sharing stories and highlights of the big event, you get a chance to become part of the Legend of Le Mans, with guests from different eras of over 100 years of racing.

Crew Chief Eric: Tonight, we have an opportunity to bring a piece of Lamar to you, sharing in the legend of Lamar with guests from different eras. of over a hundred years of racing. And as your host, I’m delighted to introduce a racing icon considered by many to be the greatest race car driver in the history of the sport.

Born in Italy, emigrating to the United States and beginning his career racing stock cars in Pennsylvania at the age of 19, he won races in sports car, [00:01:00] sprint car, stock car, formula cars. On ovals, road courses, drag strips, on the dirt, and on the pavement. His achievements are legendary. The world watched as he won the Daytona 500, the Indy 500, and ultimately the Formula One World Championship, an unprecedented trifecta.

Mario Andretti took the checkered flag 111 times during his career, a career that stretched five decades and across six continents, and includes nine That’s right. Nine entries in the famed 24 hours of Le Mans. And with that, I’m your host, Crew Chief Eric from the Motoring Podcast Network, welcoming everyone to this evening with a legend.

And so without further ado, Mario, welcome to the show.

Mario Andretti: Thank you, Eric. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

Crew Chief Eric: Well Mario, let’s start off by talking about your road to Le Mans. Your first visit was in 1966 with the Holman Moody Ford GT40 Mark II with co driver Lucien Bianchi. So tell us about that first trip to Le Mans.

How did racing at Le Mans [00:02:00] compare to everything you’d done on the road up until that point.

Mario Andretti: First of all, I really look forward to doing Le Mans. At that point, I had only done one long distance race, which was a Daytona 500 in 66 with Ferrari, but the opportunity to go to Le Mans with Ford, there was a big, big effort there.

Their objective was obviously to win it, you know, and they did finally. So anyway, I welcomed the idea, and Lucien Bianchi was quite the veteran of Valon Dess racing, and he and I became very, very close friends, you know, over the time. The experience was good, but we didn’t finish.

Crew Chief Eric: The GT40, it was still new, it was evolving, we’ve all seen the movie Ford versus Ferrari.

Was it a lot like that, going to Le Mans with that car?

Mario Andretti: Well, I had done a lot of testing. Uh, I was part of the testing team. So I was involved in, uh, all of the running that was done. So I had a pretty good feel for the car, except that, as I said, that in [00:03:00] that particular event, they put in the, well, no, no, actually there was one later that where they put in the wrong pads, you know, on the side.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, we’ll talk about that.

Mario Andretti: Yeah. And actually in 66. I think we had an engine issue, but I felt comfortable. I felt that we had a good shot of doing well. I mean, because again, I felt good in the car, you know, and the following year, Bruce McClaren and I won the 12 hour, so I was familiar. It’s not that I didn’t have extensive road racing experience, but I was, when I was coming on pretty good in the testing, you know, my speed was, was actually comparable to anyone there.

Crew Chief Eric: So would you say that first trip Lamar was intimidating? That was probably the longest lap you’d ever driven, right? On any course, or had you done other courses like the Nuremberg ring or something like that up until that point?

Mario Andretti: No, no, that was for me. That was the first. And yeah, it can be intimidating if you let it be intimidating.

It’s just that obviously any potential negative. out of your mind, no question. You approach it the way you should approach [00:04:00] any, any new experience, if you will. I felt that we had a great team behind us. There was plenty of time to get familiar with the course. Yes, I’ve been challenging, daunting, high speed.

Yes, all of that, all of those things that we, you know, I love because, uh, I mean, I used to do the Banking at Daytona, you know, flat at 220 miles an hour. So the speed was not a factor, but anything, any new experience is daunting, no question. And again, the fact that I really, really look forward to it, I think makes a big difference.

So I embraced it in the most positive way.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you brought it up, Mario. Le Mans 1967, that was your second trip to the famed 24 Hours, and you hinted at it. There was a bit of a mistake made in the pits in the middle of the night. So what happened? Describe it for us.

Mario Andretti: Yeah, it was Aleutian Bianchi, uh, and I, and again against Zangerni and, and A.

J. Foyt. I was in the same stint as A. J. Foyt, and I thought that I probably [00:05:00] could do a bit better. Uh, I had, you know, more experience with the car and I was putting up quite a bit of distance between us. And especially it was wet and part of the stint, actually I did two stints at that point, then when I handed the car.

To Lucian, he didn’t know that we had a break issue, but we knew how to deal with it. And there was a lot of vibration, but we had to live with it up to a certain point. But he was not aware of that. I had almost a lap advantage on AJ at that point when Lucian took over. Then I’m still sitting at the wall because I was pretty well spent in those daunting two stints.

And all of a sudden he comes in. And he’s discussing the situation with one of the mechanics, like, you know, like during practice, I said, you know, there’s a race going on, but he wanted the brake pads changed, which that was not going to change anything. It was that the disc needed to be [00:06:00] changed, but it wasn’t the time.

That’s what I’m saying. But since he asked for something. All of a sudden the change in the pads and I was a bit upset. So I pulled him out. I said, I’m going back in and of course full load of fuel. And, uh, unbeknownst to me later on, I’m coming over the rise, going to the down lump chicane and breaking the car, just, just turn to the right.

That’s it. So we crashed and it was all over. Actually, I busted some ribs and whatever. That was the race that was unfortunate. Later on, when they gather all the pieces together, they found out that one of the pads on the right front was put on backwards, metal to metal, uh, since the disc was cracked, it caught and with a full load of fuel.

We still run, you know, a lot of fuel in those days and it took the wheel right out of my hands. And then we went, I went into the dirt bank and basically destroyed the front of the car.

Crew Chief Eric: So after that incident in 1967, you didn’t return to Le Mans until after [00:07:00] completing your seasons in Formula One. We’re talking a gap of 1967 all the way up to 1982.

So let’s talk about how Lamar evolved during that time period. When you returned, what was it like, you know, walking down the paddock into pit lane? How had Lamar changed since 1967?

Mario Andretti: You know, obviously, Things evolve, you know, that everything just changes for the better, if you will. It’d be, you know, the infrastructure is different and the cars, rules and all those things, it’s not that I had been away from the sport.

So I was changing with that. I expected things to be different. Of course, I felt quite comfortable in that situation as well, because. We were with a Kramer Porsche, great experience team and so on and so forth. And Felipe was a third driver, you know, very good. And of course it was, uh, Michael was his second experience, but the first experience we never got to start.

You know, well, it’s a long story there. We were on a grid and they said the car was [00:08:00] illegal. So anyway, so I had a little bit of everything as far as experiences there.

Crew Chief Eric: That was with the Mirage M12 Ford?

Mario Andretti: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Crew Chief Eric: And in 82, that was still pre bus stop, pre chicane on the Molson. So you were able to go full tilt down the straightaway.

Mario Andretti: Full tilt. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: So did you guys make it through qualifying in 82? You just didn’t make it to the grid?

Mario Andretti: Yeah, we made it through qualifying. We were on a grid. We were ready to start and all of a sudden, you know, one of the marshals come here and he’s pulling me out of the car. And I said, what’s going on?

But anyway, one thing led to another that they deemed our car illegal because they said that some of the, uh, oil coolers, intakes, so forth, were changed from qualifying to the race. So I was not aware of any of that. So they pulled us out of the race. That would have been Michael’s debut. My son Michael’s debut at the time.

Crew Chief Eric: And that would have also been the first time that you guys co drove together.

Mario Andretti: Indeed. [00:09:00] Indeed. Yes. Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: But not the last time.

Mario Andretti: Not the last

Crew Chief Eric: time. 1982, if I do my math right, and I was doing some research on this, a Porsche 924 GTR Carrera took your place. I’m wondering if that was one of our previous legends that were on the show.

Maybe that was the Jim Busby, Doc Bundy team that took your spot after the car was disqualified. Cause I heard a little bit of that story as well.

Mario Andretti: Well, I suppose that was it, but I wasn’t too interested in that.

Crew Chief Eric: Speaking of that, you know, you’ve talked about the breakdowns and the pads and the disqualifications, all these situations with the car.

And one of the biggest themes that has come up with other guests on this program is mechanical sympathy. So would you say that’s maybe one of the most important parts about endurance racing, especially racing at Le Mans?

Mario Andretti: No question. You know, it’s a mouthful when you say 24 hours, the mechanical side plays, and this is when.

Porsche comes in or Ferrari, the renowned reliability they always had and as a driver, that’s where you [00:10:00] want it to be in, quite honestly, either one. The record is insurmountable, you know, the Porsche, especially a Le Mans. Yeah, to have that opportunity, you know, it was a lot of pleasure because we finished third, but we were just behind the full factory team, which they won too.

Actually, they had Trouble right at the end at one, I think it was determined that one or two laps, we would have won that race because they’re both has a turbocharger problem and nevertheless, uh, on a podium was, it was a good beginning with my son, Michael, alongside and of course, uh, it was a good podium.

Crew Chief Eric: So the last time you and I got together, we talked about how you helped. Team Lotus and Colin Chapman developed ground effects in the Type 79. And you saw that technology carry through into the sports car and endurance world, especially at Le Mans. Here we are in the eighties moving into 1988, where you mentioned earlier, you were running the Porsche 962 with Michael and your nephew, [00:11:00] John.

And so these were full ground effect cars. And so I want to take a moment to kind of compare and contrast the 962 To everything else you driven up into that point, because a lot of us hold the 9 62 in massive regard is probably one of the most legendary endurance cars of all time. So I’m going to walk us through that experience and that technology change from the Lotus 79 and what you helped develop.

To that point in 1988, almost 10 years later,

Mario Andretti: well, obviously you learn more, you know, you develop and all of a sudden with the sports car, you have a lot more square inch area to deal with as far as your diffusers and so on and so forth. So even though obviously it’s regulated, if you will, the diffuser access and so forth, but still no ground effect downforce is what drivers we love because, you know, you have more speed through the corner.

That’s the whole objective. To me, all the drivers, I’m sure, we welcomed that feature, no question. The unfortunate thing, everybody else had it, too. [00:12:00] You know, so all you did is just go faster, which is great. I remember clearly that getting away from Le Mans at Daytona, I was, Michael and I, We’re the first ones to drive a 962 because usually Le Mans was a 956, you know, 962 was for us because that single turbocharger for him.

So, and, uh, we were the first ones actually, I was on Polo Daytona and we had a gearbox issue. Actually, I was at the infancy of ground effects for Porsche because the 962 at the beginning was like a lot of air cooling in the engine and so for qualifying, it just blocked the air intakes underneath and you gain tremendous amount of downforce obviously because of that, but in a race.

They had to obviously keep that open. So in the race, it was, it was not the same, but here at the beginning and so on and so forth, the 962, it was full, full downforce, the maximum [00:13:00] that could be allowed under the rules. And, uh, it was an awesome car to drive. Absolutely.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I have a very specific question from Neil here.

So this goes back to the 1988 race, you against the factory Porsche team with Stuck Bell and Ludwig in the car. They were the expected winners. What were you, Michael and John told to do? Like, was this still a time of team orders and rank and file and things like that? Were you told to take it easy? You just had to bring the car home.

What was the plan? And did you feel like you could beat the Jaguars?

Mario Andretti: Well, we felt that we could beat the Jaguars, but there was a strange rule in place in 1988. There was a maximum amount of fuel that you could burn for, you know, with any car. Kind of was a stupid rule, but that’s it. You had to go by it.

Quite honestly, the engineer, Mr. Singer, Herbert Singer, I loved the man. I really did. And I think he liked us and he knew that we would obey. And there was no order as far as, you know, who does [00:14:00] whatever. It’s just that who just follows the strategy. He said, if by one in the morning, it said, you’re on, on a, on a fuel mark.

He said, no deficit. You probably have a chance to win the race there. That the big competition was with the Jaguars and our teammates were in deficit of fuel, something like actually. Five or seven liters, which can mean you have to stay in the pits for that long, like for maybe 30 seconds, sometimes a minute, you know, because you won’t have fuel to finish.

And we were right on. And then what happened? We lost an injector. We went on five cylinders, you know, obviously not a disappointment, you know, with a Porsche, here we go. And we, from one in the morning to the finish, we had to go five cylinders. We lost the cylinders and we still finished. We finished sixth and what helped us.

To stay somewhat competitive with [00:15:00] the rain for at least three or four hours, which helped, but at Lamont, especially straight line, we lost tremendous amount of straight line speed, obviously, and that’s, that’s a big penalty there. So, you know, going back to the question, do we have any orders? Okay. There were no orders at all that I know because going in, you never know what’s going to happen.

If there was going to be an order, it was going to be maybe toward the end or something, you know, because of points. But, you know, we did what we needed to do as far as, uh, the stain right within that allowed fuel burn and so forth. And we were right on it. I had all the faith in the world and, uh, Mr.

Singer because, uh, you know, his experience and, uh, uh, Another I know that he liked us as well.

Crew Chief Eric: And what’s great about this time period here in the late 80s, especially early 90s, you’re still running an IndyCar or cart, whichever name you want to use at that time. So if you compare your IndyCar [00:16:00] to the 962, maybe it’s apples and oranges.

And I want to ask which one did you like better, but were they similar in a way to drive or were they just totally different animals?

Mario Andretti: Absolutely, totally different animals. I mean, you talk about the weight factor, the size. When you go from one discipline to the other, usually there’s a lot of, you know, adaptation that you have to deal with to be able to extract everything out of it.

So, you cannot compare a sports car with an open wheel with a single seater. You just cannot compare that. The sports prototypes are a lot of fun. I mean, I enjoyed it. I mean, every bit about it. It’s not to be compared with a single seater.

Crew Chief Eric: 1988 is the second to last year of the open straightaway, the open Mulsanne as we jump your story forward.

You return to Lamont in the 90s 3 times in a row, 95 96 and 97 with the courage team outside of that major change. And let’s talk about the lap itself. What else about Lamont had [00:17:00] changed from the 80s? Into the mid nineties.

Mario Andretti: When were the Porsche curves introduced? I’m trying to think because that was a huge, huge change.

Their white house corner, I think it was called, was eliminated, which, uh, you were going through a narrow bridge and all that sort of thing that was very dangerous part, probably the most dangerous part of the lot, you know, before the change that I don’t remember exactly when, but I’m glad that I had the opportunity to drive that too.

You know, as a comparison to the course.

Crew Chief Eric: So the 90s, the Courage team, three in a row, what happened?

Mario Andretti: The first one there, we, uh, we obviously, we should have won that one. I made a mistake very close to the beginning. The car that I wanted to overtake was a car in front, it was really quite slow in the wet.

Hans Stuck was one of the drivers there and I was surprised, you know, that he was that slow, but I figured, okay, it’s Hans Stuck, he’ll know that I’m coming up to overtake him. I was a bit too anxious, I should have [00:18:00] waited. 2DS is there, and he pushed me in the grass, and I spun and hit the guardrail with the left side, and of course, you know, bent.

You know, body wasn’t as bad, but there was a wishbone that needed to be changed, and unfortunately, they were not really ready for it, so it took a lot longer than we thought. I felt the responsibility to really get a lot of the time back, and I was driving like a man possessed, especially at night. And there was a time when it was, uh, it was some wet driving and again, I got back, you know, more, uh, almost all the time that, that we had, it’s still plenty of time to go.

And then Bob Wallach had a problem. He spawned something on a bush curve. So we lost some more time there. And then. And we were recovering, but we needed a few more laps. At the end, we were about four minutes behind, and we couldn’t recover that, because obviously our car was quicker than the [00:19:00] McLaren’s that won.

The only thing I can tell you, I had a lot of fun, because I, I drove my butt off, and I love that, because that, you know, we had nothing to lose, and I was qualifying every lap. And, uh, I remember one of my guys, you know, J. F. Thorman, was on the side, he said, Oh, unbelievable, Alex, you’re running, you’re turning, you know.

So that part was fun, but we missed out. We finished second, but first, first in class. So I can claim. I won Le Mans. If you win class, you still win, right?

Crew Chief Eric: That’s true.

Mario Andretti: And I have a trophy upstairs to prove it. So it should have been overall, obviously. But a win is a win. I probably had more fun than if we would have just cruised around and, you know, and won that way.

Crew Chief Eric: Outside of the other changes to the track with the addition of the chicane bus stop there on the Mulsanne, did you like that addition? You know, slowing the cars down a bit instead of what you were used to, the full [00:20:00] bore down the straightaway all the way down the Mulsanne corner?

Mario Andretti: I liked it because it was another breaking point for overtaking whatever and quite honestly made it a little more technical because the chicane at the Mulsanne, you know, I think was really, it’s well done.

It’s not a Mickey Mouse chicane, you know, it’s like a proper corner. So I think it was needed because, you know, you love the high speed, but something happens and so forth. You know, before that, again, we were reaching, you know, 220, 230 miles an hour, done this straight away. I know I did that one in the morning or something with a mark two, we were about 235 miles an hour way back when

Crew Chief Eric: those speeds were absolutely unbelievable.

When you look at the nine seventeens and the GT forties, all these cars doing 200 plus mile an hour. It’s absolutely incredible.

Mario Andretti: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Again, back to back to back three years in a row. So 96 and 97, you’re back with the courage team. Any significant stories you can share with us about 96 and 97.

Mario Andretti: It’s crazy that [00:21:00] I didn’t have a lot of luck there for some reason, I think in 96, I think it was 96, uh, we were running quite well.

What did we do? I tried to out break into the Indianapolis corner, uh, one of the Porsches. And, uh, like the fronts, I went into the sandbox. That was embarrassing. That was embarrassing. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: So you mentioned luck. And one of my predecessors on this program used to bring up, when talking to the Le Mans legends, he had this saying that was, Le Mans chooses its winner.

You don’t get to choose the winner. Whether you win Lamont’s or not. Do you feel that that’s true? Is there a certain bit of, I don’t know, mystique or superstition there that Lamont’s chooses its winner?

Mario Andretti: Well, to this winner, I mean, in a sense, because of so much can happen in a 24 hour period. In my situation, like, you know, I said, okay, I was unlucky.

Some of it, I brought the unlock. I brought on myself quite honestly, because I must admit that many times I was Caught up in a moment that, [00:22:00] uh, I could have let things go, but my specialty was not long distance. I’m only thinking of the moment. I said, Oh, gosh, why did I push that? And this was a one stupid mistake that I, I would like to have another crack at, you know?

So I follow my sword when, when, when I need to, you know, and some of the situation I brought on myself, quite honestly. The fact is, my competitive spirit, you know, was, I mean, a little bit too aggressive there for long distance. But, you know, I guess I was going about to change for some reason. I’m looking at the results here in, in, in my nine.

There were a lot of DNFs here. Nevertheless, I got quite a bit of satisfaction out of it, out of my time there, just being at Le Mans, I just love, love driving that course, I just truly did.

Crew Chief Eric: And what’s really fun about this discussion, nine times at Le Mans, we’ve only talked about eight of them so far, and I held the best one for last, because if it isn’t, Incredible enough until this [00:23:00] point and people, I’m sure searching and Googling like, Oh, Mario’s time at Lamont race results.

You’re looking at as well from the time. But in 2000, it’s not that long ago. You returned to Lamont at the age of 60 and attempted the race 1 more time. And I find that just mind blowing because how many professional drivers can say I returned to the track at that age and competed in the 24 hours. So this time you partner with pain knows in the L.

M. P. 1 Roadster s. Mhm. And when you look at the, again, mid nineties to the two thousands, it’s another jump from the last time you went to Lamont. So the circuit has changed again. It has evolved. So I want to get your thoughts on that ninth entry at Lamont. What was going through your head at 60 years old, looking back over that time.

Mario Andretti: Well, here again, you know, I just, uh, I look forward to that. As you can see, that was actually my very last professional race of my career. Uh, you know, driving with David Brabham and John Magnuson, I think it was actually a great opportunity to be with those two [00:24:00] drivers. And, uh, there’s two things that happened.

One, the left front tire blew up on me once along the way, and that’s going into Indianapolis, actually. But I didn’t crash, you know, fortunately did some damage, you know, to the body because of the high speed got in the grass a bit, but I brought it back to the pits and then at night I was really, really running well, actually.

They were very happy, the competitive times that we were doing. And then there was a crash, I think was one of the GT Porsches. There were a lot of bits on the track and I was just coming in to change, you know, at the end of my stint, and it was something in the middle of the track that went underneath the oil filter somehow stood out outside of the body underneath.

And it caught the oil filter. I felt something drag, but I had no idea. And then what now? I think it was David that took over. They were ready to go. They were all happy and all of a sudden smoke. They didn’t know what it was and they, you know, [00:25:00] lost time there to change the oil filter or whatever. So we lost quite a bit of time there and that’s why we finished about 16th or something.

Crew Chief Eric: For our listeners who have never been to Lamar before, they may only be familiar with watching the race on television, right? The actual dedicated 24 hours of Lamar, but the race itself is more than just the spectacle, you know, over the Saturday and Sunday, it takes place over the entire week, sometimes longer there’s testing, there’s night practice, there’s scrimmages, qualifiers, all this kind of thing.

And so that adds to the stress level. Of every pro driver into the car. I mean, by the time you run the 24 hours, and in some cases, the cars already run the 24 hours. By the time you get to the race, thinking about Lamont holistically, what do you feel is the most challenging part of driving Lamont?

Mario Andretti: Well, it’s the physical side to be able to stay sharp.

Physically, you’re, you’re basically spent nowadays. That’s why in those days there were three driver, but I already drove it. We were two drivers, you know, at the beginning, but three drivers, it was actually [00:26:00] quite a relief. And now they have four drivers, which, uh, I think it’s a, it’s a good idea as long as all four are up to the same level.

Yeah. I mean, it’s the physical side of it. No question about it. And as you said, there’s a lot of activity. I mean, if you pull the short straw, sometimes they say, okay, you’re going to do the morning warmup at nine in the morning. So you have to get up at seven and then you have to stay up 24 hours, which is a race starts at two in the afternoon or something.

So you get the little extra. And, and, uh, I think I, uh, I do the shorts twice. I think I had to do that. So as you can see, like I said, from a physical level, yeah. You really have to prepare properly and that’s what it’s about. I mean, it’s, uh, it’s equal for everyone, but that’s the other challenge that you have, not just the mechanical challenge.

Are you sure in the world don’t want to leave anything on the table just because you’re tired or because, uh, You know, you’re not functioning a hundred percent. So that’s a matter of pride. So that’s one thing that can tell you [00:27:00] clearly, I don’t think I’ve given up an ounce in that respect. That was a real challenge, you know, to be right on.

And again, that’s another one of those things he had paid a lot of attention to. Stay hydrated, all the things.

Crew Chief Eric: And I’m glad you brought up the physical side of racing, because multiple of our audience had either sent in a question like that, or even posted it here in the chat. And they wanted to know about the physical fitness part.

You know, if you think about it today, all these pro drivers, they have simulators and reaction time testing and physical trainers and strict diets and teams of people. You were jumping from discipline to car to races all over the world. And so for you. Was it just another day at the office or how were you keeping yourself physically prepared, even mentally prepared for all these races, especially for the 24 hour Le Mans?

Mario Andretti: Well, Eric, you have to realize what you’re up against, you know, and you prepare accordingly and you know, what’s going to be daunting, you know, whether it’s any long distance race is that long distance and you better be up [00:28:00] for it. As you said, we, we had some, uh, professional help even in those days. As far as, uh, you know, people making sure that we have the, you know, the proper meals and whatever and all of that and stay hydrated and, and then we will have somebody to do some massaging or whatever.

There was even one of the races, we had a hyperbaric chamber where you could go in and take a bit of a nap, but I’m claustrophobic, so I couldn’t use that. I was in there and I was going crazy. So Anyway, but usually the teams, you know, they have professionals, you know, to help you along that, that area.

Crew Chief Eric: Another thing that comes up when discussing the 24 hour Le Mans and how demanding it can be for a driver are the weather conditions. It is so variable. There’s other tracks, Spa, Watkins Glen, the Nurburgring are like this too, where you could be at one side of the track, it’s completely dry. And on the other side, it’s downpouring and everything in between.

But Le Mans also has this added bonus. [00:29:00] Of hitting around the summer solstice is the longest day of the year with the shortest amount of nighttime driving in all those conditions. Obviously, every driver wants to drive the perfect lap when it’s sunny in the middle of the day without the sun in their eyes, but talk about driving in the wet and talk about driving at night.

How bad is it at Lamont?

Mario Andretti: I’m glad you mentioned that actually, because. You know, even going back to, um, 95, I made the most of that at night. It was, uh, quite a few hours of wet and I stayed in the car because the worst thing to do is to be, you know, to interrupt the stint and put a fresh driver in there in the middle of the night.

Whoever starts the part drive most of the night. And that’s where I made up tremendous amount of time. You figure, oh man, it’s daunting. In a way, you never know what’s going to happen, and the visibility factor and everything. But I, I said, this is an opportunity. That’s why I was making time like crazy.

Especially I could see when, um, [00:30:00] even in our own class, when, uh, they would have a driver change. It takes two, three laps for the individual to get acquainted with the conditions, if you will. I can tell you one thing, the breaking point at the end of Molson, most of the time you couldn’t even see, you know, where the breaking point, and there was a church steeple on the right beyond the trees, and it was like a bit foggy and messy, you know.

And I was judging myself to that church steeple, and I could go probably another, maybe, uh, 100 meters or so. And then definitely, you know, that was my breaking point. I said, if that church ever moves, I’m done.

That church really, really helped me because I didn’t have to hunt for it. That’s awesome. Yeah. I can still see it.

Crew Chief Eric: So a question from our audience that falls right in line with this. Matthew asks, did you find noticeable differences in your [00:31:00] ability to stay sharp for the whole race throughout your entire career there at Lamont?

Mario Andretti: You know, you know, your own self, you know, as far as what you can do and how you can extend yourself and, and you’d be surprised. How, you know, obviously toward the end of the race, obviously you’re pretty spent, but as soon as you get in the car and all of the thing that requires, you know, the speed up, you just wake right up.

I mean, your senses just sharpen up immediately and you just go, to be honest with you. And there was some other race, one race that I thought that, you know, uh, how can I go back in, in a cockpit? It was at Sebring with Bruce McLaren, you know, because, well, anyway, it was one of the hardest races of my life.

But you back in, maybe you just somehow your senses just pick right up and you go, then you die again when you come out. It’s just, you know, it’s what it is. It’s adrenaline. All of a sudden, you’re living on pure adrenaline. At that point, [00:32:00] there’s a story about my life to, you know, my long career. When I actually came out of the cockpit officially, I had some issues, issues that I Could not understand.

And I was under the temptation of a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who, by me telling him stories about my life, my career, he says, I have it now. He says, uh, the most part of your life, he said, you, you’ve been in an adrenaline junkie and your senses, your body thinks you’re dead. Believe it or not, it took me like five years to kind of start reclaiming myself.

And it’s, uh, when I got in the cockpit again to test at Indianapolis for, uh, Tony Kanaan, I was going to have to qualify for him in, uh, 2003, just as I’m in the car in the first run, all of a sudden, I just resuscitated. I mean, I was in, in my element again, and I realizing what was been happening all [00:33:00] my life, but it’s, it’s amazing how your body just gets attuned to something and it sort of helps you deal with that.

But then if you change it dramatically, like I did, all of a sudden, you know, your senses are somewhat, I don’t know, I mean, confused, if you will. And that’s what’s happening. It’s something that was interesting, you know, talking with this professor, but he was right. He said, it’d probably take you two, three, four years, you know, to just get back to what you, you know, you’re okay again.

Crew Chief Eric: You mentioned earlier about switching between disciplines, and we highlighted the fact that there were gaps between your entries at Lamar. And so when you think about it, Coming into the sixties, you had done tons of oval tracks, stock car, sprint car. And you brought that knowledge and that experience with you to Lamar.

And then you go back and then formula one happens. And then you bring that to Lamar and then you go back and IndyCar. And you know, you, you have this leapfrog in between, even though you brought a ton of experience with you to Lamar. What did Lamont teach [00:34:00] you and what did you take back to those other disciplines of racing every time you went back sort of to your day job?

Mario Andretti: Well, I’ll tell you what it teaches you. It teaches you along this is that you’d be surprised sometime when you, you start more, you know, relaxing to some degree, how you start doing the perfect lap. And you’re still quick and you take less out of the car, especially in those days where reliability factor was a big, big, big thing.

And even the short, especially the short races, you know, to be able to just get to that zone. Long distance race, the beautiful thing about it, between stints, you think about this and that, a lot of things, then you go back. And you’re trying this, you have the luxury to try so many things. And you said to yourself, I’m going to try to do the perfect lap.

Come off the same revs where I want, because you always feel when you have good acceleration off the corner. You see it, you see that at the end of the straightaway and all that. You [00:35:00] just measure yourself. There’s always something that you learn. And yes, and in long distance, as I say, you have the luxury to keep trying and trying different things every time you’re in a car.

Maybe it’s just small nuances, not big changes, but those are the things that make all the difference, you know, and in the end. So, uh, no question. I mean, that it’s a great, great test bed for, for any driver. You know, if you really try to pay attention to a lot of things.

Crew Chief Eric: So Scott asks, what is your favorite corner or section of the Sartre?

Do you have a favorite track outside of all of the ones that we’ve already talked about?

Mario Andretti: People ask that often, you know, what’s your favorite corner, this and that. And, uh, I don’t have a favorite corner, you know, and it’s just that I think, quite honestly, Slight bit of banking. You could really lean into the front going into Indianapolis.

You know, that’s what they call Indianapolis, you know, and I sort of like that. I really tried to measure myself a deep. I could go into it and [00:36:00] just take advantage of what it can. But other than that, I like all the corners.

Crew Chief Eric: So there’s no least favorite at Lamar.

Mario Andretti: No least favorite, quite honestly.

Crew Chief Eric: One of the most popular questions from our audience of all the mail ins that we got, I kind of summarized it and created one question for you.

You’ve driven a long list of cars over your career. Which was your favorite or most memorable and why?

Mario Andretti: I’ll give you a short answer to that. Every car that I could win a race with. That’s it. That’s all I can tell you. Nothing that can top that. People ask me the same thing about what’s your favorite track, any track I want to race.

That’s it. That’s the ultimate, the only objective you have, you know, as a race driver to win, and that’s your memory. That’s the golden memory. And, uh, you fall in love with the car you’re in because. It gave you that. It gave you the opportunity and so yes, that’s the only way I can put it.

Crew Chief Eric: So that leads into another one.

By May, what was the best [00:37:00] racing moment in your career?

Mario Andretti: I must say because of what really drew me to the sport, what attracted me as a young age, a young teenager. The day that I clinched the Formula One World Championship. You know, I’ve been fortunate when, you know, as you say, premier races like, you know, the Indy 500 and all that, and even winning the Indy 500 was a great day, but my thing was winning the championship, you know, the national championship, because that’s Encompasses the whole season, you know, so I won four of those and the winning world championship and another championship, the third track championship, all of those, you know, but, you know, to answer your question, the favorite moment that, uh, obviously really, really brought it all together for me was, uh, When the ultimate dream for me started, and that’s winning the world championship.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, Mario, we are heading into our wrap up segment here, and I’m gonna morph Christopher’s question into [00:38:00] my question, which is sort of along the lines of, if you go back to Le Mans, and if you’re a fan now, would you just watch the race? But we’ll take it a little further and say, if someone asks you today, why should I go or watch the 24 Hours of Le Mans, what would you say to them?

Mario Andretti: I’m gonna watch it from the hotel. No television. Well, you see what I mean? It’s that to watch it there, when you’ve been in a car, done that, to be honest with you, I’m not a good spectator. If I had one of my own, maybe driving, if you will, you know, then it’s a different story, you know, but just to go watch.

I watch, you know, just periodically during the race and be interested. But if you were in a car, you’ve done that. Watching is not really my, my rodeo.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you’ve seen a lot of change in the last 58 years since your first Le Mans, so what are some of the highlights that you would say that have come out of Le Mans since your very, very first trip there that you would communicate to somebody that [00:39:00] maybe is interested for the first time?

Mario Andretti: What’s beautiful today is the reliability of the cars due to the Proper rules today, barring mistakes or something usually have the best chance of finishing than ever before. And that’s why the races are daunting because, uh, all the top competitors, you know, can be right there. Fighting hard. That’s the beauty of today’s long distance sports car racing and the way actually some of the U S races, it seems to run in himself, you know, they have different ruling when the yellow come out, you regroup and all that.

If you have problems. Along the way, you have a chance to recoup and, and, you know, I’m doing the yellow. That’s a good thing, obviously, uh, you never feel you’re totally out of the race that way. The races are as competitive as ever because of this, and that’s why even from a spectator standpoint, you know that there’s so much to look forward to, because most of your favorites will still be there at the [00:40:00] end, and uh, that’s a, that’s a great thing, that’s a plus.

Crew Chief Eric: So our final question, Mario, I’ve been waiting to ask this since the last time we got together. Do you have a car for me? That’s the answer, right? You hinted at going after some records even at your spry age of 85 years old now, right?

Mario Andretti: Oh,

Crew Chief Eric: four, four,

Mario Andretti: four.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, there you go. Almost, right? So what’s next, Mario?

And let’s add to that. What’s next for Andretti Autospart as part of the future of Le Mans?

Mario Andretti: Well, they obviously they’re going to be there this year, and that’s another chapter for Andretti Global, if you will. Now, I’m very proud of my son, Michael. He wants to be part of all the major disciplines in our sport.

That’s certainly one of them. So, um, yeah, we’re all excited about that. And because of that, one of these days I might be there as well. So.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, before I do the outro, I want to pass the baton quickly to ACO USA President David Lowe. Do you have any parting words for Mario before I close out?

David Lowe: [00:41:00] All right. It was certainly an honor and a pleasure to have you on.

I know the members were very, very excited and looked forward to this for quite some time. So it was very gracious of you to share your time with us this evening. so much.

Mario Andretti: Well, my pleasure. I enjoy that. You know, this always brings back some fun memories for sure.

Crew Chief Eric: Mario Andretti remains one of the greatest ambassadors and one of the most respected voices in motorsport.

You can follow Mario on social media by finding him on Twitter at Mario Andretti, on Instagram at Andretti Mario, and on Facebook at Mario Andretti Official. Be sure to visit his official website at marioandretti. com for more updates on what’s next for Mario. And on behalf of everyone here and those listening at home, thank you for sharing your stories with us.

Because it doesn’t get bigger in racing than a name Mario Andretti. A name everyone knows, past, present, and future petrolheads alike. Someone all of us can relate to. So we hope you enjoyed this presentation and look forward to more Evenings [00:42:00] with a Legend throughout the season. With that, thank you, Mario.

Thank you.

Mario Andretti: Grazie

Crew Chief Eric: mille. Arrivederci, as they say, right? Arrivederci.

Mario Andretti: Thank you. Thank you.

Crew Chief Eric: This episode has been brought to you by the Automobile Club of the West and the ACO USA. From the awe inspiring speed demons that have graced the track to the courageous drivers who have pushed the limits of endurance, the 24 Hours of Le Mans is an automotive spectacle like no other. For over a century, the 24 Hours of Le Mans has urged manufacturers to innovate for the benefit of future motorists, and it’s a celebration of the relentless pursuit of speed and excellence in the world of motorsports.

To learn more about or to become a member of the ACO USA, look no further than www. lemans. org, click on English in the upper right corner, and then click on the ACO members tab for [00:43:00] club offers. Once you’ve become a member, you can follow all the action on the Facebook group, ACO USA members club, and become part of the legend with future evening with the legend meetups.

Hello, hello, hello, hello.

Crew Chief Eric: This episode has been brought to you by Grand Touring Motorsports as part of our Motoring Podcast Network. For more episodes like this, tune in each week for more exciting and educational content from organizations like The Exotic Car Marketplace, The Motoring Historian, Brake Fix, and many others.

If you’d like to support Grand Touring Motorsports and the Motoring Podcast Network, sign up for one of our many sponsorship tiers at www. patreon. com forward slash gt motorsports. Please note that the content, opinions, and materials presented and expressed in this episode are those of its creator, and this episode has been published with their consent.

If you have any inquiries about this program, please contact the creators of this episode via email or [00:44:00] social media as mentioned in the episode.

Highlights

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

00:00 Introduction to the Legend of Le Mans
01:44 Mario Andretti’s Early Years and First Le Mans Experience
04:39 Challenges and Setbacks at Le Mans
07:02 Return to Le Mans After Formula One
10:42 Ground Effects and the Porsche 962
16:47 Racing in the 90s with the Courage Team
21:32 The Unpredictability of Le Mans
22:49 A Return to Le Mans at 60
25:07 The Physical and Mental Challenges of Endurance Racing
28:38 Weather Conditions and Night Driving at Le Mans
33:29 Lessons Learned from Le Mans
36:16 Favorite Cars and Tracks
37:53 Reflections and Future Plans
40:51 Closing Remarks and Acknowledgements

Bonus Content

There's more to this story!

Be sure to check out the behind the scenes for this episode, filled with extras, bloopers, and other great moments not found in the final version. Become a Break/Fix VIP today by joining our Patreon.

All of our BEHIND THE SCENES (BTS) Break/Fix episodes are raw and unedited, and expressly shared with the permission and consent of our guests.

Learn More

Evening With A Legend (EWAL)

We hope you enjoyed this presentation and look forward to more Evening With A Legend throughout this season. Sign up for the next EWAL TODAY!

Evening With A Legend is a series of presentations exclusive to Legends of the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans giving us an opportunity to bring a piece of Le Mans to you. By sharing stories and highlights of the big event, you get a chance to become part of the Legend of Le Mans with guests from different eras of over 100 years of racing.

After conquering Formula One, Andretti returned to Le Mans in 1982, this time with his son Michael. Though their Mirage M12 Ford was disqualified before the start, the moment marked the beginning of a family legacy at the Circuit de la Sarthe.

In 1988, the Andretti trio – Mario, Michael, and nephew John – took on the race in a Porsche 962. Despite running on five cylinders for much of the event, they finished sixth, proving that grit often outpaces horsepower. “We lost an injector… and we still finished. That’s a big penalty at Le Mans.”

Andretti’s 1995 run with Courage Competition was nearly a fairy tale. After an early mistake, he drove like a man possessed – especially in the rain-soaked night hours – clawing back time and finishing second overall, first in class. “I was qualifying every lap… I probably had more fun that if we would have just cruised around and won.”

In 2000, at age 60, Andretti returned for his ninth and final Le Mans. Driving the Panoz LMP-1 Roadster S (above) alongside David Brabham and Jan Magnussen, he faced tire failures and debris damage but still delivered competitive stints. “That was actually my very last professional race… I just truly loved driving that course.”

Andretti’s reflections reveal the deeper truths of endurance racing: mechanical sympathy, mental sharpness, and the ability to adapt across decades of technological change. From judging braking points by a church steeple in the fog to pushing through physical exhaustion, his stories are a testament to the human spirit behind the wheel. “You’d be surprised how you start doing the perfect lap when you relax… and take less out of the car.”

Though Le Mans never crowned him its overall winner, Andretti’s legacy there is etched in every corner he conquered, every mistake he owned, and every lesson he passed on. His story reminds us that greatness isn’t just measured in trophies – but in the pursuit itself.

ACO USA

To learn more about or to become a member of the ACO USA, look no further than www.lemans.org, Click on English in the upper right corner and then click on the ACO members tab for Club Offers. Once you become a Member you can follow all the action on the Facebook group ACOUSAMembersClub; and become part of the Legend with future Evening With A Legend meet ups.

This content has been brought to you in-part by support through...

From Dirt Tracks to Digital Dreams: Stefy Bau’s Journey from Motocross to Esports Innovation

INIT eSports

August 29, 2024

From Dirt Tracks to Digital Dreams: Stefy Bau’s Journey from Motocross to Esports Innovation

What happens when a fearless motocross champion turns her sights toward the digital frontier? You get Stefy Bau – founder and CEO of INIT Esports – who’s redefining motorsports through the lens of esports, sim racing, and STEM outreach. In this episode of the Break/Fix podcast, Stefy shares her incredible journey from the trails of northern Italy to the cutting edge of virtual racing.

Stefy’s story begins in the picturesque region of Lago di Como, Italy. Raised by motorsport-loving parents, she was immersed in racing culture from the start. At just four years old, her father handed her a real Italjet mini dirt bike – not a toy – and taught her the basics in a cornfield near their home. By six, she was beating boys on local tracks and quickly rose through the ranks, from regional races to the Italian and European championships.

Her talent was undeniable. By the time she reached the U.S., she had contracts with Kawasaki and Honda, racing professionally until a devastating injury at age 28 ended her career. A crash on a double jump nearly cost her both legs. Though she recovered, she chose not to own a motorcycle again, knowing her competitive spirit would push her too far.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Stefy’s racing résumé includes legendary circuits like Mugello, Imola, and Monza. She even drove an IndyCar as part of a USA Network show, showcasing her versatility across motorsport disciplines. Her passion for dirt bikes never waned, and her loyalty to Honda – rooted in childhood dreams – remains strong.

When asked about her dream bike, she bypasses the expected Ducati or Aprilia and instead reflects on her time racing an Aprilia in Italy, emphasizing her love for off-road riding.

Spotlight

Synopsis

This Break/Fix episode, founder and CEO of Init eSports, Stefy Bau, shares her journey from a motorcycle racing enthusiast in Italy to an influential figure in eSports and sim racing. Stefy discusses her early passion for motorsport, inspired by her family’s love for the sport, which led her to a professional racing career until a career-ending injury. She also highlights the challenges and opportunities for women in motorsport, advocating for greater media coverage and support. Stefy’s current focus is on creating pathways for women in motorsport through initiatives like the Sim4STEM program and the screen-to-speed movement. These programs aim to make motorsport more accessible for young girls by blending STEM education with sim racing, ultimately nurturing future talent. Stefy emphasizes the importance of equal opportunities, media attention, and mentorship in building a more inclusive and diverse motorsport community.

Before we jump into all the specifics around INIT ESPORTS and the SIM4STEM program, tell us about your Motorsports journey. How did you get mixed up in all this? Did you come up through racing, a racing family or maybe started out as a fan?
What was it that set INIT ESPORTS into motion?
Motorcycles don’t get as much representation in the Sim World, but you’ve managed to create an entire eSports series around MotoCross – how does that work?
We know “all the players” in the car sim world – but What type of gear is being used for Motorcycle sims? Controllers? Or Rigs?
How has sim racing changed Motorsports?
The Screen to Speed Dream Team – what is that all about?
Challenges with SIM racing yet to overcome? Does sim racing/esports have the same barriers/costs compared to IRL motorsports?
Was the pandemic “the height” of sim racing? Or is it still on the rise?
Let’s unpack the SIM4STEM program – how does it work?

Transcript

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Break fix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the auto sphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrol heads that wonder. How did they get that job or become that person?

The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.

Crew Chief Eric: Brace yourself, race fans for a mind blowing SIM racing event, an adrenaline pumping motorcycle online tournament. Our guest tonight is part of an unstoppable e sports powerhouse dedicated to delivering unparalleled excitement to fans and groundbreaking sponsorship opportunities to brands alike.

Trevor Marks: At INIT Esports, founder and CEO Stefy Bau doesn’t just settle for the org. She creates extraordinary experiences by producing thrilling online competitions and real life events that transcend the boundaries of the e sports universe. And she’s here with us. [00:01:00] On BreakFix to share her story and help you understand why you need to get more involved in the world of esports.

Crew Chief Eric: And with that, let’s welcome Stefy to BreakFix.

Stefy Bau: Hi everyone. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Crew Chief Eric: And joining me tonight is my co host and returning BreakFix guest, founder of K53, He’s part of TORC Atlanta and an e sports aficionado. Let’s welcome back Trevor Marks.

Trevor Marks: Hello. Hello. Welcome to be here.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, Stefy, like all good break fix stories, there’s a super heroine origin story.

So let’s jump into your motorsports history before we deep dive into in e sports and your Sim4STEM program. Tell us about your motorsports journey. How did you get mixed up in all this? Did you come through a racing family or did you start out as a fan?

Stefy Bau: So my story goes like this. So you’re probably starting to hear that I have an accent.

So I am from Italy. I was a little girl with the passion of motorcycle racing. Why? Because my mom and dad, they used to be a fan of the sport. So they used to go and watch the world [00:02:00] championship round every time I was coming to Italy. So basically I was born going to the track every time there was a big world championship race happening.

At the age of four, my dad ended up buying a motorcycle and he was going just, uh, riding in like an enduro in the trails, you know, just from the house, go and do trail riding. And every time he was coming back, you know, like from his rides, he was super happy, biggest smiles on his face, dirty, full of mud and whatever.

And I start saying. Hey, I want to do that too. So ask mom and dad, I want a motorcycle. And surely enough, instead of buying me a motorcycle that was like a toy, like a battery or whatever, they ended up buying me a real motorcycle. It was a mini bike. So it was like a full on dirt bike from an Italian company called Italjet.

And yes, you know, like a very, very small, similar to what big bikes are nowadays. Maybe even like more like the Pee Wee from Yamaha. You know, the PeeWee 50. So a 50cc bike with all the gear and [00:03:00] everything. And they put me on it, you know, there was a cornfield in front of the house. They told me like, right hand is the throttle, left hand is the brake.

And here I go. So for a couple of years, I started practicing around in the field doing figure eights. Everybody that knows dirt bike or motorcycle understand what figure eights are. You know, like you continue to do it over and over to learning about cornering. When I was six years old, what happened was that my dad in one of his trip that he was out and about riding, he figured out that there was a small track with other kids who were participating.

He shoots back home and says to me, get dressed, get ready. We’re going to go there because there are other kids that they are racing motorcycle like you do. Up to them point again, my mom and dad, they were just fan of the sport. So they thought the motocross was only for adult. So they were completely like, Oh my God, this also racing for kids.

So it was a revelation. We went to do this little track. I was following my dad in the trails, you know, me with my little motorcycle, him with his arrive at the track. And then [00:04:00] he said, Hey, go in. This is the direction I found. In about one hour time, I was beating all the little boys in the track. So the family there looked at my dad and say, Hey, where are you guys coming from?

And my dad said, well, we live like six kilometers down the road. We just came up, you know, like experience this. So we basically learned that the war racing for little kids. We did a proper, you know, licensing or whatever in Italy to be able to do that. Go to my first race, the first race in my life. I finished third among little boys.

After that, that year I won every races I entered. So. You know, I was completely like, yeah, I like this. I wanted to continue racing and that’s how I got involved with them motorsport as a whole.

Crew Chief Eric: And so for our listeners, just to give them a reference point, you grew up in the Lago di Como area in the northern part of Italy, you know, bordering France and Switzerland.

That’s not a super dense area. populated area like Milano or Parma or Moldena or Bologna, [00:05:00] where you would expect to see more motorsport where Lamborghini is, where all the racetracks are. So what was it like racing up in the North of Italy or in South of France and South of Switzerland? Of

Stefy Bau: course, immediately we ended up just doing a local racing around the area at that time, you know, what’s called mini crosses.

So for mini bike. It was a very popular, you know, like the region of Lombardia, which is where Lake Como, Milan and all the other province are, was very popular. Had a lot of kids doing this as a sport. So, you know, we learn, you know, starting to do local and then regional events and then eventually the Italian championship.

And then from there, I went over to the European championship and I came to America and continue my career.

Crew Chief Eric: So are you still racing bikes today or how long did you race bikes for?

Stefy Bau: So I race bikes until I was 28 years old when I had a career ending injury. It’s okay because it happens, you know, motor sport is not easy on you.

And sometimes you’re lucky. You only have a few injury and you can still be [00:06:00] okay. Sometimes it becomes difficult. In my case, unfortunately, I came up short on a big double jump. Yes. Both of my ankle exploded and they wanted to amputate my legs. So. I have my legs, I can walk, but I don’t race anymore. I don’t own a motorcycle because I know that my brain would be like, wanted to twist that throttle like I used to.

So I purposely don’t own it. But every once in a while, if there is an occasion, yes, I’ll just hop on and do a couple laps here and there.

Crew Chief Eric: So did you own street bikes as well?

Stefy Bau: No, actually, especially when I came in the United States, I had my first contract with Kawasaki and my second contract with Honda.

In my contract, it said that I was not allowed to ride on the street because this being like an investment for the brand to have me racing for them and represent them in the various championships around the world. It became kind of like, Hey, in the street, you know, it’s not so much about me and my skill.

They of course proven over and over again that there is no issue there, but it’s more like about the cars. They [00:07:00] don’t see you. So now never been a fan of going on the street, but I did race road racing when I was back in Italy. So I ended up racing in Misano, Mugello, Monza. Imola and all of those, you know, back in the days.

And I decided to do it. I was about 17 years old when I doubled down and did the motocross and road racing that year, just because, you know, like I wanted to try something different than the dirt and I can tell you though, my best performance in on road racing was when was wet. Because at that point, the bikes were like shaking all around.

So it was more of my familiar territory. You know, they’re going just on a straight line and hitting the marks.

Crew Chief Eric: You opened a great opportunity for an additional Pit Stop question. You mentioned you were sponsored by Kawasaki and by Honda. So if money was no object, what kind of bike would you buy?

Stefy Bau: For me?

Like, since I was a very little girl, you know, and looking at America’s Supercross, the teams that they were winning was the Honda. It kind of is still embedded in me that [00:08:00] Honda is the choice, but I think it is because it comes from when I was little, you know, and when. I had this dream that I looked at my mom and dad in the eyes and say, one day I will race Supercross in the United States of America.

This, I was six years old. So you can imagine, you know, like the look in the face of my parents are like, yes, kiddo, go out and play. Right. But I ended up doing it. And like one thing that is very rewarding that comes back full circle is the fact that, that those guys that were on my wall. When I was a little girl, I got to be part of this industry and I have their cell phone number.

They respect me, you know, and a little girl coming from a small town in Italy, near Lake Como, had a dream and just went for it.

Crew Chief Eric: I expect her to say Ducati.

Trevor Marks: Yeah. A lot was to get the Primota, but. You know,

Crew Chief Eric: or an Aprilia or something.

Trevor Marks: Right.

Stefy Bau: No, it’s because it’s motocross, you know, like Ducati just made the motocross bike.

My heart has always been more into dirt bike, but I have to say when I raced [00:09:00] that year in the road racing circle in Italy, I was on board of an Aprilia. So here you have it.

Crew Chief Eric: So, as a comparison, did you ever turn laps in a car on a road racing circuit so you could have an idea what it was like to race the bike and race a car?

Stefy Bau: So, what happened to me was this. When I was in the United States, you know, and I started to be kind of like on top of my game here, I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in a, uh, TV show made by USA channel. So those was the early 2000. So this show was supposed to be, the idea around it was to pick different female sport of extreme sports and make them do another extreme sports.

So I did two episodes of them. One was skydiving. And I loved it, you know, like first the jump, a tandem, second jump solo, crazy, you know, but it seems for athlete, of course, I go for it. But the second one was I drove an IndyCar with that, you know, back in Las Vegas, there was actually, I just learned this not too long ago, that Derek Daly was the guy that had this in [00:10:00] Las Vegas back in the days.

It’s funny that everything comes full circle as we know in the industry, because now I work with his niece, Nikki Daly in one of our program. So it’s funny, like how everything works. But yes. So I drove in the car and by doing the circuit, yes, road racing and car racing at the end, you know, the racing line is still the same.

It’s just that when one of you are sitting, the other one, you just have a lot of wind against you.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you had my attention at Mugello. It is a favorite based there in the Florence area for those that don’t know where it is. Then you mentioned Imola. So I have a question and I know it’s, It’s probably the most infamous turn in all of racing.

What’s Tamburello like on a motorcycle?

Stefy Bau: Everything on a motorcycle is definitely much more dangerous feeling than in the car. You know, no matter how you want to present it, you have nothing to protect you. So if you crash it, it’s going to hurt, you know? It is just like racing in general, it is just amazing.

I grew up doing that. So like any track anywhere, if I get an opportunity, I was always like, yep, let’s do [00:11:00] this. So Tamburello or the Monza wall or whatever, you know, like let’s go and let’s do it.

Crew Chief Eric: So this comes up a lot on the four wheeled side of the house. Who is the GOAT? Who is the greatest of all time?

And we immediately go to Formula One and it becomes this Senna versus Schumacher and Hamilton and Verstappen discussion and it just all kind of spirals. But when you turn your focus to motorcycles,

Trevor Marks: and

Crew Chief Eric: there’s one name that comes to mind, and I want to see if you agree or not, is it Rossi?

Stefy Bau: Well, yes, yes.

So for road racing is Rossi. I think he won 10 world title, nine or 10 world title, but it really changed the interaction with the sport. So it was really like an actor, you know, in a way. So by doing that. All the young kids wanted to be right now, influencer. He was the original influencer by acting in the way they act.

And, you know, like, I mean, it comes from a family that is like that too. Cause I don’t know if you guys know, but his dad used to go around with a paddock with a chicken on a leash. [00:12:00] So like, that’s his dad. Yeah.

Trevor Marks: So it runs in the

Stefy Bau: family. It’s kind of like a disenvironment, but like a definitely Valentino was able to do.

For the sport. And I think Mark Marquez was destined to follow, but then, you know, like with a lot of injuries, you know, he’s still like an amazing, talented guy, but of course the injury kind of like put a little bit of a wrench into his, uh,

Trevor Marks: blame Honda for all of that. But we don’t have to,

Stefy Bau: well, you know, like it’s doing good with Ducati right now, but if we are talking about.

Door bike, you have different category because you have the American reality and then you have the world championship that goes everywhere. Sometimes it comes to America, but you know, it’s like that. So for the world championship, you have generational talent. It used to be like when I was younger, Stefan Evers was amazing.

He won 10 world title. Then of course, Antonio Cairoli. Amazing. He won nine world titles, the next [00:13:00] generation. And now, you know, in supercross and motocross, you add the Jeremy McGrath, the king of supercross, you know, like Ricky Carmichael, Bubba Stewart,

Trevor Marks: Bubba Stewart, man,

Stefy Bau: and motocross. And now, you know, Jack Lawrence, you know, Jack Lawrence, a 20 years old kid.

There’s seven years that does not lose a championship. So, you know, his goal is to have more wind that Jeremy McGrath and he has the potential to do that. So, you know, there are those generational talent to the change of the sport and it’s just amazing to see.

Crew Chief Eric: So the way you describe that lets me draw a parallel between Supercross, Motocross and WRC.

Cause if you think about the dynasties that exist at WRC, they’re very, very similar.

Stefy Bau: They’s a very. Similar concept, this generational talent that they change the sport. It’s just amazing to witness. I believe that if you are arriving second, you don’t like that much, but it is needed to change the sport. I like to think, and I’ve been told that I’m one of those for the women, you know, I’ve been called the [00:14:00] goat.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, like you’re the Michel Mouton. Yes,

Stefy Bau: yes, but then, you know, now there are other girls, you know, like there is a motocross. this young lady from the Netherlands. Her name is Lotte van Droenen. She’s amazing. But why she’s the first year that she’s doing the full on women’s championship. Leading the championship.

But why? Because she race with the boys. Cause she raised her whole career with the boys, same equipment in there with the boys. So now, you know, like competing with the girls, she is a little bit of a step up compared to them. I mean, amazing girl and amazing talent, but you can see the difference, which is what we need to accomplish by continuing having the women’s series.

And then get the women to compete with the boys. And then you see. That pathway to participation,

Crew Chief Eric: you raced for over 20 years professionally. And so how did that lead to the world of e sports? What happened in between and guide us into the inception of what you’re doing now?

Stefy Bau: Yes. [00:15:00] So of course, you know, like I’ve been one of the few women that’s.

was able to break the glass ceiling in motorcycle racing and therefore open opportunity for more other girls. I always have that desire to figure it out ways, how we can have motorsport two or four wheel as opportunity to bring more female into the industry. That doesn’t necessarily mean as. athlete per se, but it could be also part of the industry as a whole.

So I was in Italy in 2020 before the world change up to that point, that my journey into e sport was only in the fact that I was featured in two video games. As a character, when I used to be a racer. So after that point, that was my involvement with the industry, but I was in Italy and my niece at the time, I noticed that she was watching people playing video games for two, three hours a day.

So that got me going and I’m like, wait a second, maybe, you know, like a sim racing could be a potential way to create a pathway to participation for women in [00:16:00] motorsport. We all knew like at that point. Pandemic happened, all sports closed down. So Formula One was king, utilizing sim racing as an opportunity to continue to have fun, you know, like engage with the audience and so on and so forth.

So it just happened at the right time. So I study a lot, I learn a ton. And then I quickly discovered that there was no one putting effort for women. So at that point, I created a ity sport with a goal of my two passion. One pillar is motorcycle sport racing, and the other pillar is sea racing. Focusing on women.

Crew Chief Eric: eSports in general is huge, and it can be subdivided as Trevor and I have talked about many times before. You know, are you first person shooters? Is it I racing? Is it this? Is it that? But I feel like motorcycles don’t get as much representation in the sim world. I can only think of a couple of titles in my head and let’s put the arcade ones like road rash and those things to the side, you know, there’s ride and there’s some other titles out there, but there’s not that many.

So you’ve managed to create an entire e sports series [00:17:00] around. Motorcycles and motocross. So how does that work?

Stefy Bau: So again, I study a lot and I figured out what was on the market in regards to games. And just like you touch point there, there are the arcade games, but there are a couple of games in the market right now.

They are pure simulator game. So those games are exactly the same. How iRacing or Assetto Corsa Competizione work. Meaning like they are meant to have the same physics of a real motorcycle and therefore they target gamers that they have a knowledge of what racing is about. With that in mind, I started to create the partnership with a publisher of those kind of games.

And then because I come from the motor sport industry as a whole, for me, it was just like a few phone calls and try to say to different Federation, And to big trade show in the motorcycle industry. Hey, there is an opportunity here to bring the young demographic into the industry by leveraging gaming.

So with that, we ended up creating the first ever [00:18:00] Ecma eSport event. Ecma for the people that they don’t know. It’s the number one trade show for motorcycle in the war in 2024 is the 110th year that this show is going on in Italy. And there are brands from all over the world that go there. Mostly, you know, to show product to everybody, talk about the motorcycle coming out for the new year and so on and so forth.

So just like motorsport in four wheel, two wheel racing needs more kids. So when we talk to them in regards to the opportunity, Hey, we can bring a new demographic here, it was just a no brainer. So in four days that we did the event there, we got 4, 000. Thousand people through our event and we ended up having those two competition.

One, there was a four gaming specifically. So we basically open up a sign up online to compete. We got 10, 000 people to download the game to compete in this championship where the top 40 were competing for four races in a row. And [00:19:00] then the top 10 in that championship, we brought them to the event in EICMA in Milan for the grand finale.

And these are the gods of this game, you know, like, because if you see them playing, they’re like, how it can even be possible, you know, but we know that it works like that in real racing too, right? You know, like in Vestappen or Hamilton. People will say, how is it even possible, you know? So it works the same way, but they did this and it was incredibly successful.

But then we came up with another event there, we call the VIP event, where we were able to have the top three of the finale of the motocross game on MXY to race the very next day on simulator with a pickup truck, with Danny Pedrosa, Antonio Cairoli, David Bulliga, and all of this kind of like a legend. Of the motorcycle two wheels world.

And it was like magic in the works because whereas we got Danny Pedrosa to win the race on the pickup truck, one of the gamer got third overall. [00:20:00] So it was super good to see, you know, like that now stellar people, they have had success, you know, in their industry as a racer, they were right there competing, you know, with kids that they may otherwise would never even have a chance to even meet them, let alone, you know, compete against them on a video game.

Trevor Marks: Right. What’s your sim of choice? What do you like to drive on?

Stefy Bau: I don’t drive on the sim. I’m too busy running a company, you know, and try to, to change the world.

Trevor Marks: I’ve seen you in the sim. I’ve seen you in the sim a couple of times.

Stefy Bau: This might sound funny, but I’m mostly in the sim to discover if a potential game can be part of the movement.

So I tried the game as a, See it, you know, like, and then we can discuss it about creating possible partnership or whatnot. Now, I really like it for me, you know, me travel. I work with everybody because I do believe that every company out there has the same mission. The industry is big enough that we don’t do one specific seam only.

So we like to give [00:21:00] opportunities to everybody. And you know, sometimes there’s one. Cockpit, sometimes it’s a different cockpit, you know, like, and I think also that helps, you know, like bring back feedback to the same companies to learn if there is updates that can be made to kind of target a little bit more the female audience.

You know, so it’s important for us to be able to use different opportunity to kind of help the industry grow.

Trevor Marks: We know about How important simulator and what equipment that we use for car simulation. What is that look like for motorcycles? Is it controllers? Are there other simulator rigs? I mean, I know things have progressed a lot since your career.

What does that look like now for someone that’s competing at the highest level?

Stefy Bau: As of right now, everybody still compete on controllers. You know, we PCs, but you know, like, because I’m very much involved in this, I’m talking with lots of supplier to figure it out ways to create something that will give the feeling of a simulator, because for anybody that ever rode a motorcycle, you will know, you know, there is very easy.

Okay. [00:22:00] Difficult to be able to reproduce like the G force of a corner or even the sensation of doing a triple jump in Supercross, right? But we are getting there mostly in a way that at least how my company is looking into this and provides a suggestion to hardware company is to make it in a way that it is affordable.

Because again, you know, the key is there. There is some opportunity out there, but they are 100, 000 and a kid that cannot spend 100, 000 to have a simulator in their bedroom, right? You know, those are more like for training purposes, much more similar to what you will see, like a Dallara for the real car simulator.

So they are meant with that concept in mind. But like, if we wanted to bring more kids toward the sport, again, that being two or four wheels, you need to do it in the way that it’s accessible. So we are working on it. So there is going to be something happening by the end of the year. So just stay tuned.

Trevor Marks: That’s great.

Crew Chief Eric: And that’s a special situation too, because you’re dealing specifically with a [00:23:00] discipline within motorcycle racing. Which is motocross, you know, we’re talking about gear here for a moment. And I want to pull on a thread because I recently took my daughters to an arcade and they glommed on to these road racing arcade machines over there.

And you get on a physical bike and you lean it over and you use the throttle and the brake and these kinds of things. So that seems to exist for the road racing side of motorcycles. Is that ever going to translate? I mean, those are big apparatuses to your point. It’s not really going to fit in the bedroom.

Maybe some thoughts on what that might look like.

Stefy Bau: I’m going to give you a little bit of a insight information on that. So if you’re going to use a simulator, like arcade style simulator for road racing, most of the people that want to really go fast, what will they will do is put both feet on the ground and move the bike side by side.

So that’s not racing, that’s not a simulator, you know what I mean? So the purpose is like appealing to the eye, but it doesn’t do what we are trying to make happening. That’s why those are not [00:24:00] really applicable to eSports as a whole. What we are trying to create is something that it will give somewhat the feeling of grabbing a handlebar, but then having the opportunity to be integrated, like perhaps with VR.

With VR technology, then at that point, you can trick the brain to feel like that even though you’re not really moving that much, your brain thinks that you are. And then you can apply that on dirt bike games and road bike games.

Trevor Marks: Since you’re talking about opening up the sim racing world to motorcyclists and making it more accessible, how has the Sim racing changed motorsports and racing in motorsport.

Stefy Bau: To me, the 2020 pandemic is actually what spearheaded like the movement to new heights. I mean, sim racing is a very great opportunity to enter the sport. With a fraction of the cost,

Trevor Marks: it

Stefy Bau: will never substitute go karting. And every time, you know, like we speak about this, I think everybody’s aligned on that.[00:25:00]

You know, like it’s not the e sport and sim racing will take away go karting. No, that’s not possible. But it is an addition to discover talent. Because even go karting per se, we know there is. Just a category of people that tend to have the funding to be part of that.

Trevor Marks: Correct.

Stefy Bau: We’ve seen raising by lowering the barrier of entry.

Now you give the opportunity to many more people for every background, every gender, you know, every ethnicity to be able to Give it a try. So that’s what is important. I feel about sim racing and for us in particular, Trevo, you already know, we really focus on the girls because it’s never been done before and we speak on a way of authenticity, you know, like our team face forward is always women.

We are proud to say these four women by women. Because we understand that community, we work with them and we have created this safe space where, uh, you know, like this participant are in there and we support them and thanks to the opportunity in the industry that we are able to [00:26:00] provide, we are continue to open that doors, which then at the end, motorsport as a whole wins.

Trevor Marks: Absolutely. And one of the things that we’ve seen, and I’m sure you’ve seen this as well. And during the iRacing series. Is that they had that moment where the drivers were cooling their tires on the grass and then coming over into now I did see a driver doing that in like a GT3 class some point in real life, which is the risk reward.

There is crazy. But have you seen sim racers learning? Bad habits, because there’s like an iRacing line and driving, right? There’s things you can do where you’re super competitive online. But if I put you in that real car, that’s not a feasible move. You can’t really go for that gap. You can’t really take the curbs that hard.

And the reason why is because it hurts. If you’re in a formula car and you take a curb on some of these turns, it’s gonna hurt. Have you seen that? And how is that gonna impact the sim racing Motorsports ecosystem moving forward?

Stefy Bau: Everyone is gonna try anything in their power to win , no matter what. Right, because that’s the the [00:27:00] sense of racing, right?

Correct. I mean, I think it was last year or maybe a couple years ago, there was a professional race car driver. They took the racing line , so he rode the wall.

Trevor Marks: Yes, in NASCAR, that was a absolute video game move. 100%,

Stefy Bau: 100 percent

Trevor Marks: banned to hell. Now, absolutely do not do it again, but he got in with it,

Stefy Bau: but this is the point, right?

You know, the point, like you will do anything and everything in life to get that little advantage. You know, like, uh, if you have tried in iRacing and like, Hey, I’m crazy enough. You know, I’ve done it bad enough. I’m going to try it on a real racing that is going to happen. And then of course, all the organization, like everything, if you do it once and it’s not good, then you create the rules so that you can do it anymore.

In a way, I feel it goes both ways. You know, people are going to always try anything, you know, they can. It’s good to see that in, at least in digital racing. So in I racing and all of the scene racing, you don’t have the [00:28:00] risk to get hurt. So

Trevor Marks: that’s

Stefy Bau: the point there. And in real life depends how crazy you are, I guess, how bad you want it.

Crew Chief Eric: But isn’t that what we judge the quality of the sims on? Especially if we come from the racing world, how good they are or how realistic they are. So for me, maybe I’m a purist. It annoys me if you can get away with doing something that isn’t feasible in real life. And I watched some of these other racers or I look at some of the ghost files, you know, even in Assetto Corsa or some of the other things that I run.

And it’s just like, that’s impossible. I’ve driven this track in real life. You can’t do that. And you watch their replay and it’s like, How does the system even allow it? So when you guys are judging the competition, you mentioned the rules change, but do you take that into account? Like that isn’t humanly possible and that weighs against the sim racers.

So there’s that risk reward there.

Stefy Bau: When you create a sim racing competition, do you put out a lot of rules for participants so they know beforehand, you know, what the expectation is. So even that, for instance, you know, like [00:29:00] we run most of the time tight racing where a contact is not allowed. Yeah. Because that’s the same thing in racing, you can not just go out there and put somebody on the wall just for the fun of it.

So you kind of like try really much to mimic the in real racing world. But then again, it is a digital environment. As you were saying earlier, you’re not going to feel the G force. So, you know, like if you are able to. Keep the car somehow on the track by doing something that you think it is impossible to do in real life, they’re going to try to do it no matter what.

And I can tell you that, you know, there are some people out there that are so good in digital environment that it just blows your mind away. You’re just thinking, just like you said, it’s not possible. I cannot believe that this is possible, but I witnessed more than one time than doing it in real life.

On a simulator, you look at them and you look what they are doing on the screen. And it’s like, well, they are doing it.

Crew Chief Eric: But we also have seen, let’s say, movies highlight this transition from digital to the real world. Let’s take the Gran Turismo movie [00:30:00] as a prime example. So has that happened in the two wheeled world in motorcycles where someone has gone from digital and gone in real life?

What is their feedback been?

Stefy Bau: In motorcycle, it’s not been done yet. It’s one of my tasks that I wanted to achieve. Again, for the nature of motorcycle, it doesn’t really translate that much compared to what it is on the scene. We wanted to create opportunities where we can get the best scene racing motorcycles to take classes eventually, unless they’re already a racer, then, you know, they’re already a racer, but if they are not to take classes.

To be able to bring them into the industry in a smart way. So that’s the progression. But you’re never gonna be William Baron that, you know, wins a scene racing motorcycle event and then go out and win a Supercross event. There’s no chance. It’s not possible that way. But again, it’s possible to create a pathway.

to participation, but I also want to bring out because you said about [00:31:00] the Gran Turismo movie, we did something for that for girls. The screen to speed original, you know, was exactly that. So we add the competition and travel was part of it. So you witness it. We create this online competition, girls from all over the world sign up, participate online, and then the top 20, the best of this qualification, we brought them to Las Vegas during the NASCAR Penza 400 event, and not only they were like there when the race was happening around them, imagine, you know, the scenario, but the winner did not even have a driving license.

And we brought her back, you know, like to test in a real Porsche 911 cup car and her performance was like mind blowing. So exactly the same effect of a Gran Turismo. And we are using that to be able to now link opportunities through the movement to eventually discover talent, even for the F1 Academy. So continue to dig deeper within the community of eSports, but also [00:32:00] we’re going to get to that, but like with the Sim4STEM program that goes in school, it’s all about trying to discover talent, give them chance and when they’re young, take them by hand and say, Hey, this is an opportunity for you starting from Sim.

And then. Having the door open to potentially go into a real race car.

Trevor Marks: Do you see the future for sim racing being more screen to speed programs and more of a pipeline being built out? Or how do you see this relationship with sim racing and motorsports evolving?

Stefy Bau: I think it goes hand in hand because what we’ve been saying, right?

It’s a way to get the sport in front of people that maybe otherwise would never try it. So, it would be a no brainer in my opinion if it just stays separate one from the other. We have proven more and more that there is the pathway to participation and I see that it’s going to continue to evolve that way.

Brands are going to start looking more and more into SimRacer than putting them in go karting or like mini cars or whatever it is. And again, for [00:33:00] us, we are the original for the women and we do have the community. And it’s been very rewarding to see and discover this talent from all over the world and create this environment that it’s for them is a safe space.

We are there with a sense of women supporting women to. Be arm in arm with each other. So if that one will step out and compete, maybe one day in Formula One, she will know that there is an army of other girls that we have created behind her there to support.

Trevor Marks: I believe it’s Formula Two. There’s no power steering, right?

Stefy Bau: Correct.

Trevor Marks: I don’t know what I was watching. Some type of series, women in racing. There was someone. Of authority in racing with saying that they need to add power steering for women because they’re not strong enough to do it. I have friends that are MMA fighters that are women. I have friends that are boxers.

I really strongly take offense to that the idea that a woman is not strong enough or cannot gain the strength necessary To turn the wheel because she’s gonna have to gain the strength to keep her head up as you deal with the g forces And this is women talking about how this needs to be brought down So what is your opinion on that

Stefy Bau: [00:34:00] in formula one car?

You have steering assistant So therefore, if a woman is in a Formula One car, she’ll drive with a steering assistant, but if they are in Formula Two or in Formula Four, they should drive exactly the same that the guys drive. So like same equipment is incredibly important to continue to tell the story that women belong there.

So if you start messing with the equipment, then it becomes. Not a good opportunity to compare Apple to Apple. Right. The thing that I wish it will happen is like that the Formula One Academy, instead of driving with Formula Four car, they will drive Formula One car among themselves. They have testing car, all of this team, they can have testing cars.

They have two for each driver during the races. They can have tasting car and have a woman on that. Now you’re talking the same now is Apple to Apple, but like having the girls in the Formula Four car and then putting them alongside the Miami GP with the Formula One car, of course, the girl are going to look silly, you

Trevor Marks: know, like much slower.

Stefy Bau: [00:35:00] Those cars are silly compared to Formula One car. And I guarantee you each and every one of these girls, if you give them the opportunity to be in a Formula One car and compete amongst themselves, they will sign their life away right now and say, Put me in 100%. And as I was saying a little bit ago, like motocross, that’s my sport.

That’s exactly how it happens. That is the women’s world motocross championship, the rides on 250 or stroke machine. Exactly the same of the MX2 world championship with men. What that creates is like equal. Level. So now you can really compare apple to apple,

Trevor Marks: right? Lap times and performance. It’s

Stefy Bau: the same, it’s the same track, right?

The same equipment. So now it’s like, and motocross is a little bit harder than drive cars. I’m sorry, but , the physicality on a dirt bike, it’s a little bit harder, you know, like than being in a car.

Trevor Marks: I’m with you on that.

Crew Chief Eric: So did they do balance of performance then? Because obviously weight plays in

Stefy Bau: No, no.

You do it the same, but I can also tell you this a [00:36:00] very. Good motocross rider right now, you know, by even like 20 years ago, when I was racing, you don’t use brute force. You don’t, you use physics, right? You use physics and leverage. That is why I was able to compete with the best men in the world, because even though I’m not so good.

like a man at the top of their fitness level, me being at top of my fitness level, I was not strong like them, but was able to compete with them, given not at the level to win a super cross world championship, but I can hold my place there. Right. Because it was the same equipment.

Trevor Marks: Right.

Stefy Bau: So like, I guarantee you, like, if we have a women that have the opportunity, I think more than equal is trying to create that too.

You know, like if we can have a women with the same equipment of men and give them the same amount of time on the equipment as men, You will find that Formula One driver for women, guaranteed. And also like looking in the other way, Abby Pooling, that got to win the Formula One F1 Academy in Miami, just [00:37:00] race with the same type of car, the F4 in the UK, and guess what?

She won the race against the men. Point proven. So it has to be the same equipment. So all of this conversation, you know, they just stay where they are, unless there is the same equipment, you know, everybody can say whatever they want, but until you compare Apple to Apple.

Trevor Marks: Now, given that, that’s a huge goal to get the first female into Formula One.

What are the problems that we have in sim racing as a whole? That we have to overcome, like there’s still a cost barrier. How does that compare to in real life? Motorsports? What do we have to work on together as people that are in this industry?

Stefy Bau: For me, the key is media attention in real life and in sim racing coming as a former professional racer.

And talking about the women’s side of things, there is not enough media attention,

Trevor Marks: media attention on simracing as a whole,

Stefy Bau: on simracing, but also on female drivers as a whole,

Trevor Marks: women, motor sports and sim in general,

Stefy Bau: right? There is not enough attention brought to them. So like we live in the world that the visual it’s [00:38:00] important.

So we always say, Lindsay and James say that often too, if you can see her, you can be her. So we need to sow those women, those girls. So, so then somebody else is going to believe, Oh, I can do that too. And then it continued to grow. But we are seeing this in sport in general. Everybody knows about Kathleen Clark right now, because she’s not only a great athlete, but she’s getting a ton of media attention.

Same thing what happened with soccer, with the revolution of this women’s soccer world. Why they got that popular? Not only because they were good, but because media started following them. That’s the key. And in Motorsport, we never had it. And if we have had it, and they say I spin it on my skin too. It’s just like that decade or that four, five years that she’s on top of it.

Everybody talks about her. And then there is no pathway to follow. So that’s exactly what we are creating. A pathway of participation to have more and more women, that superstar stop racing. There is another one we can put there. And then the [00:39:00] next year, it might be two we can put there. And then in the year follow three, we can put there.

And if one fall off, there is another one to come up. So exactly the same, our work in men racing.

Crew Chief Eric: You mentioned earlier Lynn St. James, do you work with WMNA?

Stefy Bau: Yes. So I’m part of WMNA. Yes. I’m inside of WMNA and that, you know, it was launched a couple of years ago and actually it was Beth Perretta that she invited me to be part of the group.

So of course I know Lynn, you know, respect Lynn and everybody in that group at home. And I’m in there, you know, with the sim racing aspect and it’s still a little bit a young concept, let’s say for the group. You know, like hopefully little by little, they’re going to start to understand it a little bit better in some ways.

I mean, they are getting wrapped in into some stuff, but everybody has their own way, you know, to present things and we’ll see what happens, but I’m part of the group. So I’m in the working group of WMNA.

Crew Chief Eric: And I think you’ve stepped into something that we’ve talked about before. It’s the special nature of motor sports as a whole.

What I’m getting [00:40:00] at is. It’s probably one of the most diverse sports hands down across all sports that exist, whether you recognize motorsport as a sport or not. So I understand the arguments for men’s basketball versus women’s basketball. And sometimes I’m like, I don’t understand why these sports aren’t co ed, but in the case of motorsport, it’s a level playing field.

So the question becomes, how do we bring more people in and make it more diverse?

Stefy Bau: My solution is how I explain it. You know, it is exactly by creative representation, but for women specifically, I’m a woman in this male dominated industry. I can tell you that, yes, it is true behind the steering wheel with the helmet on, everybody’s the same.

But there is not enough women that we can continue to put out there or team to say, yes, we’re going to put a 50 50 grid on the racetrack to be able to achieve that 50 50 grid. We need to have the army. Otherwise it will never happen. So we are deconstructing the problem by Figure it out, you know, like I want to have 10, 000 little [00:41:00] girl.

They want to do sim racing and then 100, 000 little girl. They want to do sim racing and then move them into go karting and then move them into something else. Now you start having the number. Other countries taught us this. The Netherlands, they decide to do field hockey in every school in the Netherlands.

They started focusing on that sport. Now the Netherlands has so many young little girl. They play field hockey, that they been like the world champion in the Olympic for years and years and years and years. But why? Because they have the feeding. So that’s what we need to create. And then once we have that feeding, then that argument that everybody’s the same is going to completely go away because you have the number.

Then, then it’s just class right now. What happens is that if you have just one sensational athlete, they are going to sensationalize her. And that’s it. Now you have brands that they wanted to invest, but they have as many brands, they are like, yeah, but there is no scalability.

Trevor Marks: It’s a similar problem to traditional esports when [00:42:00] talking to any minority group about why we don’t have more reputations for them.

And the question is how many people need to play Counter Strike to get one pro? How many people need to sim race and cart? to get one Formula One driver. It’s like a million people. You need a million people to get one Formula One driver. You need a million people to get one Tana Fey. So I can understand how you’re feeding that ecosystem to get that million girls to get that one Formula One driver, that one IndyCar champion, that one NASCAR champion.

Crew Chief Eric: But I think it goes back to something you said earlier, Stefy, about media coverage. If you look at it on the global scale, there’s going to be certain racing bodies Be it Formula One, be it World Rally, whether it’s WEC, IMSA, Superbike, all that kind of stuff. They’re the bastions that we look up to.

They’re like the pinnacle of racing in those disciplines. I’ve noticed though, on a more grassroots level, especially in the United States, I went to an expo recently for sprint car and dirt track racing. There were more female drivers, especially young women drivers in [00:43:00] that discipline of motorsport than I’d ever seen anywhere else.

It felt really just normal. It felt super comfortable. It wasn’t like we’re placating to these ideas. It was like. There’s a lot of women in this, how do we shine a light on that? How do we then grow and blossom that and maybe get the bigger motorsports disciplines to kind of turn their head and go, we need to do what they’re doing in USAC or they’re doing, you know, over here, over there.

Stefy Bau: So it’s a very complicated problem. You know, like I leave this, you know, like it’s me being a former racer. So you have a few things going on. Usually once a kid hit the teenage years. There is no difference. You find him more often than not is 50 50, you know, in whatever sport. And you can see that in this small category of racing too.

They are competitive, but nobody expects you to become Lewis Hamilton. It’s more fun, it’s family, whatever. Then there is a very interesting study that came from a university in the UK that share when we lose the girl. Pay attention to [00:44:00] this. So in the teenage year, when I started in puberty and you start realizing different things in the world, if you have a situation where a boy fail on doing anything, it’s not just about motorsport, like a boy fails, what happens is that the peer group around that boy, 99 percent of the time, the answer is to that boy, come on, get up.

Do it again. I don’t want to hear it. Get up. Do it again. And this is documented, like, it’s a study. If a girl fails, especially if she’s trying to do something in a male dominated industry, therefore is going to be surrounded mostly by male, the majority of the answer is, Oh, sweetie, it’s okay. You tried. So what does that do in the brain of that girl?

They’re going to be like, hell no, I’m not going to do that ever again. You know, I don’t want to be confronted to this reality. I’ll just stay aside and I’m going to go do something else, you know, without confronting myself. Because we know this, one of the things that we are doing by saying, for women, by women, is that we can go to that [00:45:00] teenage girl and say, I don’t want to hear it.

Get up and do it again. Because I’m a female, you know, I can go to her and say that. So we are trying to change the narrative in that way. So, it is important to see those things because it’s at that age that we can create individuals that then grow up seeing the world that there is no differences. So this is what we are doing with the racing, the scene for STEM, what we’re doing with the movement from screen to speed is trying to tell that story, you know, and make everybody feel like, of course, there is no difference.

We are all treating the same. I can get up and do it again. So that’s one important part that sometimes is forgotten. Because it’s part of human nature, there is going to be the Stefy out there, like there is the Jamie Chadwick out there. Even if they say, Hey sweetie, it’s okay. I’m like, are you saying it’s okay?

Let me show you. You know, like there is not enough because it’s the culture that we live in because there is always the father figure that wants to protect the little girl. And there’s nothing wrong with that. [00:46:00] You know, it’s just that we need to kind of like change a little bit the narrative and say, no, you are capable to do anything you want.

You know, in this world. And another thing to unpack the question that you put out there is for me, it’s like, we need to do way more the model the extreme E is doing. So one male, one female, at least to generalize like this, then one day, okay. It’s going to be non binary, whatever. It’s all good. But right now to be able to give the same media attention.

That’s the way, and in fact, you know, the young demographic is very much attracted to what’s happening with extreme E. If you look and you talk to the young one, that’s what they look up. They say, Oh, I can have my teammate, you know, like, and it’s a woman or a boy to compete with me. The ER1 series, the boat series, copying the same model.

So I think that’s the future. If we can start to do that. More and more, then we started to get the balance, but it takes a village because the cultural effort, the way that we are brought up thinking, and [00:47:00] also the fact that there are a lot of brands don’t want to take the risk. Somebody told me that there will never be a Formula One or Indy 500 car woman compete at the highest level because the industry is scared of her dying in an accident.

And I’m like, Oh, a woman and a man’s body is the same, you know, like, And men can die like a woman can die.

Trevor Marks: Yeah, but culturally, women and children first, then women get killed. It’s a big problem.

Stefy Bau: So

Trevor Marks: if that’s got your logo on there, it’s a way bigger deal. The contrapositive to that is that men are disposable, women are not.

And yeah, that’s a huge hurdle to have to culturally overcome.

Stefy Bau: But that’s not the truth, though. Like, we are all human beings, so there is no difference, really. You know, like, Especially sport, you know, but in anything you do. Right. But the only hope is like to get the young demographic to start treating E.

coli from the very young age when they hit that puberty. Then they’re started to, you know, the DNA working like we’ve been for many, many centuries now. Little by little, you know, give her the opportunity [00:48:00] to think like that she can do it. And it goes back to the fact if you can see her, you can be her. So it goes back to the media attention.

So more we can show that those girls are out there and there is other girls out there that they are doing it, more we’re going to kind of tilt that needle and eventually not have ever anymore the discussion who is behind the helmet. It doesn’t matter. It’s just an individual that wants to race.

Crew Chief Eric: Stephie, you’ve tiptoed us across the threshold of this next subject.

A couple of times, you’ve mentioned your Sim4STEM program. So let’s talk about that. How does that work? What’s that all about?

Stefy Bau: So the Sim4STEM program, it’s an idea that came about between me and my very good friend, Nikki Daly. She’s a former Olympian from Ireland and her uncle is Derek Daly and her cousin is Connor Daly.

So she never had the opportunity to really race or be involved as a participant in motorsport, but she always been around motorsport. So she has a very similar passion on the one that I have. So she started to come up with the idea, what if we use STEM, [00:49:00] you know, like to get the attention of girls and me being the esports sim racing for girls, it was just a natural opportunity to get together and create.

seen for STEM. So what this program does goes into schools and put the younger in a role of a motorsport team by using STEM activities motorsport related and then they apply what they learn into simulators. So now you have the racing line, you have a bunch of other things that they can actually use math to understand and then goes into the simulator and they can see results.

So it becomes an experiential learning. So now schools are like, Whoa, you open the Pandora box here because not only, you know, you meet the kids where they are online, but also you get them to do math, engineering, science, and technology in a way that is very appropriate to what they are doing every day when they play games.

And using motorsport, it’s a no brainer because everybody can relate to it. Now [00:50:00] you can have the principal of a school or a superintendent then. Put them into a sim and they’re like, Oh, now I get why you want to have eSport in the schools. This is an opportunity. And I’m not saying that sim racing is the only way, but it’s definitely a way that opens tons of possibility for eSport to become more and more popular in every school in the world, not just in the US.

With that though, we create the pathway. So we discover the talent, then we can create the online school championship for girls, and then they can escalate to the screen to speed online series. So compete against girls all over the world. And then eventually, you know, we can figure out ways to put them in cars to test or go karts, depending on the age, right, and get them to have an experience in real life.

And yeah, Who knows, maybe along the way we’ll do find that talent that she didn’t even know that she has. Because it’s all about inclusivity, and for me is incredibly important. In school now, we are also running the program mix. But the thing that we say is like, yes, you are [00:51:00] allowed to run the program mix, but it has to be at least 50 percent girls.

So now it touches back to the extreme model. So now if you are a boy, of course, you’re going to want to do sim racing, you know, and do math and whatever to get better. But now you’re going to have to recruit the girls. Otherwise you don’t get to do it.

Crew Chief Eric: So STEM or STEAM?

Stefy Bau: Well, right now we call it STEM, but of course, you know, we can put art in there for sure.

You know, like we have not explored that part yet, but it’s all about building and not dividing. We are doing this. We have the passion. If You know, like other people, like David is doing too, and we got connected with him. Let’s just unite the energies, you know, and try to elevate everybody together. So that’s the most important thing I say.

Crew Chief Eric: So Stefy, when you look back over your motorsports career, there aren’t a ton of female motorcycle riders out there. I’m sure, you know, a lot of them, but you’re at the pointy end of that spectrum. Beer, but who was somebody that you looked up to? Somebody that inspired you in the motor sports world?

Stefy Bau: Yeah.

So when I was a very [00:52:00] little, I didn’t know of any woman doing this, you know, like all of my competition, when I was a young girl, up to my teenager, I turned professional at 17. They were all the boys. So, you know, I, I was like, Oh yeah, I like to do this. I was looking up, of course, at the dream of the American supercross racer.

So all of these guys I was telling you earlier that they were on my wall, you know, like that’s what I was looking up. But when I got a little bit older, like around that teenage years, I discovered, and guess this was the age where there were no social media and the internet that you can discover everything like in a split of a second.

I learned about this female athlete. Her name is Mercedes Gonzalez and she’s American. I remember still nowadays, the thing that I loved, she was featured on a box of Axo boot. So every boot that was be sold worldwide, there was her image in there. And then he’s like, Oh man, I need to do this. I want it to be her.

And it’s funny again, like the very first time that I got to come to the United States of [00:53:00] America to race, I was 14 years old. And guess what? I competed in this international women’s race event in the Paris Raceway in California, where there was Mercedes. That was almost toward the end of her career. So for me already, you know, be there and compete with my idol was incredibly like something to Out of this world and I have won the race.

So you can imagine, you know, like how I built my confidence and continue to do what I ended up doing in life, but like, we are great friends, her, you know, give me the opportunity to say, yeah, you are this little one now coming up, you know, like, and be able to be the queen of the sport, but with respect.

You know, back and forth, it’s never been, you know, like any situation with anybody in the women’s series. Like, Oh, you know, like the ones, the young ones come in and so we need to keep them back now. I did the same back to, you know, like when I was toward the end of my career, I was inviting rider that I knew that they were getting to be faster than me.

But I was not [00:54:00] scared that they were going to beat me because that’s the evolution of the sport. You know, you need to help the young generation to want it to continue to grow. And they look at you and say, you’ve done it before. So I want to be you, you know, and when you turn around and say, let me help you get there, then it’s magical.

Crew Chief Eric: So Stefy, I got one more question. As we wrap up this thought about Sim4STEM screen to speed program and all these different things that you’re working on. And we’ve sort of hinted at this the whole time and you’ve said it, but I want to hear your elevator pitch in a way, you know, a little girl walks up to you in the paddock and says, Stephie, why should I race?

What do you say to them?

Stefy Bau: Well, if they come up to me and say, why should I race? It’s like, first of all, you’re already in the paddock. So you have the bug. And second, let me help you get that desire where it can go. So the sky is the limit always go for it. So if you have a passion, that’s the key though.

It’s passion. So if you have the passion, just keep going in newer, like the negativity because it [00:55:00] comes, we live in a world where we are connected with everybody in your that just keep on working out and keep on going because sooner or later, you’re going to get what you want. Just follow your passion.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, Stephie, we’ve reached that part of the episode where I like to invite our guests. To share any shout outs, promotions, or anything else that we didn’t cover thus far.

Stefy Bau: Now, you know, Dorna is putting together the championship for women in road racing. So that is going to be launched this year. There is movement, you know, in motorcycling too, you know, and I hope that by trying to get girls interested in e sports motorcycling as well, we can kind of continue to feed that system.

Possibly get more women involved. We have the movement that they school screen to speed. My company’s name is in it. So our tagline is be in it. So be part of something to make a difference. So in it, uh, esport. gg can find that the championship that we run in there, you see the two category near motorcycle and sim racing with cars.

And yes, you know, like. This is kind of like what we do. [00:56:00] We do activation, of course, also, and you know, this is part of sim racing. So if you wanted to engage, you know, the female world or like make something that is a little bit different than everybody else, probably we are the one for you.

Trevor Marks: Stefy takes pride in being part of a woman led company, blazing a trail of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

With a cutting edge platform, they are on a mission to eradicate bullying and cheating from the e sports world, ensuring a level playing field where safety and fairness reign supreme. In it e sports is here to unleash a tidal wave excitement, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in the gaming realm and motorsports.

To learn more about how you can join them as they revolutionized the motorsports and esports landscape, be sure to log on to initesports. gg or follow them on social at init underscore esports on Twitter, at initesports on Facebook, Instagram and on YouTube.

Crew Chief Eric: And with that, Stefy, I can’t thank you enough for coming on break fix and sharing your story with us.

And I have to say being [00:57:00] paisani, it’s in the DNA to be passionate about motor sports as Italiani, but your passion goes beyond just the heritage and the ethnicity. It comes through in everything you’re doing and the way you speak and the way you’re putting this out there. And I’m excited as a father of two daughters that are entrenched in the motor For world that there are opportunities like this for them to explore when they come of age and they’re getting close to it.

So we’ll be looking to work with you more in the future, but I’m really excited on the foundation you’ve built. And I have really appreciate the way you’re continuing to promote motorsports enthusiasm.

Stefy Bau: Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure to be here. Thank you everybody for listening to my story and I can’t wait to keep providing an opportunity for young girls and anybody that wants to be in this fantastic world of motorsport.

Crew Chief Eric: Grazie.

Stefy Bau: Prego. Ciao, ciao.

Crew Chief Eric: We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Brake Fix Podcast brought to you [00:58:00] by Grand Touring Motorsports. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure to follow us on all social media platforms at GrandTouringMotorsports. And if you’d like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on article at GTMotorsports.

org. We remain a commercial free and no annual fees organization through our sponsors, but also through the generous support of our fans, families, and friends through Patreon. For as little as 2. 50 a month, you can get access to more behind the scenes action, additional Pit Stop minisodes, and other VIP goodies, as well as keeping our team of creators Fed on their strict diet of fig Newtons, gumby bears, and monster.

So consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com forward slash GT motorsports, and remember without you, none of this would be [00:59:00] possible.

Highlights

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

00:00 Meet Stefy Bau: From Motorsports to Esports
01:36 Stefy’s Early Motorsports Journey
04:44 Racing in Italy and Career Highlights
14:51 Transition from Racing to Esports
16:22 Creating Opportunities for Women in Esports
24:28 Sim Racing and Its Impact on Motorsports
28:49 Sim Racing Rules and Realism
29:53 Digital to Real World Transitions
30:56 Screen to Speed: A Success Story
32:18 The Future of Sim Racing and Motorsports
33:13 Women in Motorsports: Challenges and Opportunities
37:35 The Importance of Media Attention
48:26 Sim4STEM: Bridging STEM and Motorsports
51:43 Stefy’s Inspirations and Career Reflections
55:10 Final Thoughts and Future Endeavors

Bonus Content

There's more to this story!

All of our BEHIND THE SCENES (BTS) Break/Fix episodes are raw and unedited, and expressly shared with the permission and consent of our guests.

Stefy Bau: Breaking Barriers, Empowering Girls in Male-Dominated Industries (Break/Fix Podcast)

We go Back to School with Stefy Bau and learn about her motorsports journey, her company INIT eSports and her SIM4STEM and "Screen to Speed" programs, focusing on young female ...racers and gamers!

Check out the behind the scenes: https://www.patreon.com/posts/bts-stefy-bau-1-104289464
Check out the follow along article: https://www.gtmotorsports.org/sim4stem-stefy-bau/
Check out the podcast episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sim4stem-init-esports-with-stefy-bau/id1520501489?i=1000667033378

The Motoring Podcast Network: Years of racing, wrenching and Motorsports experience brings together a top notch collection of knowledge, stories and information. #everyonehasastory http://www.motoringpodcast.net

► Check out our membership program and go VIP at: https://www.patreon.com/join/gtmotorsports
►► Other cool stuff: https://www.gtmotorsports.org/linksShow More

Stefy Bau: Breaking Barriers, Empowering Girls in Male-Dominated Industries (Break/Fix Podcast)

We go Back to School with Stefy Bau and learn about her motorsports ...

Stefy Bau: Breaking Barriers: How Esports is Transforming Motorsport for Women (Break/Fix Podcast)

We go Back to School with Stefy Bau and learn about her motorsports ...

Stefy Bau: Empowering Women in Sports: Breaking Barriers and Inspiring the Next Generation

We go Back to School with Stefy Bau and learn about her motorsports ...

Stefy Bau: Experience the Thrill of Road Racing & Car Racing: My Unforgettable Double Performance

We go Back to School with Stefy Bau and learn about her motorsports ...

Stefy Bau From Childhood Passion to Racing Champion, My Journey in Motorcycle Racing

We go Back to School with Stefy Bau and learn about her motorsports ...

Stefy Bau: From Mini Bike to Motorcycle Racing_ My Journey as a Young Racer (Break/Fix Podcast)

We go Back to School with Stefy Bau and learn about her motorsports ...

Stefy Bau: From Racing Little Boys to Motorsport Champion_ My Inspiring Journey (Break/Fix Podcast)

We go Back to School with Stefy Bau and learn about her motorsports ...

Stefy Bau: Revolutionizing Education, Using STEM and Sim Racing to Empower Girls (Break/Fix Podcast)

We go Back to School with Stefy Bau and learn about her motorsports ...

Stefy Bau: Revolutionizing Esports, Creating a Motorcycle Racing Community in the Gaming World

We go Back to School with Stefy Bau and learn about her motorsports ...

Stefy Bau: Revolutionizing Motorsport, EICMA's First-Ever eSport Event (Break/Fix Podcast)

We go Back to School with Stefy Bau and learn about her motorsports ...

Learn More

Global eSports Games Opportunity!

INIT eSports is running the qualifiers for TEAM USA to go to the Global Esports Games. Hot laps until Sept 15. Qualifier Sept 21. IRL finale in Lima (Peru) or Abu Dabhi in December (14-17, 2024). All expenses paid by the United States Esports Federation.

REGISTER NOW

To learn more about how you can join them as they revolutionize the motorsports and esports landscape be sure to logon to www.initesports.gg or follow them on social @init_esports on Twitter, @initesports on FB, IG and on YouTube!

Stefy’s pivot to esports began in 2020, inspired by her niece’s gaming habits and the pandemic’s impact on traditional racing. She saw sim racing as a gateway for young people – especially women – to engage with motorsports in a meaningful, accessible way.

INIT Esports was born from this vision, with two core pillars: motorcycle racing and sim racing, both with a strong focus on female participation. Stefy’s team has created groundbreaking events, including the first-ever esports competition at EICMA, the world’s largest motorcycle trade show. The event drew 4,000 attendees and 10,000 online participants, culminating in a thrilling finale where top sim racers competed alongside legends like Dani Pedrosa and Antonio Cairoli.

Sim Racing for All: Breaking Barriers, Building Futures

Stefy is passionate about lowering the barrier to entry in motorsports. While elite simulators exist, they’re often prohibitively expensive. Her goal is to develop affordable, immersive motorcycle sims – possibly integrating VR – to bring the thrill of racing to more kids’ bedrooms.

She also emphasizes the importance of authenticity and realism in sim racing. While some digital tricks (like wall-riding in NASCAR) might work online, they don’t translate to real-world racing. Her team works closely with developers to ensure games reflect true racing physics and strategy.

Sim4STEM and the Future of Inclusive Motorsports

Through programs like Sim4STEM, Stefy is creating safe, supportive spaces for women in esports. Her organization is proudly “for women, by women,” and she’s committed to expanding opportunities across gender, ethnicity, and background.

Sim racing isn’t a replacement for karting or traditional motorsports – it’s an addition. It’s a tool for discovering talent, building community, and reshaping the future of racing.

When asked about the greatest of all time in motorcycle racing, Stefy doesn’t hesitate: Valentino Rossi. But she also highlights generational talents like Stefan Everts, Antonio Cairoli, and rising stars like Jett Lawrence and Lotte van Drunen – young athletes who are changing the game by competing with the boys and dominating the women’s field.

And as for Stefy herself? She’s been called the GOAT of women’s motocross. Like Michèle Mouton in rallying, Stefy’s legacy is one of trailblazing, grit, and transformation.

Want to hear more from Stefy Bau and the world of motorsports esports? Tune in to the full episode of Break/Fix and discover how passion, perseverance, and pixels are shaping the next generation of racers.

Guest Co-Host: Trevor Marks

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the Break/Fix episode with our co-host.

This content has been brought to you in-part by sponsorship through...

From the Prints: A Student’s Perspective on Racing History Education

IMRRC

August 22, 2024

From the Prints: A Student’s Perspective on Racing History Education

As a student of the Automotive Restoration program at McPherson College, a four-year degree that centers the skills needed for the preservation and/or restoration of the vehicle itself and its associated history, a younger generation is given the chance to take the torch. Hands-on skills such as engine rebuilding and general mechanical work are supplemented by a dive into proper research methods, archival building/handling, general history of automobiles and their artistic and technological designs, along with literature courses that help create a unique liberal arts education. Using an example of a current project involving the digitization and creation of an archive of original Duesenberg road car, racing car, and marine engine blueprints that are housed within the school’s library, this presentation will show how the curriculum at McPherson College culminates in a comprehensive educational experience.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Bio

Jeremy Porter, from Seneca Falls, NY, is a senior studying automotive restoration technology at McPherson College in Kansas. First bitten by the car bug at the age of five after attending the Vintage Festival at Watkins Glen, he is fascinated by the mechanical aspects of vehicles and other machinery. He was a part of the team that restored the school’s 1953 Mercedes Benz 300S Cabriolet that finished second in class at Pebble Beach. His interests include vintage Ferraris, pre-war Bugattis and Alfas, open-wheel race cars, and the development of technologies within the drivetrain.

Notes

Follow along using the video version of the Slide Deck from this Presentation

Transcript

[00:00:00] Brake Fix’s History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Argettsinger family. Teaching Motorsports History at Merfierson College, a three part episode featuring Ken Young, Christy Socia, and Jeremy Porter.

Part 3. From the Prince. A student’s perspective on racing history education by Jeremy Porter. Jeremy Porter is from Seneca Falls, New York, and he is a senior studying automotive restoration technology at McPherson College in Kansas. First bitten by the car bug at the age of five after attending the Vintage Festival at Watkins Glen, he is fascinated by the mechanical aspects of vehicles and other machinery.

He was part of the team that restored the school’s 1953 Mercedes Benz 300S Cabriolet that finished second in class at Pebble Beach. His interests include vintage Ferraris, pre war Bugattis and Alfa Romeos, open wheel [00:01:00] race cars, and the development of technologies within the drivetrain. As a student of the Automotive Restoration Program at McPherson College, a four year degree that centers the skills needed for the preservation and restoration of the vehicle itself and its associated history, a younger generation is given the chance to take the torch.

Hands on skills such as engine rebuilding and general mechanical work are supplemented by a dive into proper research methods, archiving, building, and handling, as well as general history of automobiles and their artistic and technological designs, along with literature courses that help create a unique, liberal arts education.

Using an example of his current project involving the digitization and creation of an archive of original Duesenberg road car racing car and marine engine blueprints that are housed within the school’s library, Jeremy’s presentation will show how the curriculum at McPherson College culminates in a comprehensive educational experience.

This is a student’s perspective of learning at McPherson College. I have a soft spot for a number of institutions. McPherson’s [00:02:00] one of them. Ken and I got to meet a number of times in Allentown. Dealt with his students for a number of years now. It’s great. We’ve got, of course, now Billman Abbey has joined the regime, I guess.

Of course, Alfred State. So we’re starting to develop something here. And what we’re going to get from Jeremy, who is local, is a different perspective than what us older people have about things. Hello all. My name is Jeremy Porter. So I’m a student at McPherson College. I’m here with I am from this area.

I’m from Seneca Falls. I was not born into a Carr family at all, but I did attend the Vintage Races down at Watkins Glen, and that’s sort of how I got started in this area. I love history first. A combination of vintage motorsports and going fast and stuff like that is kinda what I fell in love with.

McPherson College is a small liberal arts school in McPherson, Kansas. [00:03:00] We have roughly 800 students, 160 of which are in our Automotive Restoration Program. Our Automotive Restoration Program is a four year school. Where you learn basic maintenance skills and automotive skills on top of also taking your general liberal arts education.

So you take communication, writing, your maths, your sciences, your history, and with all of that, you get a very unique educational experience. We have a very small campus as you can expect from 800 students. The two major areas for automotive students on campus is number 20, Templeton. That is where all of our mechanical work is performed.

We have our own collection of cars, roughly 85. They range from 1876, 1877. We have a copy of the Mercedes Benz Patent Wagon, the first vehicle that was made. And we focus up until really 1973. Some vehicles that are part of our highlights is we have a Porsche 356, a couple Lincolns, a Mercedes Benz [00:04:00] 300S, Model Ts, Model As, along those likes.

And then the other major building is the Miller Library. That is where our archives and our automotive restoration library is located. Surprisingly, not really unsurprisingly, we have a third space. Within urban planning and whatnot, third spaces are places outside of your work and home, where socializing occurs, where you can meet new people.

The Sheds is a warehouse like building right across from Templeton that is not owned by the college, so it is not under college jurisdiction. Some shenanigans do get up. But, students are able to implement what they learn in class, and they work on their own vehicles. Practically everyone has a project car out there.

My own vehicle is a 1965 Pontiac GTO, but there’s all types of vehicles there. Because we’re all young and we want to go fast, there’s a very strong culture of hot rodding there. Kids will soup up their Model A’s and Model T’s just like they were from the 1950s using vintage speed parts, not using parts that were made new.

There’s a very strong focus on being [00:05:00] period correct, looking up to and using companies and people’s names like Moroso or. Edelbrock, using pure 1970s, 1950s instead of recalculated made new parts. We have a very strong financial backing, which we’re very lucky to have because of our very unique program.

There’s lots of school support within the automobile restoration program. Ken was lucky enough to take a group of students to Europe this past winter on a Cars and Castles trips where we visited collections such as the Schlumpf Museum, the Porsche Collection, the Mercedes Collection, and the Laumann Museum.

With our ties that we have all over the automotive industry, we were able to get back room access to the Porsche factory and Mercedes factories and see their own physical restoration departments where with their road cars. They’re also doing race car work. When we pulled into the Porsche museum right beside us was a Porsche 959 Dakar car.

that was being pulled into their workshop. So, it’s just stuff like that. Last year, I was fortunate enough with three other students and one of our professors, Luke Chenell, who is a part of the American Bugatti Club, [00:06:00] to attend the Bugatti Rally here at Watkins Glen. Every single year, students help create a rally manual, usually focused on the Bugatti Type 13 Bruscia.

This past year, on this trip, you just get to be around race cars and physically learn their technologies. When I am looking at vintage cars like this, I am focusing on the technologies. Within the automotive tract at school, there are five different emphases. Technology, where you are physically working on the cars.

History, communications, business and management, and automotive design. Just because you are in those five different tracts doesn’t mean you can’t do other things. I’m a technology major. I’m doing an independent study centered around Duesenberg blueprints, which I will touch on momentarily. And I just approached members at the school and said, Hey, I’m interested in about this history.

Can I do this project? And they were very supportive of it. But on these sort of school trips, you get to physically see the technologies as parts that you’re learning about in school while also talking to the owners and people who are more knowledgeable about it. So in this bottom photo there, the three students and a professor were looking at the front [00:07:00] axle arrangement on a Type 35 Bugatti.

Bugattis were very unique in their front axle arrangements, that their front suspension runs through the frame rails. And when you’re assembling them, you have to be very, very precise to make sure they’re located where they’re supposed to be. Bill Milliken, with chassis 4906, the first thing he did when he bought Type 35 was to Blanking the wheelbase by four inches and he was having problems locating that front springs where they were supposed to be and then that Top photo on a type 57 this car came out of France.

They went to California in the 1960s the owners the Cleary families The first thing he did was chop 18 inches out of the frame put a type 55 body onto it and go Racing and the family still races it like that way today, but the clutch mechanism went on it And they were not going to race for the rest of the weekend.

The student and I, I’m on the left in the white. Uh, the other student’s name is Matthew Croker. He now works at a shop in Colorado. He does rally work and preps for the Colorado Grand, which features race cars all across. Leading up to 1955, Ritter just said, Hey, we’d like to take a crack at it. We’ve read the manuals and [00:08:00] whatnot.

The guys have a very unique, Clutch mechanism. It acts as a lever from the top. The owner was like, sure, take a crack at it. And we were able to fix it in the hour and a half that we had before his next session. And it’s still running. As he said, I saw him at Pebble Beach this last summer. Speaking of Pebble Beach, I got to go to Pebble Beach this past year.

The school had restored a Mercedes Benz 300S Cabriolet. I was a part of that. There’s a later photo of the car that you will see, but as a part of that, I got to attend Laguna Seca and see, again, race cars in action, owners driving them, pushing them to the limits, see a 312P, which there’s three of in the world, chassis 0872, the only Berlinetta being driven at 100 percent by a professional racing driver.

It’s things like those, seeing the technologies in the cars in person, which I like. But as a part of that, things break, which is not good. And blueprints, specifically older blueprints, are very important to keeping those cars going. With that, I spent my last, my 2022 summer at an internship in [00:09:00] Wisconsin.

Our school is very good with internships. We have a career fair in February. We usually have around 50 people come looking for interns. And then outside of that, there’s always more people looking for interns. You can do mechanical work, museums, collections, auction houses. We had two former students.

Roughly six or seven years ago, who helped finish the Shelby registry, documenting all those cars and the histories of them for the Shelby owners. There’s alums that work in auction houses, writing auction houses descriptions, selling the cars, researching the cars, working with people like Marcel Massini, just documenting everything there is to be documented, finding photos that don’t exist, reaching out to archives like the IMRRC.

Working with them and whatnot, and it’s really, really good. But, I was at a shop in Wisconsin, Motion Products. I am a Ferrari fan, and I was able to be around race cars and learn about them. Some of the cars that I worked on, that top left there is a 121LM chassis 0484. It is a six cylinder Ferrari. It’s a 4.

4 liter straight six. That car was owned [00:10:00] by Tony Paravano out in California, and it’s the only one bodied like that. It has an increased radiator front opening, and a very interesting history. It was raced by Carroll Shelby and Phil Hill, and Tony Paravano disappeared in Mexico after being chased by the IRS.

The bottom left there, that is a 250 GTO, a chassis 4153 GT. It finished fourth at Le Mans in 1963, and then won the Tour de France Auto in 1964, driven by Lucien Bianchi. That is the former most expensive car in the world, recently broken. But here I am as a 20 year old, three weeks into my internship, working on a 250 GTO.

Learning about them, learning about the history of that specific car, learning about the history of the other 35 chassis, what sets them apart and whatnot. That 405 that’s splattered on that hood there, that is a Mille Miglia winning car, chassis 0082, that is a 1951 winner. That car finished second in class at Pebble Beach, not this past Pebble Beach 2023, but 2022.

Some parts I made for that was a steering [00:11:00] column lock to hold the steering wheel in place. I worked off two photos taken at the 1951 Mille Miglia, and that’s all I had, no dimensions, no anything. So I had to make that out on a lathe and follow the correct curvatures and whatnot. And then that bottom car there, probably the most unhappy looking person to ever sit in a Formula 1 car, is me, sitting in a Ferrari 641, which competed in the 1990 season.

Uh, that specific chassis is the chassis that Alain Prost drove in the 1990 Suzuka GP, where famously Senna may or may not have crashed into him on purpose. And it’s up to interpretation and depending on who you ask, but an engine was rebuilt for that. And it’s a 60 valve, five valve per head, 3. 5 liter V12.

And two weeks into my internship, I was shown how to disconnect the drivetrain, the engine and gearbox from the tub and perform a camshaft inspection. And I did that by myself, very much thrown into the depths of it. What I’m here mostly to talk about is an archival project that I’m partaking in. Roughly 20 years ago, Augie Duesenberg’s grandson [00:12:00] donated 106 blueprints to our school, and since then they’ve been sitting in two drawers.

These Duesenberg blueprints were taken by Augie when the Corps had bought Duesenberg from the two brothers. Augie wanted nothing to do with the road cars anymore. Fred stayed on and helped with the development of the Js, but Augie just wanted to do racing, as mostly everyone does. And it’s a mixture of Indianapolis motors, Duesenberg Model J and Model A motors, some rear axle assemblies, and then just over roughly half of them are to a W24, which was actually used in Marine Engine that was built for Horse Dodge.

They’re relevant to our program because you are able to practice and learn archival skills, research. If you want to, you can recreate parts using the blueprints, which is, uh, A little side project that I am doing at school. And they’re just cool. Who doesn’t want to see life size motors that are over 100 years old?

Just some pictures on the left here of that W24 motor. The engine roughly when it was rebuilt. I was lucky enough to see this motor three [00:13:00] weeks ago and hear it run. It sounds like an entire field of Miller Rafi midgets. 625 cubic inches with a supercharger. And it spins to 5, 000 rpm. It’s a lot of noise.

It had a whole development cycle over roughly 10 years with different methods and different construction, things that were added, things that were subtracted from it. What I’m doing is researching and creating a little story, a little book if I want to, of the story of that specific engine. Automotive wise, these are blueprints to a 1926 Duesenberg IndyCar motor, 91.

5 cubic inches, 1. 5 liters. It’s a straight eight, and it used Babbitt bearings, but it is not a four stroke, it is a two stroke. One motor was built, as far as I can tell, I was talking to Randy Ema, who is the premier Duesenberg expert in the country. And it was ran in one car and there’s three articles on the internet about this car and that’s it.

And it just mentions it’s a two stroke motor. It wasn’t allowed to go past 4, 600 RPM. This motor no longer exists anymore, but [00:14:00] we have the crankcase cylinder heads, the camshaft profile charts with flow rates that they were able to trying out to see how much power they could get out of it, they’re all in good condition.

And there’s nothing really written about this. And you can see the technical differences. from a four stroke motor. So like in our engines class, when you’re teaching about four strokes and two strokes, you could go and look at a physical blueprint that shows the different construction methods and help you envision in your brain what your professor is talking about.

And then marine wise, as I mentioned, I was able to see parts and the boat when the engine. And that is a timing cover chain for the motor. It’s all dual overhead cams, six camshafts. It’s a little bit of a pain to time. The owners of the boat still have some original parts, and they were kind enough to show me, so I grabbed some photos of those parts, and it was cool to see, because I have photos on my phone right now, just on my phone, we’ll be properly archiving them and creating a true archive with them, it’ll be scanned at 600 dpi, and we hope to [00:15:00] make them digitally available for people to learn about, but it was just cool for me to see that these physical parts Were made from those blueprints right there, and those blueprints exist in one other place, and that’s out in California in a private collection that isn’t shown.

I’m a firm believer that these things need to be shown and need to be shared for people to learn about. It’s the same thing with racing cars. I think that they should be driven. I don’t think that they should sit in a collection. Although there is discussion about that because when you have original cars, or cars that were extremely important, it gets, A little shady and I’m open to discussion about that with anyone.

It’s a cool project that I wanted to talk about because there is a younger generation that’s interested in this and McPherson is a great way to get into this world and whatnot. We have contacts all over and it’s not just physically working on the cars because it’s the story of the people that designed them, the people who worked on them, the people who drove them, the people who owned them later on in life.

The family that owns that boat now, he bought the engine in the early 90s and wanted to build a land speed car. And [00:16:00] once he found out it was for a boat, he was like, okay, we’re going to recreate that boat and recreate that hull because it’s something that is important to the marine racing world. He had never built a boat before, so him and his son just went and started building a boat using the original hull plans because they found the original family whose the two brothers built the boat in the mid 1930s.

It’s the story of people and them interacting with people, and I think just using those blueprints, using a car, it’s a medium to do that because it’s about the people that makes me love this industry, not the cars themselves, although they are great. Thank you. I’m free to answer any questions about the program, about the projects, about anything.

Absolutely fantastic. You hit it out of the ballpark. You had a question over here. So you mentioned that you are from up here in Seneca Falls area. How is the move going from up here down to Kansas and the completely different area opposite side of the Mississippi? Not very fun. I grew up on a lake. Not having any [00:17:00] bodies of water near me has been quite a change, no hills or anything like that.

But I’ve grown to appreciate it. It’s its own unique place, the own unique culture. Even though we’re a small school, there’s a very strong sense of commodity, and within the automobile industry, restorations, auctions, and stuff like that. You say you’re from McPherson College, And it opens up doors all over the world.

You can walk into the Mercedes Benz Classic Center in California and say, I’m from McPherson College. Could you show me around? And you’d be let in because the president of that is on our board at our school. And the vice president is an alumni of our college. So it just opens up an entire world. It’s great.

For someone who’s maybe looking into that program, can you expand on the advantages of a four year program, you know, coming from a liberal arts background, versus maybe what we might consider the more traditional sort of trade approach in this country? It’s very much geared more towards restoration [00:18:00] and not maintenance and stuff like that.

If you’re restoring a historically significant car, you want to get the details right. An example of this is, you know, a car that’s, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s 10 years ago, our school set a goal to compete at the d’Elegance with a car entirely restored by 20 year olds against people who have been doing this for 40 years and know every trick in the book.

That car is a 1953 Mercedes Benz 300S Cabriolet. 203 were made in that body style, 560 overall. It uses a triple Solex carb 3 liter straight six. It’s the same motor that’s used in the Gullwings, but it’s just not fuel injected and with a not as hot cam. But this car has 13, 000 individual parts. A Gullwing has 6, 500.

It has a chassis lubrication system. And our car was special order with a different kind of chassis lubrication system. So we had to find the original Bakelite piece from 1953. And roughly 80 of those cars were options, so there’s only 80 made. So they didn’t have ours anymore, by Argoose, and then show a photo documenting that our car had it.

These [00:19:00] cars have silver CAD electrical connectors. We had to go and find press photos from 1951 from the Mercedes factory showing, yes, these are supposed to be silver CAD, they’re not supposed to be like that. And then probably the most, Obvious one we were asked about at the show by the judges is radiator hoses because most people are used to seeing gull wings.

These are a steel braid woven radiator hose and water cooled hose. All the other ones they had seen were just black and they had to double check and ask if this is supposed to be correct and you just open the binder and there’s a photo right there. Being able to know how to find your photos in your research, very, very important.

And then being able to have the skills to implement that. That is very important as well, and that’s what sets us apart from other two year programs around. Because you don’t have to just go physically into the restoration world. For example, I’ve mentioned you can go into auction houses. You can go as just a general historian.

You can go and work in insurance. You can go and manage a shop. You don’t have to physically just work on the cars. And you’re not [00:20:00] just learning about the cars you’re interested in. I had no appreciation for pre war vehicles, or European vehicles before I went to school there. I was a muscle guy through and through, and now I’m into Ferraris, pre war Alfas, and pre war Bugattis, and just GP cars.

If I didn’t go to school, I would not be into those things. Jeremy, have you had any contact with the, uh, Auburn Court Duesenberg Museum? I guess you’ve talked with Brandon, uh, Anderson, I guess, at the, um, director at all? I have not yet, because there’s a story about those two, our Duesenberg blueprints. They were looking to get those, but they were donated to us.

I think that cooperation is needed between the two. Once they’re digitized, they’re going to be available for everyone to see. It’s important to the Duesenberg legacy. They already have an established museum around Auburn Corps Duesenbergs. And even with us still having the original Duesenberg blueprints, You can still print off one to one size copies of them once they’re digitized and they can have them on display, for example, and stuff [00:21:00] like that.

I think that cooperation is needed between people in this industry because there’s historians out there who just want to hoard information and not share it with people when I think that it’s just for everyone to know. Any more questions, please? After the first trial No idea.

Ferrari mechanicals have always come up along with obviously the history side. I’m a chassis number person. I’ve been able to tell I was able to visit a shop out in California, which is renowned, which my best friend now works at actually, she was able to work on a three 12 P when I visited, she was working on a two 46 Dino Daytona’s.

There’s an F50 GT in there, and then their shop owners also run a 750 Manza on the track and actually race it all over the world. So that would be a fun experience if I would get to do that, we’ll see, but I am just trying to figure out what’s going to be best for me. That is the future, ladies and [00:22:00] gentlemen.

We’re in good hands. Thank you.

This episode is brought to you in part by the International Motor Racing Research Center. Its charter is to collect, share, and preserve the history of motorsports spanning continents, eras, and race series. The center’s collection embodies the speed, drama, and camaraderie of amateur and professional motor racing throughout the world.

The Center welcomes serious researchers and casual fans alike to share stories of race drivers, race series, and race cars captured on their shelves and walls and brought to life through a regular calendar of public lectures and special events. To learn more about the Center, visit www. racingarchives.

org. This episode is also brought to you by the Society of Automotive Historians. They encourage research into any aspect of automotive history. The SAH actively supports the compilation and preservation of papers. Organizational records, print ephemera [00:23:00] and images to safeguard, as well as to broaden and deepen the understanding of motorized, wheeled land transportation through the modern age and into the future.

For more information about the SAH, visit www. autohistory. org.

We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Brake Fix Podcast brought to you by Grand Touring Motorsports. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure to follow us on all social media platforms at GrandTouringMotorsports. And if you’d like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on article at GTMotorsports.

org. We remain a commercial free and no annual fees organization through our sponsors, but also through the generous support of our fans, families, and friends through Patreon. For as little as 2. 50 a month, you can get access to more behind the scenes action, additional Pit Stop minisodes, and other VIP goodies, as [00:24:00] well as keeping our team of creators Fed on their strict diet of fig Newtons, gumby bears, and monster.

So consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com forward slash GT motorsports, and remember without you, none of this would be possible.

Livestream

Learn More

If you enjoyed this History of Motorsports Series episode, please go to Apple Podcasts and leave us a review. That would help us beat the algorithms and help spread the enthusiasm to others. Subscribe to Break/Fix using your favorite Podcast App:

Consider becoming a Patreon VIP and get behind the scenes content and schwag from the Motoring Podcast Network

Do you like what you've seen, heard and read? - Don't forget, GTM is fueled by volunteers and remains a no-annual-fee organization, but we still need help to pay to keep the lights on... For as little as $2.50/month you can help us keep the momentum going so we can continue to record, write, edit and broadcast your favorite content. Support GTM today! or make a One Time Donation.

This episode is sponsored in part by: The International Motor Racing Research Center (IMRRC), The Society of Automotive Historians (SAH), The Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Argetsinger Family – and was recorded in front of a live studio audience.

Other episodes you might enjoy

Michael R. Argetsinger Symposium on International Motor Racing History

The International Motor Racing Research Center (IMRRC), partnering with the Society of Automotive Historians (SAH), presents the annual Michael R. Argetsinger Symposium on International Motor Racing History. The Symposium established itself as a unique and respected scholarly forum and has gained a growing audience of students and enthusiasts. It provides an opportunity for scholars, researchers and writers to present their work related to the history of automotive competition and the cultural impact of motor racing. Papers are presented by faculty members, graduate students and independent researchers.The history of international automotive competition falls within several realms, all of which are welcomed as topics for presentations, including, but not limited to: sports history, cultural studies, public history, political history, the history of technology, sports geography and gender studies, as well as archival studies.

The symposium is named in honor of Michael R. Argetsinger (1944-2015), an award-winning motorsports author and longtime member of the Center's Governing Council. Michael's work on motorsports includes:

Walt Hansgen: His Life and the History of Post-war American Road Racing (2006)
Mark Donohue: Technical Excellence at Speed (2009)
Formula One at Watkins Glen: 20 Years of the United States Grand Prix, 1961-1980 (2011)
An American Racer: Bobby Marshman and the Indianapolis 500 (2019)

This content has been brought to you in-part by support through...

Racing Against the Odds: Doc Bundy’s Journey to Le Mans

Gran T

August 15, 2024

Racing Against the Odds: Doc Bundy’s Journey to Le Mans

Few names evoke the grit, charm, and relentless hustle in motorsports like that of Doc Bundy. Doc’s story begins not with a steering wheel, but with a newspaper route. As a kid, he hustled through town on a moped, delivering seven daily papers and three Sunday editions. That early grind laid the foundation for a work ethic that would later define his racing career.

His first taste of speed came when he stumbled upon two go-karts at a local ballpark. “These are amazing,” he told his father, a racing fan himself. Soon, Bundy was helping build a local track and racing karts until he left for school and a job with an airline. But the dream never faded.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

After a crash sidelined his Formula C car, Bundy cold-called racing legend Peter Gregg of Brumos Porsche. He landed a trial gig prepping cars, living in the shop, showering at a nearby MG dealership, and outworking everyone. “I could outwork anybody,” he said. That grit earned him a spot on the team and eventually led him to Al Holbert – a pivotal figure in Bundy’s career.

Bundy didn’t just turn wrenches. He turned heads. He built press kits, secured sponsorships, and promoted Holbert Racing with a flair that earned him the nickname “Mr. Sparkle and Glitter.” His goal? “Push Al up, and maybe he’ll drag me along.”

Bundy’s first trip to Le Mans came in 1982, driving a BF Goodrich-liveried Porsche 924 Turbo (above) alongside Jim Busby. The race was a rollercoaster: engine trouble in night practice, a last-minute reinstatement by the ACO, and a warm-up crash that required some parts being “borrowed” from Derek Bell’s car in the parking lot.

Despite the chaos, Bundy and Busby ran the entire 24 hours on one set of tires – with a blown head gasket – and won their class. “We were doing two laps at a time, adding water and Bars Leak,” Bundy recalled. “Sunday afternoon was just survival.”

Spotlight

Synopsis

This episode of Evening with the Legend features Doc Bundy, a renowned motorsports figure, recounting his extensive career in racing, particularly at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Hosted by David Spitzer of ACO USA, Bundy’s interview covers his humble beginnings in a small town, his early interest in go-kart racing, and his ascension in the motorsports world. Key highlights include his time working with Al Holbert, navigating the trials of endurance racing, his strategy-driven performances at Le Mans, and notable anecdotes such as dealing with a blown head gasket and racing with broken headlamps. The episode offers an in-depth look at Bundy’s resilience, strategic thinking, and noteworthy achievements in racing, enriched with personal stories and professional insights.

During a recent Evening with a Legend session hosted by ACO USA’s David Spitzer, fans were treated to a whirlwind tour through Bundy’s life—from paperboy in a tiny town to class winner at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Transcript

Crew Chief Eric: Doc Bundy is a renowned figure in motorsports and has left an indelible mark on the iconic 24 Hours of Le Mans throughout his career. His journey at Le Mans also spans multiple years in teams, each marked by displays of exceptional skill, determination, and sportsmanship. Doc’s driving record reflects a remarkable consistency and competitiveness on the legendary circuit, where he has navigated the grueling endurance race with precision and flair.

Whether piloting prototypes or GT [00:01:00] cars, Doc’s performances have often been characterized by a blend of speed, strategy, and resilience, earning him admiration from fans and fellow competitors alike. This Evening with a Legend was hosted by David Spitzer, a member of the ACO USA, and who you might recognize as one of the pit reporters from the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

David Spitzer: Welcome to all of our guests this evening from the ACO club. We’re excited to host another of our theories all about an evening chat with racing legend. And tonight we are very honored and very excited to speak to doc Bundy with a wonderful history and Porsche’s and racing many years spent with Al Holbert and that legendary team and driving for a number of different manufacturers, but without further ado, let me introduce doc.

Hello y’all. So doc, I’m going to kind of get you started and I know because you and I had a great chat recently that once we get you going, the wonderful stories will flow. Do you want to start with a little bit about how you got into racing, but make sure you work us up to [00:02:00] Lamar and a little bit of how you got to Lamar, but go ahead.

Tell us a little bit about getting into racing and the early part of your

Doc Bundy: career. Like most karts as a youngster. I grew up in a very tiny little town. They used to tell me when I was little that it was 2, 000 people, but I think they counted all the farms and all the farm animals in that number, because I think realistically it was maybe 600 people or something like that.

I became a paper boy there, took over from another guy that got older and so he was ready to quit and hand it down. He delivered five different newspapers and two Sunday papers. So I increased it to seven daily papers, seven from different towns and three Sunday papers. So as you can imagine, I start out with a bicycle with baskets and I would have to go back to the drugstore and pick up more papers because I couldn’t carry all that [00:03:00] I needed to deliver to the whole town.

I had a moped for a while. After the moped, I had a bicycle. Bad rep. I ran out of paper about a mile out of town. So I got to go back to the goat store and get it real quick. So I’m flying back 35 40 mile an hour on the moped and the town was in a valley that had two sets of railroad tracks. with a creek between them that you crossed.

As a young boy, I had a friend on the other side of town. Two of us rode our bicycles to meet up with him and he went around the crossing gate and the train hit him.

David Spitzer: Oh goodness.

Doc Bundy: Oh yeah.

David Spitzer: Now you got to help us get back to racing. Come on, how does this get us to racing? Were you making money with your paper route and that got you to get a go kart?

Doc Bundy: What happened was, I was on a Saturday, I was collecting. At this time, I had a yard cart with a Clinton engine on it, and I fiddled around with it a little bit to try to make it a little bit faster. When I was [00:04:00] on one side of town, I heard this noise that sounded like my engine with no muffler. I worked my way down, customer wise, to the ballpark, and here was two go karts running there.

Real go karts. Not yard carts. Proper go carts. Yeah. And so I ride up these two guys and they were just riding down there at the park with ball field from another town. They’d come over trying to get kids or people to show up because they wanted to sell them. I couldn’t wait to get done. So they let me drive it.

I thought, Oh, this is the real thing. And I have grown up. My father taking me to race. Where was that now? What track? Would we know it? They were okay. As soon as I got home, you know, I grabbed my dad and I said, Dad, you got to see these things. These are amazing. He was a race fan. So he got into it. He got along with some other fathers and they, in the end, they built a racetrack.

Oh, wow. We started out down there beyond the [00:05:00] ballpark on a dirt track. Oh, that lasted not too long floods and things kind of ruined it. They ended up making a paved track and I was part of the building process. That’s when I learned to drive a pickup truck. And so we raced go karts till I was probably a senior.

Then I went off to a school in Minneapolis and went to work for an airline in Chicago. The weirdest thing is my ideal race car. Post Vietnam, a Formula B car, which morphed into a Formula Atlantic eventually, that was my dream car. I just had to have one of those. I never had one. I never got to drive one.

David Spitzer: That was the goal to get to that level of pace, that level of power and everything else, right?

Doc Bundy: Yeah. I had a friend that we went together and bought a Lotus 22 Formula C car, 1100 cc engine. That didn’t last very long. Got crashed. Wasn’t my crash. Driven [00:06:00] up to Watkins Glen to do a regional, forgot to charge the battery.

So I was out first practice and a guy spun in front of me and so I had to spin to miss him. Going into turn one, so I went off on the outside and it wouldn’t restart. Battery was dead. They wouldn’t let me move the car. And of course, I got hit. We almost got into a fight. This is not worth your life. It is fine.

It’s everything I have is invested in this thing. There’s a waving yellow. There’s no problem. All the cars have gone by. They’ve seen it. You were in the strike zone. Yep. And I saw this car coming and I could see his eyes and he was staring at my race car and I thought, no, no, no, no, don’t look at it.

Because your hands follow your up. So sure enough, he realized the last second that he was going to hit it, and he blocked up, went into the side of it, bent the chassis. So I had no clue how to fix that.

David Spitzer: So if we go on Wikipedia, this made you chuckle because I shared with you what it says on Wikipedia about you.

It [00:07:00] says you started out, I thought it said mechanic, but it says car prep. Tell us a little bit about the early days with Peter Gregg, the legend from the Brumos organization. Give us a few minutes of what it took to get into your first Porsche race car.

Doc Bundy: From that experience, God knows how I ever convinced him to even take my phone calls, but I started calling John Bishop.

I’m trying to talk him into taking Making formula be part of it was new to talk. And so that was my goal. And I call him all the calls.

David Spitzer: I don’t know. Bless that man. Everybody talks about him being a saint. Now I’ve got more evidence. It

Doc Bundy: was when Peg would answer. Usually Peg would answer, but sometimes he would.

And she would say, Okay, Doc, just a minute. I’ll get John. And he would take the call. So, and eventually what he did is he said, Doc, he says, you’ve got great ideas, very enthusiastic, and you need to Get experience. You need real world experience. You need to [00:08:00] go work for a race team. So after the crash of my car, I didn’t have a choice.

Quit the airline, called Peter Gregg out of the blue. I picked him because I wanted to be in EMSA. To me, it was either or. Roger Penske, but I was afraid of Roger Penske because he looked too military oriented, and I’d come out of the military. I didn’t want to stay in there. Or Roy Woods, because he ran 5, 000 Trans Am in Canada, which was great racing, but I wanted to be in EMSA.

I saw an ad that said that Peter, Greg was looking for people, a gopher. I called Peter, he said, well, if you’ll come down here to Jacksonville, I was up in Ohio at that time. If you’ll come down here to Jacksonville, he says, I’ve got about seven of you guys I’m gonna try out. And he says, whoever works the best, that’s who I’m gonna hire.

Well, that was simple to me. ’cause you know, I’m a returning vet. I could outwork anybody, so I didn’t have anything. I go down there. Get to the [00:09:00] shop. They’re getting ready for Sebring and they’d already won the 24. So I lived in the race shop for a couple of weeks and then we went to Sebring and we won there.

He sold that car and we’ve got another new car. for the next event, which was back then Road Atlanta. We went there, we won there. So we won four races in a row. Now, he hadn’t hired me officially, but after each race, because he won or sat on the pole one or the other, he gave us each a hundred dollars. I had some to live on.

When I came back, I couldn’t keep living in the race shop. One of the other guys that got hired, his dad was the sheriff of Ruvala County, which is the whole city. And his mother was a doctor. Later on, he becomes a FBI agent. So that’s how I started with Peter. I just outworked everybody. And I would stay in the shop.

There was a little [00:10:00] MG dealership in front of

the

Doc Bundy: warehouse where the race shop was. I would go over there because they had a shower and I could shower and that

David Spitzer: story though is everybody in racing. I mean, everybody’s got to make a sacrifice. You’ve got to have that journey to really value it. So you spend some time taking care of the motor home for them and kind of working your way into things.

How many years of hard work was it before you started driving? And then how many years of driving before you were graced with the opportunity to run at Le Mans?

Doc Bundy: I was two years with Peter and realized there was no future for what I wanted. About the early fall of the second year, I went to Peter and I said, look, I’m going to leave at the end of the season.

He said, where are you going to go? And I, Oh, I’m looking for, Someplace where I might have an opportunity to drive at some point and he goes, it’s never going to happen. He says, I’ve met your family. They have no money. Who’s going to give you a 50, [00:11:00] 000 race car to learn to drive? And I go, I know how to race like that.

But his telling me no, no, no, just motivated me. That much more, I was determined and along that period, I had met Al Holberg, he had an engine, a three liter that Peter bought from him. So I got sent to get the engine. I already had met Al and had talked with him and that sort of thing. So I went up there to get the engine and he just kept delaying, delaying, delaying, delaying, giving it to me.

And so finally I sat down with Al and he said, What’s your big hurry to go back? It was on a weekend. I’d driven up Friday, and then I had the weekend off, and then back to work on Monday. He wanted me to stay and chat with him, because we talk racing, much to the chagrin of his wife. So Al said, why don’t you come to work for me?

And I go, well, no, I’m committed to Peter for the balance of this year. I said, [00:12:00] besides Al, what I want to do is drive eventually. You know, I made it clear up front, and he said, okay. I said, we’re about the same age, and you have all this experience, and you are really good. I could never drive with you because I have to go through the learning phases.

He eventually convinced me, because I finished with Peter at the Christmas party, actually got a handwritten letter of recommendation. Anytime you ever want to come back, we’ll welcome you. And I said, well, I hope I won’t be back, unless you’re hiring me as a driver. And he laughed, and we parted on friendly terms.

I didn’t want to go to work for Al because I just didn’t think I would have a future there. Didn’t feel like I had a lot to offer, but he kept calling, how would you view this happening? How do you view that you could get to drive? And I said, well, I have some ideas about sponsorship and I’ll search out sponsorship.

I can help on [00:13:00] the race car, but I’m not going to be a mechanic. Brumos tried to make me a mechanic. I didn’t want to be one. I learned to do things. I disassembled a 917 engine cannon with the real mechanic. He made me take everything apart. And I said, how are we ever going to get it back together? He just laughed.

He says, I’ll put it together. Don’t worry. I just knew enough and could do enough to understand mechanics. You know, I knew the cars because I would turn just enough wrenches To learn the cars. Eventually, Al convinced me to come to work for him. That next year, still living in Jacksonville, he had me come down to Daytona and he says, we’ll move you to Pennsylvania after the race.

We did pretty good in the race. I don’t remember where we finished that first year, but we were in contention through a lot of the race. And I think it had some kind of a problem that we lost time. And then we get up to Pennsylvania. He moves me in the house with him, his wife and two children. I was there for probably about [00:14:00] two months, finally got a place of my own.

In the meantime I started learning how to promote Al. He didn’t have much of a reputation then, other than he was Bob Holbrook’s son. His father was a banker. pretty successful racer. Father was a wonderful guy, but Al, you know, like most sons and dads, the two of them didn’t always get along. So he would always put me in the middle.

And I didn’t want to be in the middle. And he treated me like a brother and he felt like a brother to me. So we got really close. So I started making sponsorship deals. They were small deals, but. Nevertheless, brought money to the team and then I developed a press kit. I went to Penske because his connection to them over and over.

So I went over and they kind of taught me how to do a press kit and give me one of theirs to use as a example. From that, I started a newsletter that I would send out to sponsors and fans. And I started getting [00:15:00] him to do clothing, t shirts and hats and things like that, jackets, apparel, that started going really well on its own.

And then I would find him rides and things that he would never have thought about, like super Vs. I got to ride in a super V a couple of times, an Atlantic car. And he would say, why are you doing this? He says, I know why you’re doing it. These are cars you want to drive. And I said, no, Al, I’m trying to expand your portfolio.

So it actually included IMSA races. So I was well known in the paddock, Mr. Friendly to everybody.

David Spitzer: And Mr. Make it happen. No excuses, not afraid of hard work. You’re going to make it happen.

Doc Bundy: Yeah, I did some crazy things, I recommended him for rides, I’d write to people and they would know him and I knew he had a connection and they call him and they say, uh, who’s Doc Bundy?

And he goes, Oh, he works for me. He’s in charge of sparkle and glitter.

David Spitzer: Sparkle and [00:16:00] glitter.

Doc Bundy: Yeah, you know, trying to promote out. I figured if I pushed him hard enough up, he might drag me along. I truly was invested in helping to build Holbrook racing, a real entity, and he had a great work ethic, how he approached racing, the cars, everything was just wonderful and super good driver, most sensitive driver I’ve ever met in my life.

He never told me how to drive, would ask questions. And then make me give him the answers to him. And we did a lot of testing and I learned to love that he never owned a 935. So I made deals that would include me. And so I get one or two races a year in other people’s cars. Gary Belcher out of Florida, he invented the bang stick.

Anyway, his 935, I was friends with his crew chief. And when I would talk to him about maybe using Al. And he goes, Al would drive our car. And I said, [00:17:00] yeah, I know how you prepare a car. You do a good car. And Al has a good year contract. So for a 24 hour race, can you imagine a better situation? You have to pay Al something, but he’ll bring tires to the deal.

And you got to let me drive. So my friend says, okay. We’ll do it. And then later on it was Preston. His old crew

David Spitzer: chief is a good friend of mine, a guy named Gary Cummings. Yeah. Gary’s a very good friend, but keep on going. So you got with Preston. You’re starting to get a little

Doc Bundy: bit of driving. I would get to do these one offs here and there.

I drove Moby Dick, you know, Preston had bought that was not part of the plan at all. It was at the Daytona Finale. Back then, you know, they would run around Thanksgiving. Yep. And I was driving with Bonnie in a 935. He had like two 935s in the special car. He and Al were driving it while I was leading the race and Preston doesn’t want to get in the car.

The car that I was driving with Bonnie blew a rear tire going into [00:18:00] three. And of course, put it up almost on its nose and came back down and I, I kept it from crashing tire tore up the right side and took out an oil cooler. So we were out of the race, tow it back to the pits and I’m in the pits and Preston comes up and he says, get your helmet.

And I said, get my helmet for what? I thought maybe he wanted me to help fuel or something. And he says, you’re going to get in the car. I’ve already talked to Al, Al’s okay with it. And I said, what? I’ve never even sat in that car. And he goes, you’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. Well, the seat was like way wide.

So I had to have him put pills in. And even then I go into the infield and come into the corners and I have to slide up on this side of the seat, go through this one back to this side and see for this one, but I’m running first and second, I’m racing Wallach and I raced him in the wrong place because I could pass him anytime I [00:19:00] wanted on the bank.

It was inexperienced. And he short braked me going into the kink in the infield. He short braked me all at once. He was smart. He knew I wouldn’t hit him. So I spun off and I fell back. But I ended up finishing second in the race in the end. I was catching back up and then the race was over.

David Spitzer: What was your first year at Le Mans?

What was your first Le Mans experience?

Doc Bundy: 82. 82. Okay. I had won the runoffs in 80 with the deep production, the deep production 924. That was my first full time ride. Became an instructor at Road Atlanta. I separated from Hobart racing. And that was because I believed that if I was there, Al would always count on me to straighten things out with his race cars and his crew.

And I wanted to be separate. I want concentration on what I was going to drive. And he was pretty good about that. At one point, he was questioning, why doesn’t Doc drive with you in the Michelob [00:20:00] portion? And I helped him get that sponsorship. And he goes, Doc’s very demanding.

David Spitzer: Doc knows what he wants, gosh darn

Doc Bundy: it.

Anyway, racing the 924, we win the runoffs. And of course, Hoppin promised me the world if I won the race and nothing happened and afterwards I kind of went through withdrawals because through the balance of November and through December into January, I didn’t know if I was ever going to get to driving because there was no plan.

So I’m working at Road Atlanta. Just hustling rides wherever I can find them. Usually not getting paid anything. Usually do good with whatever car I drove. I’d get the max out of it and put it in places where it had never been before. So things weren’t terribly bleak. I drew upon my experiences from Vietnam where, you know, if you were super aggressive, you got a lot of praise.

You go out and shot people or created good situations for the [00:21:00] army. Then they praise you a lot and put you on a pedestal and all that silly stuff. So I realized, okay, I’m going through that here in peacetime in racing. Then it was decided, okay, the 924 turbos coming out. So we got one of those. Al was playing with stock cars at that time.

I still said, well, we have to do sports car racing. You know, that’s your roots. And I said, I hate stock car racing, the rules and all the crap that you can go through. I would threaten to leave so many times. You know, we were a Northern team, so we got a lot of crap.

David Spitzer: We don’t cotton to your kind around here, Yankees, right?

Doc Bundy: Yeah, they liked Al, but I was not as personal and I would tell Al, I say, you know, when I pull into the NASCAR track, I know it’s going to be a battle that it’s not fun. So I didn’t want to continue doing it. After that, Porsche offered him a deal to run the 924 turbo and it was going to be him and [00:22:00] I, because now I’m at a level that I don’t hold him back, not necessarily quite as fast, but Far off.

And he picks Rick Mears as the third driver. Wow. Yeah. And I’m going, Oh my God, what are you doing to me, Al? I got to drive Rick Mears. I go there and Porsche is running Porsche Motorsports and he’s the, Making a big deal about the 924 and this team. And so we have to do a press conference. So we go over to the tower, do a media thing.

On the way there, Al goes and says, okay, you’re going to be team leader in this. And I said, what? He said, you’re going to be the team leader. Rick and I’ve already talked about it. Rick agrees. And I said, okay, whatever. So we do the news conference and they ask Al questions. Then they ask Rick questions and they started asking Rick about IndyCars because the car season hadn’t started yet.

He says, I’m not here to talk about IndyCars. [00:23:00] I’m here to drive a Porsche, and the team leader is Doc Bundy. He says, that’s who you need to direct your questions at. And I was floored. To get any kind of respect from somebody at that level blew me away. We didn’t do so well in the race. We had problems with the car, but we did finish.

I don’t know where, but we did finish. But that led on to me running Trans Am races with the 924 Turbo. Transcribed And because I did that, obviously got experience running the 924 turbo, and that was the BF Goodrich car was a 924 turbo that Buzz put together with BF Goodrich. And I knew all the BF Goodrich people from IMSA racing.

Yep. So I knew them all. So when they asked me if I would drive, you know, I said, sure. A little different schedule. It was Daytona and Sebring and Le Mans.

David Spitzer: So I was going to say the first time you went to Le Mans, was it in that 924 turbo?

Doc Bundy: Yes.

David Spitzer: And the [00:24:00] livery on that car was BFG?

Doc Bundy: Yes. So we had run Daytona, I think we finished, and then we went to Sebring.

And I was given a new teammate, James Brolin. Oh, wow. The movie star. And he may have been at Daytona. I don’t remember that if he was, he was in this, the other car, he and I were together at Sebring and during night practice, he hit a pig. Oh, that’s a bummer. And it wasn’t his fault. Somebody had brought it there as a pet.

And a dog chased it. And

David Spitzer: you know, being around racing, we had a lot of what we called agriculturals. You know, when you’re driving a race car, you’re committed. And if an animal gets in the way, it’s an ugly scene. You know, it’s just, there’s nothing you can do. You know, it’s horrible for that pig. And it’s a pretty dense thing to hit.

I’m sure it tore up the race car real good.

Doc Bundy: You know, I’m on the radio. I’m out of the car. Obviously, James is out there. And it happened right after the hairpin, then the high speed S’s. It was in the ICS is where it broke. I can picture it. [00:25:00] Yep. You know, you’re faster. You’re flat out. It freaked him out pretty much.

I figured it totaled the car. First, when he called in, he said, I’ve been in a wreck. I just hit a pig. And you’re like, what? James, where are you? Cause I figured he ran off somewhere in the back straight of missed that corner back there. He says, I’m just outside the SS. And I said, after the hairpin, and he said, yes, I said, are you okay?

He says, yeah, but the car really messed up. I can’t drive it back. Obviously they had to stop the session and load it on a flatbed and bring it back. The crew repaired the car. They pulled the frame out and finished the race. And after the race, You know how the paddocks open? People from over there can get into the paddock.

And these people showed up and they said, can we talk to James Brolin? James was in the motorhome. And I said, nah, I don’t think he wants to talk to anybody. He’s pretty shy. And they said, well, we brought him a plate. pig. I said, no, I [00:26:00] really don’t think you want that. Was it cooked

David Spitzer: or was it raw?

Doc Bundy: So, I go in the motorhome.

I was trying to be nice to them. So, I go in the motorhome. I said, James, I think I know what you’re gonna say but would you be interested in eating some pork? And he goes, what? What are you talking about? And I said, the people butchered the pig and And they brought a plate over, they want to give to you.

And he says, I don’t want to meet him. And I said, I understand. I said, I’ll take care of it. So I went back out and I made apologies and everything. And I said, but I think the crew might. Oh,

David Spitzer: heck yes. That crew was going to relish every bite and tell that story. That’s as good as it gets. That’s Sebring through and through, isn’t it?

Doc Bundy: So from there, then I ended up at Lamar and Lamar was unique was my first visit. So I had so much to learn. There’s so much going on. You’re there very early. Go through the tech [00:27:00] stuff and all that goes on. We have Jim Busby, me, and Mignot was our French driver because they wanted a local driver. Always a

David Spitzer: good idea to grease the skids when you go to Le Mans to put a French guy in.

We had Christophe Tanso and the four of that guys had Franck Friant. Always the same thing. You pick a good French driver and put him in and it just makes everything a lot easier at Le Mans.

Doc Bundy: Well, Mignot, he’d run many times. in the race itself, everything. Mostly Porsches, but every model of Porsches. And he was the head instructor at their school there.

So he knew everybody by first name. So he thought it was kind of a shoot. Well, guess what? The engine let go in night practice and he had only had two laps when it let go. We didn’t really think anything of it. We weren’t surprised the engine let go, a little disappointed. I got my laps in, Jim had gotten his laps in, but then Jim got in the second car.

Back then you, if it [00:28:00] was a team car, you could move over and do laps in another car. So he did that just to experience in the other car, the Herman Miller car. Make a long story short, the ACO decided there was only one driver, me, because we had turned a lap time fast enough to be in the field, not very far out because of the car, but we were right up with all the other 924 turbos in the race.

on race tracks and all. And we qualified on the street tires, though BF Goodrich had brought us a set of, they removed the sidewall, but I think they were Dunlop’s slicks in case we needed them, but we never needed them. We were fast enough.

David Spitzer: Wow.

Doc Bundy: They interpreted by who told them, you know, it was one of the officials at the pit said, well, he got in the other car.

So he’s driving the other car. Yeah. So there was a big thing and Porsche was involved, we have Goodrich was involved all day Friday and finally we got reinstated, but they didn’t tell us. They said, well, be ready to do [00:29:00] warmup in the morning, just in case, change your mind. They said, well, there’s only one driver and he can’t do that.

So they argued, no, we didn’t take Jim out of that car. And they said, well, you know, didn’t do his required night. In the end, they let us start last, and it was Jim and I. In morning warm up, it had rained some, a little bit, so the grass was wet. I went off in the Porsche curves, and the back end hit the guardrail, and it broke the taillight.

We didn’t have a spare taillight. So, Porsche goes, We know where there’s one. In the parking lot. It was Derek Bell’s car. They didn’t tell him. They just took it. Of course not. He was gonna say no.

David Spitzer: Screw that. They just took it. I think he was driving without. They’ll give it back at the end of the race.

It’ll be fine. He’ll never notice. Right. Fast forward one year. The following year you went back to Le Mans and I think you did real well. Is that correct?

Doc Bundy: No, I never did.

David Spitzer: We won our

Doc Bundy: class with a blown head [00:30:00] gasket, one tire, one tire for 24 hours. Argued with the BF Goodrich guys. I said, no, no, we can’t change it.

It had a very slight cut in the sidewall on the right front tire. And I said, oh no, we can’t change it. It’s. Sunday, you know, it’ll make it. It’s as good as the other tires, other than that little cut. And they go, we cannot risk it. So they changed one tire.

David Spitzer: So it was you and Busby. With a blown head

Doc Bundy: gasket.

David Spitzer: And Mignot didn’t get in the car. Never got

Doc Bundy: in

David Spitzer: the car. And the two of you guys with the same set of tires ran the whole 24 hours and won your class.

Doc Bundy: Yes, and it came down to a race at the end with Billy Hagan. We were in the same class with Billy Hagan’s Camaro. I was

David Spitzer: going to

Doc Bundy: say I had to be a Camaro if it’s Billy Hagan.

They kept breaking gearboxes. Bless their hearts. We’d be ahead and they’d run us down passes, passes, passes with no boost. We’re doing two laps at a time. Sunday afternoon, coming in, putting bars, leak in, putting water back in, going back out for two more laps. That’s how we spend [00:31:00] Sunday afternoon.

David Spitzer: So you’re not just a little bit of blown head gasket.

Your head gasket is junk. You are pumping water out of that thing. Yes. That’s crazy.

Doc Bundy: We held her breath. There was a little bit of a showdown thing that happened because I was supposed to finish and I got yanked out of the car by a then team leader owner. I was really, really upset. I bet. I went back to the trailer and was packing up.

I’m going home. The heck with him. Gary Pace, BF Goodrich, the guy at the races that ran the thing. And Gary came in the trailer where I was. He says, Doc, you got to put your gear back on. I said, I won’t drive for that blankety blank ever again. He says, no, you don’t understand. If Jim finishes the race, he goes illegal.

We lose. Oh, we had to follow

David Spitzer: the rules. Yeah. Right.

Doc Bundy: Yes. He was going to go over the time limit. I bitched for a little while and finally I realized, you know, I can’t throw them under the bus.

David Spitzer: [00:32:00] No, and all the crew guys and everything. There’s so much that’s gone into this at that point.

Doc Bundy: And I said, if you remove her from the pit, I’ll come back out and I’ll finish the race.

So he said, get your gear on and he left. So when I come out, I didn’t even look over there. I just got my helmet on and they says, we’ll bring Jim in now. He’ll be right in, got in the car and finished the race, which was an experience in itself because Al was in that race. And I can’t remember if that’s the one they won.

Or he was second, but you know, it was Porsche one, two, I think maybe one, two, three. And so i’m trying to go fast enough because they were catching me right at the end of the lap. So I wanted to cross the finish line right behind them if I could but I couldn’t keep up with them, you know On the last lap nobody’s really racing as we come on to this Start, finish straight.

There’s like a sea of people, flagmen in front of them, running with the checkered flag. The cars are all coming to a stop and turning right. And I said to the crew, I’m [00:33:00] not even going to get the checkered flag. The race is over. It’s okay.

David Spitzer: Back it

Doc Bundy: up. And he goes, no, it’s okay. The race is over. We won our category.

So it’s stop and go, stop and go, stop and go, stop and go. We get up, and it’s the impound area, and there’s joint arms all around it, people everywhere. They open the gate and let you in, they close the gate, open the gate, let you in. So we get in there, and there’s people everywhere, and they’re pounding on the car.

So I’m afraid to get out of the car, and I’m talking to the crew, and they said, you got to come over here, because we got to go up on the stand. And I go, I’m afraid to get out and I’m not taking anything off and it’s hot as hell. Come and get me. Come and get me. I don’t know where I am. So they finally get over there, get all my gear up and they said, the car is going to be okay.

The John Arms are here and all. And I said, but there’s people everywhere. They said, yeah, well, they’re watching. They won’t steal anything off the car. I said, yeah, right. So they start walking towards tower. Well, the gate was the left. And I said, we got to go [00:34:00] out the gate. They said, what are you talking about?

And we walk over and the fence around the impound was like a foot and a half. So it’s no wonder it was full of people. Cause they didn’t step over it. So we step across and we go over to the tower to do the, Victory thing. That’s crazy. And I love the story. So during the race coming out of Arash, kind of a slow corner, you come back towards the Porsche curves.

Yep. But when you come out of that corner, it was the second gear corner for us, and you’d shift to third and there was a little road right there where you shifted the third cut. Something outta the corner of my eye. I haven’t looked over. And here’s a guy in a bikini and he is shooting me the bird. Then I’m shift third and I’m gone.

And I’m thinking, did I really see that? Is that real? I think about it the whole lab. I come around again. When I come off the corner, I look over there and there he is. And he gives me the thing. Well, now I’m perplexed. Does he hate Americans? [00:35:00] Hate BFGoodrich horses? Why is he eating fingers? So I never really tell anybody about this.

I just kind of forget about it after the race and all. But he was there every lap. So we get back to the States. We’re at a race somewhere. I’m in the Trans Am car and Al’s in the Can Am car. We’re talking, we usually broom together when we race together. I remembered that guy, Lamar, and I said, I gotta tell you something.

So I told him the story and he goes, Oh yeah, he did the same thing to me. We both laughed about it and wondered, you know, what was his motivation? Maybe he just hated all racers and he lived in that village back there. Right.

David Spitzer: It

Doc Bundy: was

David Spitzer: crazy. That’s hilarious. That same part of the racetrack, as you come off of Arnage and head up towards Porsche Curves.

On the right side, there’s about three or four people that live there, and I’ve had the opportunity to go around the racetrack with a guy that puts up all the fences, and they block those people in. Those people are landlocked. They gotta, they gotta have groceries for [00:36:00] a week because, or whatever, for a couple days.

They put the racetrack up, and those people can’t go anywhere. There’s a bloody racetrack going across the end of their driveway.

Doc Bundy: Now see, that confirms why he was that way. He gave

David Spitzer: everybody the fence. You know what the best part about this evening with a legend tradition is that we’re building is that we get wonderful people on here with great experiences but we never know where it’s going to go.

I guarantee you I did not think we were talking about that

Doc Bundy: today. You know, I went back with Jaguar a couple years later. With Bob Tullius and the group 44 Jag, right? Right. My big suggestion to him was we needed to take our own toilet paper. Because what you get at Le Mans is not what you’re going to be used to.

It’s

David Spitzer: not very

Doc Bundy: comfortable and it runs out quickly. So our whole rig went. The truck driver made sure that we had two big bundles of toilet paper when we went over there. We were the only ones comfortable.

David Spitzer: That’s great. You had a ton of success over [00:37:00] many, many years, and we’re certainly honored to have this time with you.

What a great pleasure. What a treat for us all to get to know you a little bit this evening and to hear these stories. I mean, it’s just priceless. I admire you for the hard work. You’re an inspiration. As I explained to you, I’m an amateur, but all of us Have our own goals, whether it’s in racing or whatever, and your perseverance, your attitude of whatever it takes is certainly inspiring.

So thank you so much for being with us.

Crew Chief Eric: This episode has been brought to you by the Automobile Club of the West and the ACO USA. From the awe inspiring speed demons that have graced the track to the courageous drivers who have pushed the limits of endurance, the 24 Hours of Le Mans is an automotive spectacle like no other. For over a century, the 24 Hours of Le Mans has urged manufacturers to innovate for the benefit of future motorists, and it’s a celebration of the [00:38:00] relentless pursuit of speed and excellence in the world of motorsports.

To learn more about, or to become a member of the ACO USA, look no further than www. lemans. org, click on English in the upper right corner, and then click on the ACO Members tab for club offers. Once you’ve become a member, you can follow all the action on the Facebook group, ACO USA Members Club, and become part of the legend with future Evening with the Legend meetups.

This episode has been brought to you by Grand Touring Motorsports as part of our Motoring Podcast Network. For more episodes like this, tune in each week for more exciting and educational content from organizations like The Exotic Car Marketplace, The Motoring Historian, Brake Fix, and many others. If you’d like to support Grand Touring Motorsports and the Motoring Podcast Network, sign up for one of our many sponsorship tiers at [00:39:00] www.

patreon. com forward slash GT Motorsports. Please note that the content, opinions, and materials presented and expressed in this episode are those of its creator, and this episode has been published with their consent. If you have any inquiries about this program, please contact the creators of this episode via email or social media as mentioned in the episode.

Highlights

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

00:00 Introduction to the Legend of Le Mans
01:45 Doc Bundy’s Early Life and Introduction to Racing
05:24 First Steps in Professional Racing
07:09 Joining Peter Gregg and Brumos Racing
10:33 Transition to Al Holbert Racing
13:32 Building a Career and Seeking Opportunities
16:49 Racing Highlights and Challenges
19:19 First Le Mans Experience
22:18 Unexpected Team Leader
23:12 Racing Challenges and Pig Incident
26:47 Le Mans Adventures
32:18 Victory and Post-Race Chaos
36:13 Reflecting on Racing Experiences
36:58 Conclusion and Acknowledgements

Bonus Content

There's more to this story!

All of our BEHIND THE SCENES (BTS) Break/Fix episodes are raw and unedited, and expressly shared with the permission and consent of our guests.

Learn More

Evening With A Legend (EWAL)

We hope you enjoyed this presentation and look forward to more Evening With A Legend throughout this season. Sign up for the next EWAL TODAY!

Doc Bundy’s career is a testament to perseverance. He didn’t come from money. He didn’t have a clear path. But he had hustle, heart, and a knack for making things happen. Whether driving Moby Dick, racing with Jaguar, or dodging bikini-clad hecklers at Arnage, Bundy’s stories are as rich as the history of Le Mans itself.

As Spitzer put it, “Your attitude of ‘whatever it takes’ is inspiring.” And for anyone chasing a dream – on track or off – that’s the real takeaway.

ACO USA

This content has been brought to you in-part by support through...

Porsche vs Corvette: The Everyman Sports Car Showdown (Part 2)

Eric M

August 13, 2024

Porsche vs Corvette: The Everyman Sports Car Showdown (Part 2)

Sixty years of Porsche 911. Eight generations. One iconic silhouette. And a whole lot of opinions.

In this episode of Break/Fix’s What Should I Buy? series, our panel of petrol heads takes on a new challenge: help a first-time collector find a Porsche 911 that’ll turn heads at Cars & Coffee – whether it’s admiration or confusion. The criteria? Something that makes friends say, “Where’d you get that Porsche?”

We’ve done Corvette. Now it’s time for Porsche. The 911 is often seen as the everyman’s sports car – just like the Corvette – but with a distinctly German twist. While the Ferrari F40 and Porsche 959 might dominate poster walls, our panel is focused on attainable classics. The real question: which 911 is the right one for a new collector?

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Mark Shank – Resident 90s car guy and Bring a Trailer data whisperer
Crew Chief Eric – Our East Coast moderator with a penchant for stirring the pot
Don Weberg – Garage Style Magazine
William “Big Money” Ross – Exotic Car Marketplace
Ryan Bahrke – Road Show Pod, formerly of The Steering Committee
David Middleton – Former Nürburgring race engineer and president of M.I.E. Racing

The conversation kicks off with the earliest 911s – the 901s. Are they truly collectible, or just rounding out someone’s already deep Porsche collection?

William and Don agree: the short-wheelbase 901s (1965–1968) are more about purity than practicality. Restoration costs, parts scarcity, and drivability issues make them a tough sell for anyone but the most committed enthusiast. And let’s not forget the Singer effect – replicas of early 911s are often more desirable than the originals.

Porsche 901
Porsche 911
Porsche 911 S
1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RS 2.7
1974-1989 Porsche 911
The Infamous 930 Turbo "Whale Tail"
Porsche 964 Turbo
Porsche 996 GT3
Porsche 993 Turbo w/ Safari 911s
Porsche 997 Turbo
Porsche 991
Porsche 992 Targa
Porsche 992 GT3

Ryan adds that early 911s, like the 356s before them, struggle in real-world driving scenarios like the Colorado Grand rally. Altitude saps power, and comfort is minimal. Still, the 911S from 1972 remains a standout – lightweight, sporty, and rare.

Shopping Criteria

Our panel of car enthusiasts and experts, including representatives from Garage Style Magazine, The Exotic Car Marketplace, Roadshow Podcast, and MIE Racing, convene to debate the ultimate Porsche for a first-time collector under the theme ‘What Should I Buy?’ They delve into the nuances of different Porsche models, focusing primarily on the 911, and its various generations. The discussion spans from air-cooled classics like the 901, 964, and 993, to water-cooled counterparts such as the 996, 997, and the latest 992 generation. They explore factors like tech advancements, collectibility, driving experience, and market value. Comparisons are drawn with the Corvette, touching upon reliability, serviceability, and performance. Throughout, the panel provides insights on the unique appeal of each Porsche generation while teasing their favorite picks under a hypothetical $100,000 budget.

We have 8 generations of the 911 to talk about. However, they can be grouped: 901, 911, 930, 964, 993, 996, 997, 991, 992. So hang in there, it’s worth it!

Back when we had things like the E(conomy), T(ouring) and S(port) models (and L, R and RS too!)
First 911 (930) Turbo, 1978, 4-speed, massive lag, BUT later came the slantnose
964 – Lowest production numbers of 911s out of all the generations, ~4000/yr. Apparently Porsche was on the verge of bankruptcy
Quick quiz, anyone know who bought the last Air-cooled 911?
Is 996 the best deal? With its intermediate shaft issues! (just like the Boxster) And the eggdrop headlights?
991/992 – What’s up with this DOT-1, DOT-2 stuff? I even hear people using this nomenclature for the 944s now. 944.1, .2 … why?
Special Models… Carrera, C4, C4S, Turbo, Turbo S, GT3, GT3 RS…
Fact/Fiction: More 911s are now GT3s than anything else, why?
How has Singer Vehicle Design messed up the Market?
Knowing what we know now, before turning the tables… Would you buy a Porsche? (or settle for a Corvette).
You’ve got $100K to spend on a “DAILY” 911, What do you buy?

Highlights

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

00:00 Introduction and Panel Setup
00:19 Porsche vs. Ferrari: The Everyday Enthusiast’s Dilemma
00:51 Exploring the 60 Years of the Porsche 911
02:05 Collector’s Insight: Air-Cooled Porsches
06:00 The Evolution of the Porsche 911
24:11 The Turbo Era: Porsche 930
29:14 Porsche’s Diversification and Survival
34:41 Porsche’s Front-Engine Models: 944 and 928
37:01 Corvette’s Dark Period and Porsche’s Evolution
38:13 The 964: A Turning Point for Porsche
38:50 Porsche’s Production Challenges and Market Performance
39:31 The Impact of Singer on the 964 Market
43:13 964 Turbo vs. 930 Turbo: A Debate
46:15 The 993: The Ultimate Air-Cooled 911?
51:46 The 996: A Bargain or a Missed Opportunity?
54:47 The 997: A Modern Classic
01:07:57 The GT3 Legacy and Porsche’s Motorsport Evolution
01:11:50 Breaking Down Porsche Production Numbers
01:13:05 Navigating the GT Car Market
01:14:30 The GT Car Experience
01:16:59 Porsche vs. Corvette: Track Day Realities
01:23:25 The Future of Porsche 911
01:35:02 Porsche vs. Corvette: The Final Verdict
01:40:05 What Porsche to Buy with $100K
01:46:22 Closing Thoughts and Farewell

Transcript

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Our panel of break fix petrolheads are back for another rousing what should I buy debate. Using unique shopping criteria, they are challenged to find our first time collector the best vehicle that will make their friends go, Where’d you get that? or What the hell is wrong with you? at the next Cars and Coffee.

Crew Chief Eric: When we talk about Porsche rivalries, there’s always one that jumps immediately to the surface. Do you choose the technologically savvy space age Porsche 959 or the raw and exhilarating passion of the Ferrari F40? But for those of us that are everyday enthusiasts with more modest budgets, those aren’t the kinds of cars we’re interested in collecting.

Right, Mark?

Mark Shank: Absolutely right, Eric. So picking up from our previous What Should I Buy episode, we looked at the Corvette as the natural rival. So the nine 11 has the every man’s sports car. And in this episode, we’re going to focus on the 60 years of the nine 11. We’re joined by Don Wieberg from garage style magazine, along with William big money Ross [00:01:00] from the exotic car marketplace and Ryan Barkie, formerly of the steering committee podcast.

Now part of the road show pod, along with David Milton, former race engineer at the Nuremberg. and president of M. I. E. Racing. Then there’s me. Who am I? I’m Mark Schenck, our resident 90s car guy and de facto bring a trailer data analyst.

Crew Chief Eric: Thanks, Mark. And like all What Should I Buy episodes, we have some shopping criteria.

So get ready, folks. It’s time to slick back your hair. Press your Paisley button down, lace up those Oxfords, and loosen up your checkbooks, because we’re shopping for 9 11s. And in this episode, our panel of extraordinary Petroheads are challenged to find our first time collector something that will make their friends go, ja, das ist gut, at the next Cars Coffee.

So welcome back to the show, guys. Thanks for being back.

Mark Shank: Thank you.

Don Weberg: Thank you very much. Isn’t that dunker? Yeah. Dunker. But I patched now. Don, I’m wearing my eye patch. Why

Mark Shank: are I patches? German pirates? They’re like, they don’t even have [00:02:00] much of an ocean going history. Really?

Don Weberg: No, they don’t. They don’t.

Ryan Bahrke: It’s a very small coastline.

That was the

Don Weberg: Irish and the

Ryan Bahrke: Swedes.

Crew Chief Eric: Last time we got together, we talked about Corvette. We really did a stellar job at condensing eight generations, 70 years of Corvette into that episode. And so we look to do this again with Porsche with a slightly shorter history, right? The 911 celebrating its 60th birthday.

The 901 came out in 1964 and it too has gone through Eight different iterations not to be outdone by Corvette, even though it had basically a 10 year head start on Porsche. We’re going to talk about the other side of the equation, because as we alluded to the last time, the natural rivalry here in the States, if you’re looking for that, every man’s sports car, something that you can take to the office, you can run around with up in the mountains.

You can have fun with, you can take to the track race on Sunday, go to work on Monday. It’s Porsche and Corvette at the end of the day.

Don Weberg: I gotta tell you I heard I heard Eric’s accent from the east coast over there kick up And man, I gotta tell you he [00:03:00] never says it right every time he says it He says, you know, it’s Porsche versus Corvette And I gotta tell you my little German friend over here is having a fit because he says the versus Corvette is silent It’s just say Porsche you’re done

Ryan Bahrke: I don’t think there’s a lot of cross shopping.

Is that what Heinrich says

Don Weberg: you can ask anybody The 911 is the finest motor vehicle in the world. Just ask me. I will tell you. If I do not tell you, you can ask Porsche themselves and they will tell you. They are wonderful cars.

Crew Chief Eric: Wunderbar. Kicking off 901s go all the way back to the long nose cars, kind of like the C1 Corvette.

Are people collecting these cars?

Don Weberg: Oh, you mean you want to talk about the Porsche Beetle? Is that what you’re talking about? Because that’s where we really leave off. It’s

William Ross: a Porsche Beetle. Well, someone’s always collecting something. It doesn’t matter. So I mean, someone’s going to collect them. I guess it just depends the reasoning behind collecting it.

Is it something that had to do with their childhood? [00:04:00] Something to do with just something they saw? Seeing a poster? One of those things. I mean, someone’s always going to collect something. But to what extent is it key? And what are they doing with them? Are they collecting them or storing them? They collected to drive them.

They just collected them to hoard them in their backyard.

Crew Chief Eric: And I don’t want to go down the singer rabbit hole right away. And the reason I’m like, are people actually collecting legitimate air cooled early 901s and 9 11s? It’s because singers producing replica early nine 11s, what are people buying? And we’ll probably diverge into singer conversation more than once on this episode, but the question is, are there really a lot of nine Oh ones?

I mean, William, this is really your area air cooled Porsches out there in circulation or people asking for those, or are they looking for something else?

William Ross: The person is looking for a nine Oh one. Someone’s going to have a lot of other Porsches. And again, it kind of goes back to what we said before in regards to Fats last episode, you know, it’s like completing a collection of what they have currently.

No, I don’t think anyone wants one car, one car. All they’re going, Oh, I’m going to get a 901. No, because it’s one [00:05:00] just cost restoration. Just me. I mean, everything. Finding Park. I mean, it’s just all that goes with it.

Mark Shank: I’m with William on that. I think, you know, the short wheelbase 65 to 68, those are rounding out a collection, I think, but you know, I don’t know, that’s just me.

William Ross: There’s a lot of personal preference in those. As we all know, 911s have a tendency throughout the years from the sixties all the way till now, all look the same in essence, that same shape and everything. So it’s not really like you’re going these big styling cues, like say on a vet, where you’re going from a 63 split window to, you know, a 64, you know, that kind of stuff going from a C2 to a C3 or C3 to C4, that kind of stuff where it completely changed, totally different car.

Now let’s see the same shape and style throughout the year, especially all the way up till the ugly ass nine, nine, six with those eggplant headlight.

Ryan Bahrke: I’ve never heard them call the eggplant.

Mark Shank: All right. We’re like three minutes into this. We’ve already talked about singer and like fried egg headlights and like, Jesus, this went off

Crew Chief Eric: right away.

Took a left turn. [00:06:00] When you get away from the real, real early cars, 64 to 68, and you start to move into 69, 70, 71, all the way to 72, especially free government bumpers and seat belts and all those kinds of regulations that came about in 73 and 74, you had variants of the 9 11, right? You had the E, the T and the S.

And especially the S the 72 S was one of those cars. That was like the halo car, even in the eighties, like, Oh my God, you have a 72 S, you know, lightweight, the sport model versus the touring or the economy. That’s what the T and the E stood for. It’s really difficult because a lot of people will consider 64 to 89, just 911.

But in reality, you have to look at the actual part numbers. So 901, 64 to basically 73 ish, then it changes over to 911 and 930 and so on.

Don Weberg: I got to tell you, I think it has to do with a purity thing. You look at people with 356s, there’s no other car in the world. If you’re a 356 guy, that’s it. What is 911?

We don’t know. 356 [00:07:00] is it. But it’s such a pure car to drive, and when you get in a 9 0 1 or an early nine 11, you experience that. But just like Corvette with all these iterations, yeah, Porsche always kinda looked the same and always had that sort of teardrop look, but there were so much evolution under the skin that made each nine 11 a little better, a little better, a little better.

Very similar to Corvette. What 9 0 1 might be faced with is a little bit of what C one and even C two to a degree are faced with, which is drivability. 9 11 has evolved so much over the years, you’re going to go on a rally. You’re going to cruise the mountains of Malibu. You’re going to have fun. You got your other little Porsche friends out there with you.

You’re going to hit a few little beer stops on the way. You want the 901 with the crappy radio and no air conditioning and the rough ride of that short wheelbase suspension, or would you rather have, even God forbid, I should bring it up, the 996. infinitely better car, infinitely better engineered, infinitely better driving experience, [00:08:00]

Mark Shank: infinitely worse interior.

I don’t know. Oh,

Don Weberg: yeah. The interiors are pretty. Yeah.

Ryan Bahrke: Hey, it’s coming into its own now all these years later. I truly believe it.

Mark Shank: It is coming into its own as it should. It was undervalued, but the interior was pretty bad. Yeah,

Ryan Bahrke: it was.

Mark Shank: We’ll

Ryan Bahrke: get

Crew Chief Eric: to the nine, nine soon.

Ryan Bahrke: Yeah. For

Crew Chief Eric: sure.

Ryan Bahrke: Don makes an interesting point.

I’m involved with the Colorado Grand, which is a thousand mile pre 1960 or 1960 and earlier, I guess, road rally, a thousand miles in five days in Colorado. And you talk about the 356s, 356 is not enough car for the Grand. No. So most of the 356s you see anymore are Emory cars. And I kind of feel like that’s the same deal with the early 911s.

It’s horses for courses. What are you looking to do with the thing? The valuable Porsches are the rare cars or the cars that are exceptionally good to drive. Then you get sort of where the Venn diagram connects and those are the really special cars.

Don Weberg: You said that the 356s and the 901s by relation have.

Hubble on the Colorado grand, is it just, they have a power deficit

Ryan Bahrke: and that’s it. And just for the record. So the grand is 60 and earlier. So, you know, we’re talking three 56s.

Don Weberg: Yeah. Okay. But

Ryan Bahrke: yeah, you know, it’s [00:09:00] just elevation. Altitude is your enemy and it’s a real thing. You’re a pass at 12, 000 feet, 14, 000 feet.

That car’s got half the power that says it has. That’s a real issue. You know, some of those old Ferraris don’t have that problem, but the Porsches do. The goal wings, no problem. Perfect grand car. Wouldn’t stop me from wanting one or owning one. Yeah. You know, again, what are you going to use it for?

Probably not the rally car for you. Around town, whatever. Nice Sunday drive. Great car. You get everything else. It’s like the whole 9 11 versus 9 12 argument later. So much of the inherent goodness is in the 9 12, but it’ll never be a 9 11.

Crew Chief Eric: He might’ve just lost his Porsche card with everybody that’s listening.

Talking about 9 12s.

Ryan Bahrke: Hey, I can’t afford one of those either anymores. So I guess it’s, what are you looking for?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, we’re all looking for a 73 Carrera RS 2. 7 liter.

Ryan Bahrke: Absolutely. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: I think those early cars have a little bit of room for investment, but. I haven’t seen too many 72, nine 11 S’s up for sale.

Well, the production volumes were so low back then.

Mark Shank: Right. So you have to take [00:10:00] that into perspective, but your nine 11 S, which was produced 69 to 73, they’ve had. Maybe 30 odd go up for auction on bring a trailer. In the last 12 months, half of those transacted and half of them didn’t, and the price ranges on the ones that transacted were from 70 K to 240 k.

I’ve got a good buddy with the 72 s Euro spec. He’s in the uk. I rode with him around in that. To me, for the older cars, I think the S is like the driver’s car and the other cars are the collector’s cars, but maybe that’s a bias on my part.

Don Weberg: I really like them. I think they’re spectacular looking cars. I’ve had the joy of riding in one.

It was a little small for me. But it really, really was a cool experience. And growing up, my best friend, we were in baseball together. His father had a 356. I don’t know what year it was. And so I kind of grew up around that 356. And I really, really liked that car too. But I [00:11:00] noticed in that early nine 11, I thought, man, this is just a nice car.

This is much, much better, more power. The sound is there. It’s just a different car.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m like a C1. I think, you know, the right color and, you know, with the right leather and this and that, we’re like, yes, C1 is doable, but 901,

Don Weberg: I think the C1 I think the C1 edges it out a little bit. So I

Crew Chief Eric: grew up with the early 9 11.

However, like a lot of early 9 11s. It was heavily modified. It was made to look like a 78, nine 30. So we’ll get into that. That’s actually kind of the next generation of nine 11s.

Don Weberg: You ride in the later ones and you start to realize, okay, that evolution is really showing itself here. And do I really want to be, forgive the term, but do I want to be stuck with that early, early car?

And I mean, let me ask you, is it going to get harder and harder to sell those early cars? Did it come back to William’s point of, yeah, you’ll be able to sell it someday, but it’s really just going to go into a collection. The guy is not going to drive it. He’s not going to be a real enthusiast. He just wants it to round out a certain aura of a [00:12:00] collection or something like that, which I guess what I’m wondering is will 901 start losing value or will it take the Ferrari road and start to become much more valuable because there are so few of them.

Because so many of them were converted into later model cars, et cetera. I think that’s going to be interesting to see come the future.

Crew Chief Eric: And if you think about it until 72 and 73, when the bigger motors started to come in bigger. Yeah. Yeah. And air quotes, right. 2. 4, 2. 5, and then 2. 7 liters. Those early cars.

2. 0, 2. 2, although everybody was mixed matching parts. Oh, you got an S, but you put E cams in it because of the lobing and, you know, all this kind of crazy performance stuff. It’s a step above a three 56. You know, you’re making a hundred, 120 horsepower instead of 65. Yeah. Okay. But the car’s heavier, it’s bigger, but it’s the same principle.

William Ross: That was a cool thing about that is the similarities production wise on all those cars is you could interchange. And make that car yours. Now you personalize that car to such an extent. It was yours. That was the one thing, [00:13:00] you know, you go out and use car market even now, but some years ago is when you found one is like, okay, well, you knew you’re going to have to do something to it to get it to where you wanted it because that person personalized it so much because.

You could, that was the thing. It wasn’t like, you know, you kept it stock or it was like some things that everyone did. You could personalize the heck out of those things so much. Parts in abundance.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s not just personalization so much as a lot of that stemmed from grassroots motorsports, where you’re looking for the advantage against the other guy with the nine 11 and somebody went, you know, the E cams.

And the heads out of the T and if you make this weird Frankenstein combination, you’ll get 10 more horsepower with these jets from the Webers, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Grassroots motorsport fueled a lot of those combinations, but they weren’t factory sanctioned. I think the factory took a while to kind of catch up later.

They were designing to a budget. Well, if you bought the E, it was the base model 911. If you bought the touring, the T. Then you’ve got these [00:14:00] extra things like factory air or whatever it was, right? Which was an option in the S was the sport model. So there’s a lot of that going on from a sales perspective, but I don’t think they were quite yet thinking about the amateur drivers.

Yes, they were competing that Lamar. They had been doing that with the three 56s and other cars before that point. They hadn’t tuned in the same way that let’s say Corvette did going. We’re going to build a car for people to go have fun with. They were just building 911s to fuel the engineering program, the racing program.

David L. Middleton: That’s also a very German philosophy, right? And you got to think at that time where Americans were more, we’re going to tune, we’re going to change, we’re going to modify and German culture, especially back then, I don’t think it was natural for the average German person who bought a Porsche to say, I’m going to go out and change parts, right?

It was probably looked down upon as like, Oh, you’re taking away from the OEM, right? I’m sure there were a few people doing it here or there. But that tends to be more of an American thing, you know, and I think America has pushed that into the mainstream now where of course everybody does it [00:15:00] globally.

But I think, especially back then, if you were a German and you started modifying your Porsche, you know, your neighbor in Stuttgart would have looked and said, like, what are you doing?

Ryan Bahrke: You bring up a good point too. It’s a little tougher to get 10 horsepower out of a, an air cooled Porsche than it is like a Chevy small.

You don’t

Crew Chief Eric: say

Ryan Bahrke: look at the

William Ross: Chevy

Ryan Bahrke: sideways.

William Ross: I mean, it’s tough to stick another hamster in there.

Crew Chief Eric: I think Ryan’s right. Early long nose, nine 11 might still be a stretch and a struggle on something like the Colorado grand. And that’s when you want to move into a 74 later, nine 11.

Ryan Bahrke: How many 901s actually are there?

These aren’t the numbers pretty small

Crew Chief Eric: or of them. Then there are nine 64. So I’m going to say that.

Ryan Bahrke: Well, anymore, right? Thanks singer. We’ll get to those. Do your point

Crew Chief Eric: quick quiz for David and Ryan. Do you guys know why Portia had to stop using the nine Oh one moniker and switched to nine 11?

David L. Middleton: Yes, I do. I do.

Crew Chief Eric: David, go ahead. Tell us.

David L. Middleton: Of course, it’s because of Peugeot and Peugeot had this [00:16:00] 901 was inside factory number or as they say, like a internal number and they did like a cease and desist. Basically, they changed it from 901 to 911 and it actually worked out better. I think for a Porsche.

Ryan Bahrke: Can you imagine if they had kept that name?

Would it have the same panache? I don’t know that it would.

David L. Middleton: Oh, Portia being Portia, I’m sure they would have turned it to like a cold following. But yeah, I mean, it was probably a blessing in disguise. I didn’t feel it at the time.

Don Weberg: It gives you an idea too, of how Portia has come along through the years.

Back in the day, Peugeot was able to stand up and say, stop. You will not do that to us. We keep this zero. You do not, you go away. You stupid little German people. You. And now look at it, I don’t think Peugeot could really, I mean, I don’t know, maybe they could, but Porsche has become this huge corporation.

Crew Chief Eric: And I’ll add to that, that wasn’t the first time that Porsche had tangled with Peugeot either, because rumors have it that they’re the ones that put the old man in jail after the war. So hey, you know what? It’s all good, right? Twice bitten.

Don Weberg: You remember the Continental name, I mean, [00:17:00] going back to 356 and then they had to tango with Ford.

And it was just one of those things where cease and desist and stop doing that. And again, now they’re to a point, it’s just like, if you want to go to court, let’s go to court.

Crew Chief Eric: So moving to the second half of that original 901, 911 generation, 1964. Tonight, 1889, we get the first body change, and as you guys said, you can always see the lines of the nine 11 through every generation that’s come since the very first one in 1964.

So if you think about it, it’s very German, it’s very iterative, just like you’re developing software version one and version two in version three. But when you switch over in 74, because of the new regulations and the bigger bumpers and the safety stuff. It was sort of like C1 to C2. Yeah, it’s still 911, but suddenly we got big bumpers and those butt cheeks in the back and those lights in the bumper and the headlights got bigger.

And the car just physically got larger, although it kept the same silhouette. I think a lot of us, like we talked about C2 is the car we imprinted on or C4 [00:18:00] is the car we imprinted on. Those 74 to 89, nine 11s there on everybody’s wall. As a kid, you’re

William Ross: like,

Crew Chief Eric: God, it’s a nine 11. You just know what it is, but sort of like Sano, does it still hold that same greatness compared to other nine 11?

So the second gen nine 11, let’s call it that. Is it still as good as, as it ever was?

Mark Shank: Like, I love it. There’s such a great aftermarket for it. You can make it a genuinely light car. It’s not that hard to get a 2, 500. Pound car out of it. There’s a lot of different things you can do from a power perspective.

I believe they flared the fenders out with the SC a little bit in the back. For me as a kid, that my little kid brain, when they flared the fenders, they were cool. It was like the older ones were not cool without those hips. You know, maybe I learned something about myself later in life, but those hips work for me.

I’m a little biased. I owned one for a long time. It’s one of my biggest regrets is not still having that car. It was so much fun to drive. It’s very different driving experience [00:19:00] than like even in a modern, very fast car. But it is, it’s very analog, the brakes and in the steering and everything. I don’t know.

I, I think it’s awesome.

Don Weberg: I think too, when it comes to that, if you’ll forgive it, that second generation, if you can call it that 9 11, you started to become a lot more mainstream. Let’s face it, even those late seventies, mid seventies S’s, SC, and then certainly by the time the Carreras were out in the 1980s, you had a very strong evolution of, we’re going to go after our customer base.

Well, who is our customer base? Oh, that’s doctors and lawyers, people with big money. They want their comfort. They want their panache. They want to be able to enjoy all the qualities of a German car, all the comforts of a luxury car. This one just so happens to be able to move very, very well. I think they started pulling away from their racing roots a little bit, especially during the 1980s, even though they had the 930, which was very capable car, you still had a lot of the luxuries and you can’t say it was unique.

Corvette did the [00:20:00] same thing to a degree. Yeah. You had the 350 and the 327 and all that, which we could modify until kingdom come. But I mean, you look at Datsun with the 280Z versus the 280ZX, and that happened right around that same time, that late seventies, early eighties. But the ZX was a big departure from what the Z enthusiasts were really, really wanting.

Well, what Nissan or Datsun was trying to point out to them was, yeah, you guys, you enthusiasts are great. We love you. I guess who’s writing the checks these days. It’s the yuppies. It’s not you guys, Porsche and Corvette. I think both recognize the same thing. And they started having to pull away and they started having to develop really what became the yuppie mobiles of the eighties.

Crew Chief Eric: We talk a lot on the American side about the malaise period, adding the luxury. We talked about that quite a bit with the C3 Corvette, where it was like all show and no go, Horses have always been pretty Spartan. They’re very utilitarian. If you sit in a nine 64 outside of, you know, more modern video cockpit design gauges, it’s still the same interior going back all the way to 1964, [00:21:00] more or less the seats got better, but it’s all the same basic recipe.

But the thing is you hit the nail on the head in the eighties, much like the C2 Corvette, the second generation nine 11 was suddenly on TV. You saw nine 11s on heart to heart. Linda Carter drove a nine, a wonder woman. I mean, celebrities are driving nine 11s, right? But the thing is, if you look at it chronologically, Porsche is always behind.

I feel like they’re playing catch up to Corvette a little bit. Like, look at what they’re doing over there because they are 10 years behind. C2 was already at C3 was already on its way in by the time the second gen 911 was coming around, but you also mentioned something in the second generation, you had the regular 911, then the S and the SC, and then the Carrera and this and that, and they kept piling what I noticed, especially growing up in the Porsche club, it was like, Oh, you own an S.

I have an SC and then the guy next to him goes, Oh, you only have an SC. Well, I have a turbo, you know? And it became this like almost bidding war in their own community. [00:22:00] Like you had to have the latest, greatest, biggest, baddest one there was. And it sort of set the whole thing into motion.

Don Weberg: I’m listening to you and I hear you and I get it.

And I’m going to step into that realm. And I know you and I cannot engage in that realm, not because we fight, but because you and I will just keep that damn thing going forever, but I’m going to go into the C3 real quick. And we’ve already discussed this, but the C3 was really kind of a neat car. You saw the shift.

It was obvious when the C3 was born. Yeah. You had another performance Corvette. You had fun. You had higher squealing performance, et cetera. It was fantastic. And then the mid seventies set in and we started losing our chrome bumpers in favor of those elasto form plastic bumpers that bend with five mile per hour impact.

Well, okay. I guess it’s more aerodynamic. Yeah, but it’s also better on fuel because of this, this and this. Oh, and the emissions are a lot cleaner because of this, that, and the other. Uh huh. So does it still move? Yeah, man. 190 horsepower. Wait, what? You know, all of a sudden it was a gutless [00:23:00] wonder, but you got real leather seats now, huh?

And how about that fake wood dashboard, man? You don’t get that in no Porsche, no sir. By the way, two tone leather seats for you, buddy. It’s gonna be special. We’re gonna put you a CB radio in there, too, man. You’re gonna have some fun playing Smokey and the Bandit all day long. You actually got to see the evolution from performance to, I guess, malaise is what we’ll stick to.

Cars got more comfortable. They got more luxurious. They had two tone paint jobs, et cetera. I’m not saying the 911 went that crazy. Certainly it never did. But, exactly what you’re saying. If you follow along, yeah, yeah, yeah. The gauges were all the same. The layout’s all the same. Why? Germans aren’t really that creative.

Oh Lord. Okay. So. They keep doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over. So they’re just not all that creative. So the Porsche just kept going and going and going. And yes, they were playing catch up, but by the mid seventies, you could barely see the light of malaise coming through on nine 11 if for no other [00:24:00] reason.

They really started catering to their customer base that they were actually genius at how they evolved 9 11 so subtly, so subtly Corvette, man, it’s in your face, you’re getting crap. And that’s the end of the day,

Crew Chief Eric: but there is a caveat to that, which is the 930, the third gen 9 11 with the turbo. The very first ones came out as early as 1975.

Most of us know here in the States 1978, all the way through 1989 with the four speed and the 3.3 liter and all that kinda stuff. The thing about the nine 30 though, much like the C3 Corvette, it wasn’t luxury. It was insanity. We’re talking a big snail under the hood and all sorts of crazy noises, but what it was was a derivative.

Of what was happening on the big stage and racing which they were ushering in the turbo era Look at all the turbo renault’s all the other turbo porsches that were racing all this other kind of stuff that was happening at le mans At endurance racing can am turbo turbo turbo turbo So it made sense [00:25:00] for porsche to introduce the 911 turbo when they did and corvette’s like Hey man, Rochester carburetor, the 930 had fuel injection.

They were way ahead of the curve. So what they lacked in luxury, they dumped it all in technology. Not wrong, not wrong.

Don Weberg: You know, David, if you keep giving us those long winded descriptions, I’m going to write you up. Remember he lived in Germany

Crew Chief Eric: for a long time, very to the point.

Ryan Bahrke: Let me ask. So I’m 48 years old, so I don’t remember that far back.

I mean, I guess it’s pretty far back, but back in the seventies though, were people cross shopping nine 11s and Corvettes more so than they are say in 2024?

Crew Chief Eric: No, I don’t think so. And that’s why we’re having this conversation. Yeah.

Don Weberg: Yeah. I mean, you know, Eric, to your point though, I mean, to your direct question, those forces, that particular generation is.

Especially the SC and the Carrera of the eighties, that to me is still the reigning king 9 11. I think that was a real summit in 9 11 development. And I don’t know [00:26:00] why. I don’t know if it’s because those were the ones that I was raised with. I don’t know if it’s because of what you just said, Eric, about all the technology and all the engineering that went into ensuring that little six cylinder could still hold onto a Corvette could still even outclass a Corvette because yeah, it’s fuel injected.

Now it’s got turbochargers. And I mean that, come on, it was a six cylinder. That was cleaning Ferrari clocks. I mean, that’s something to be said.

Ryan Bahrke: The reason I mentioned the demographics is one car was the doctor killer that wasn’t the Corvette, right?

Crew Chief Eric: The nine 30 was a widow maker for sure. Have any of you guys driven one?

Cause I have, and my uncle owned one and it was just vicious.

Ryan Bahrke: It was the car that put Porsche on the radar for me personally growing up. I, and to this day, I’ve never driven one, but that was the car that put it on my radar. There was a single guy who lived next to us who seemed to have all the ladies and all the cash, whatever.

I don’t know what he did professionally, but he had two cars. He had an old five 60 SL and he had a nine 30 turbo with silver BBS wheels. And I just thought that guy was just the Alpha and the Omega. I thought he was the [00:27:00] coolest, you know? And so that for me will always forever be the, the Porsche, the 911.

But to this day, I’ve never driven one. I’ve ridden in them, never driven one. The one to have is the 89, right? With the five speed or whatever.

Crew Chief Eric: And there’s a reason you make the statement. If you have any other turbocharged German cars, it’s got 930 like turbo lag.

Mark Shank: 930 is this Derox machine of turbo lag. Oh, it is insane.

Crew Chief Eric: When it comes on, it comes on like a shot out of a cannon.

Ryan Bahrke: Bonkers. So all the stories are true.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes, a hundred percent. You can’t actually enjoy a nine 30 because you have to manage a nine 30 and you have to be very careful, respectful of it. And when it’s not on boost Yeah, it can’t get out of its own way.

And when it is on boost, yeah. Hold on.

Don Weberg: Yeah. It’s a Jekyll and Hyde

Ryan Bahrke: and it’s all of 260 horsepower, right?

Don Weberg: Yeah. It ain’t a lot. But it’s not the horsepower, it’s the torque. Yeah. But I think that thing had 310 foot pounds of torque.

Ryan Bahrke: Not nothing.

Don Weberg: No, it’s not bad. That was huge. There’s

Crew Chief Eric: a reason why it’s so wide too.

They double the size of the rear tires to try to make traction.

Don Weberg: In the Corvette community, they used to call them steam rollers.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, [00:28:00] like you, Ryan, I had a black on black 930 turbo on my wall. It even had black BBS basket weaves, but it was the slant nose. The slant nose was the one everybody was talking about.

Oh, it’s so cool. It’s like a nine 35, you know, no headlights.

Ryan Bahrke: You didn’t see them. That was it. They only existed on posters and in magazines, at least where I lived in Indiana. I mean, that was just a next level exotic.

Crew Chief Eric: I mentioned my uncle had one. His was a replica all steel slammer.

Ryan Bahrke: Okay.

Mark Shank: You can find them.

Ryan Bahrke: Yeah. Where’d they all go?

Crew Chief Eric: Gone. Like magic.

Mark Shank: There was something said earlier. I want to, I maybe want to challenge a little bit, cause I feel like an understatement. the significance of the 959, which you mentioned in the intro outside of the turbo technology, which we’ve talked about being not amazingly well implemented in the 930.

The 911 didn’t change for a long time. It was a pretty low volume car. They’re selling a thousand units. They’re selling 2, 000 units while the Corvette’s selling 25, 30. You know, in the late seventies, the Corvette was crushing it. [00:29:00] Absolutely destroying. Stayed this low volume. You know, they stuck with this 915 transmission, which I absolutely loved.

My 915, I put some Wevo aftermarket parts in it and it was just absolutely amazing, but it was an anachronism for its time. I feel like the 959 and the investment that Porsche put around that and where they went from there. Was a real turning point for the brand and it really started trying to win on technology and taking the risk on the investment and in a large way betting the company on this idea that they were going to increase sales volume and they were going to drive higher margin, higher value.

And they did all those things. If you add the 911 variants up across, they sell similar or better volume relative to Corvette. And they do it at much higher margins and much higher MSRP. And you can see that kind of start to happen in the 90s. It’s an important, significant evolution of the brand. And I loved my 1985 911 3.

2 that had no power steering, [00:30:00] no anti lock brakes. The suspension setup was You know, you could argue at the time that it was well dated and how it was set up. I mean, I loved it. And the 9 11 was relatively static for a long time. I think that was indicative of where Porsche was putting their money, putting it into different programs.

9 28, they thought that was going to take over and kill the 9 11. We haven’t told that story that everybody knows if they know anything about 9 11, but then also they were doing the Volkswagen project that they ended up having to take over for themselves to sell. The 9 44 and they’re putting all this money in.

other places and not in the 9 11 and then that changed significantly and it became the future of the brand. It’s important I think to kind of talk about from that perspective.

Crew Chief Eric: And I’m glad you brought that up. It was at the back of my mind. There was a moment there where 9 11 might not have made it past the 80s because if you go back to some of those magazines that I know Ryan’s got memorized, but if you look at some of the spec of like the 944 turbos, they were more aerodynamic than the 9 11.

They were quicker. The 928 is faster. [00:31:00] Especially when you get up to GTS, you’re talking near 200 mile an hour cars. The 911 wasn’t putting down those kinds of speeds yet. The 959 was the 911 that could do 200 miles an hour air quotes on that one too. To your point, yeah, they were sort of not lost, but they were definitely diversifying their product portfolio.

Mark Shank: They were a small company, and I think that’s hard to appreciate in the modern context. They were a small company. Great point. They were investing in these other lines that they were going to go on a more luxurious higher end point with the nine 28, but they’re going to go more economical, the nine 44, the nine 24.

They were putting investment in those spaces and they weren’t hamstringing those in the way the Americans did, where it was like, no, your 9 44 can’t impune the nine 11. Which is funny ’cause they do that today, right? Like your complaint about your payment or something today is it feels like it was built to be the best thing that wouldn’t beat to nine 11.

It’s like, eh, you know, obviously they’ve gotten better with that, a lot more [00:32:00] with the GD fours and the RSS and the spiders, and I feel like they’ve really improved that in the last five, seven years. But up until then they had a real problem, but they didn’t do that in the eighties. Right. And then I think they didn’t do that because they didn’t think that 9 11 was the future of the brand.

So they didn’t care.

Don Weberg: But that changed. The 928, I guess, even the 944, 924, et cetera, in the seventies as they came out. If I’m not mistaken, 928 was supposed to take the baton from 9 11 because they didn’t expect it to get out of the seventies. They thought 9 11 was going to be out to put to sleep because they didn’t think the air cooled would meet the American emissions regulations.

And so 9 28 was developed and it became kind of an oops car because 9 28 just didn’t resonate with 9 11 customers. That was not. Porsche, but what it did do, it dragged some traditional Mercedes and BMW people into the Porsche showroom for a slightly larger, more luxurious Porsche

Crew Chief Eric: experience. And it was the way Porsche embraced the malaise period too.

Yeah.

Ryan Bahrke: It was also very expensive. Yes. Relative to [00:33:00] other Porsches.

Crew Chief Eric: It was

Mark Shank: very expensive.

Crew Chief Eric: But they are amazing to drive. And we could probably go down a whole rabbit hole on 928. I adore 928s, they’re a lot of fun. Seen in movies like Scarface and Risky Business and Weird Science and things like that. And you

Don Weberg: do know where 928 came from, don’t you?

Don’t even

Crew Chief Eric: start.

Don Weberg: I mean, let’s face it, the 9 11 is nothing more than a squashed beetle. And the 9 28 is nothing more than a squashed American pacer.

Crew Chief Eric: Legend has it its inspiration comes from the pacer.

Don Weberg: But I will tell you where Jeremy Clarkson, where he hates 9 11, he loves 9 28. Yeah. He absolutely loves 9 28.

So for him, you know, kudos.

William Ross: I

Ryan Bahrke: was going to say, a little more room for that giant head,

Don Weberg: huh?

Mark Shank: Can you imagine the cost of developing the automatic transmission and the new manual transmission and a 32 valve V8 for a car as low volume as this? 928 don’t only to walk away from it, they sold what? Five in 1994.[00:34:00]

I mean, that was such a boondoggle for the brand. I guess they should get credit for surviving it.

Crew Chief Eric: It was like a 20 plus year boondoggle. The 928 was around forever. It’s like, it was never going to die. You know,

Mark Shank: someone was trying to amortize the cost of all that R and D. It just kept going.

Crew Chief Eric: Porsche has always been like on the edge of bankruptcy.

Every so many years, it was like, holy cow, you know, we got to bet the farm. And the 944 was a saving grace. Like it kept the service bays full. And I’m not saying because 944 was plagued with issues, but it was just so different to maintain than a 9

David L. Middleton: 11. Yeah, it is a company for many, many years was on the edge of bankruptcy and had to be creative and innovative to keep going.

You know, it’s funny, we talked about the 944 and then the 928. Well, those were the first Porsches for me that I fell in love with because I grew up in New York city and there weren’t a lot of 911s going around in my neighborhood. Like I knew of it, but what I first saw, and I remember this vividly, the first thing I saw, and I think it mentions other podcasts, it was a red 944.

That somebody in [00:35:00] my neighborhood had, and then fell in love kind of with the 928. But that changed very quickly. Once I really discovered the 911s cause you know, the 930 turbo and the, just the 930 in general, the history of its racing and, and the history of what it became was what I started to fall in love with.

So, yeah, to me, it’s a very important car. Would I ever own one? Probably not right now. Like I probably wouldn’t get a 944 just cause there’s so much other stuff in the Porsche range that I love. I mean, I love seeing them at car shows and I still go to a lot of car shows. So I love seeing the 944, the 944 S.

And in fact, when we were in Detroit, there was that one sitting, I was like, Hey, so yeah, I definitely love seeing them. And I love seeing the 928. And when my kids see them, they think it’s cool. Cause the lights, right. They’re like, you know, those are the only portions with pop up lights. And then. I tell him, yeah, but it’s front engine.

And then my, my little daughter says, well, that’s not a real Porsche. The nine, six, eight doesn’t count. I love

Ryan Bahrke: the nine, six,

David L. Middleton: eight counts. But in my family, I kept telling them because they, you know, as my girls are learning about cars and the difference between Corvettes, Mustangs, Porsches. Even Audi’s like, I’ve always said one thing [00:36:00] that makes Porsche special was, you know, at least the engine used to sit behind the rear axle.

And we started this thing of like, that’s not a real Porsche. You know, we’d see things out in the wild and, and my girls were like, Oh, that’s not a real Porsche because where the engine sits, but the bad thing now is that they say it to a lot of people they go to school with whose parents own McCann’s and Cayenne’s.

And you know, the kid’s like, Oh, my father has a McCann and my daughter’s like, well, that’s a fake Porsche. And they called this big Porsche to like some parents. And so the parents are looking at me like, obviously influenced by your dad. And my daughter’s like, no, we just learned what’s proper. So

Ryan Bahrke: the Porsche Tiguan.

Yeah,

David L. Middleton: yeah,

Mark Shank: exactly. I taught my children gatekeeping and elitism in the Porsche

Ryan Bahrke: community tradition going

Mark Shank: well.

Crew Chief Eric: So, Mark, are these second gen and even third gen 930s, are they even attainable? Are they completely out of the range of possibility anymore?

Mark Shank: No, no, no. I mean, I think the SE continues in my mind.

It’s been the [00:37:00] value purchase. For the last 15, 20 years, it’s now gone from being something you could get for 15 K for being something you can get for 40 K, which is not cheap by any means for something that’s 180 horsepower or something like that.

Crew Chief Eric: We talked about the last time. There was a dark period for Corvette and that happened with C3 was the longest running Corvette.

It kind of weathered the storm for Corvette as well. As Mark alluded to, so many were produced in like a 25 year run is insane, but we turned the corner in 1989 at Porsche and you’re starting to see the 928s getting wrapped up, the 944s on its way out with the 16 valve and then the S and the S2. And you know, all the special editions that they did, but all limited number stuff and the 911s.

Still sort of the 9 11 through 1989 and then the 964 comes along and everybody gets excited again. There’s a new 9 11! Wait, it looks just like the rest of them except rounded and what’s the difference? You guys have heard [00:38:00] me say this a million times if I’ve said it once. The 90s is full of these just bulbous, porpoise, marshmallow looking cars.

And the 911 was right there lockstep with everybody else. They smoothed it out. But what I’ve come to appreciate about the 964 is that it’s smooth and that it’s round, that it’s sleek and slippery. What a lot of our listeners might not know is lowest production numbers of nine 11. Full stop. The 9 64 has the least produced.

Again, the company is on the verge of bankruptcy and it has a very short run, 1989 through 1994, and they’re just trying to get their act together, right? 9 68 didn’t come until 1992. The 9 93 didn’t come until 93, 94. There was all these spinning plates. And here we are with 9 11 and rounded bumpers.

Mark Shank: Yeah, I mean, let’s finesse that point a little bit, right?

Because it’s lowest production numbers because it’s the shortest. From an actual sales per annum perspective, it did very well. It’s like your last year’s odd [00:39:00] because the 993s out. Porsche does the lovely thing where they sell two different cars with the same model year designation. So you got a 94 93, you got a 94 964, you got 89s.

But if you look at like the more pure years or 90, 91, 92, 93, they sold really well, particularly when in comparison to their trajectory at the time, right? So if you’re selling 20, 000 Porsche 911s in 1991, almost 22, 000, actually, that’s really great for them. I mean, you mentioned singer earlier. Now we’re on the nine, six, four.

We can say singer now. Those bastards ruin the 9 6 4, because not everybody wants a 9 6 4 to modify it, so it can be a poor man’s singer, and it used to be the least loved version of the nine 11 that you could most easily get. I can remember when I was looking for a car, I ended up buying that 3.2. I bought that 3.2 for like 20 grand.

It was. Amazingly restored and really well done. And I remember looking at nine, six, four, not the 3. 6, but the [00:40:00] 3. 3 turbos, they were just like 50 grand all day long. And so in Southern California, those days are long gone.

Crew Chief Eric: And I’m glad you brought that up. The 3. 3 liter turbo, it went all the way up to 3. 8 in the 964 at one point, depending on, you know, who is building it at the

Mark Shank: RS and RSR, yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And then the RS America, you know, there were so few of those and all that, but the thing about the 964 that I always appreciated, and I had sort of firsthand involvement in this because we purchased a 964 twin spark engine to put in our 914. And at that point, nobody was doing three sixes. And anything, let alone nine fourteens to deal with that motor, to look at what they had done.

It was a huge step away from the 3. 2, all the changes that they made, the Motronic fuel injection, you know, all this other stuff that they added to it. It was a much more modern car under sort of an ancient skin. And it was sort of the test mule what set the trajectory for every other 3. 6 liter base nine 11 going forward.

So to your point, Mark. It’s [00:41:00] underappreciated, but I also think it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Mark Shank: Yeah, for sure. And again, you know, going back to that narrative, it’s post nine, five, nine. It’s I think when really Porsche started trying to win on technology and advancing, and that’s evidence of that. They started there rather than somewhere else.

William Ross: When they came out in 1964, they also came out with the Carrera 4. I mean, I don’t know if that brought anyone to the force of fold because living in cold or weather climates where it’s snow, someone can buy an all wheel drive one and drive it year round. I mean, does that open the door up for wanting to go look at it or not?

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. I’ll give you all of that. The only problem was a lot of us went to the nine 64 C4 with the fantasy that, Oh my God, I can buy nine 59 technology.

William Ross: Yeah, let’s

Crew Chief Eric: pause and clarify for a second. Cause the nine 59 was an Audi Quattro underneath the nine 64 C4 is a VW synchro system underneath, and they are not the same thing.

It tends to still be very rear wheel bias until it gets into trouble. And then at that point it’s [00:42:00] too late. They didn’t fix that problem until late in the nine 93, when you had the C4 S and some of the other models that come out where they really, you know, Spent the time to develop the all wheel drive system.

So for me, if I’m buying a nine 64 C2, because you’re just carrying around ballast with a C4, so you’re

William Ross: telling me the salesman back in the nineties and a Porsche dealership was going to explain that to someone coming in,

Crew Chief Eric: it was all lies.

William Ross: No, it’s the same exact as a 9 5

Crew Chief Eric: 9. Yeah. Uh huh. Yeah.

Don Weberg: Well, and again, this goes to your point, Eric, that we were talking about Porsche is always playing catch up to Corvette.

It feels like they’re always evolving. They’re always developing. But it’s almost like they do it in a fist punch fashion in the mid seventies. They were evolving a little bit and then the nine 30 was evolved. And that, Holy cow, that put Porsche on the map. And then the SC came out a little bit more, a little bit more every, every time.

And then the next thing, you know, yeah, the nine 64 comes out. And just like Mark is saying, that was a [00:43:00] huge step forward for the company. So it’s almost like they take these huge steps where Corvette constantly is just little by little by little. Porsche just rides the wave for a long time. And then boom, surprise.

We’re here now. Very interesting the way they’ve done that.

Crew Chief Eric: So I got to ask 960 Ford turbo or 930 turbo. What do you choose?

William Ross: Which 964 turbo though? There’s some variants in there.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, you’re right. William. The worst one.

William Ross: 930? It’s still better. Come on. I mean, let’s be

Mark Shank: honest. If it’s stock for stock, it’s still a lot better.

I mean, you’re comparing like stone age to iron age between those two things. Like you just skipped bronze age. Like you just jumped that.

Crew Chief Eric: Granted stock normally aspirated three, six is faster than the old turbo, but that’s not the point. Let’s just look at it from an aesthetics perspective. Would you rather have sitting in your garage?

Late nine 30 turbo or a 9 64 turbo,

William Ross: well without a flack bow.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh man, why you gotta do that to me?

William Ross: Then you got say, you start, right. They

Crew Chief Eric: gotta have the same kind of [00:44:00] headlights, right? Where that’s, that’s my rule.

William Ross: It’s a hard choice. All right. They did make a couple where it was a flack bow, but it was to delete and it was just, you know, made no sense in regards to how they did it.

But I mean, I’d go old school, I’d do the nine 30. I just think because it’s so raw, but it doesn’t matter what it is. I’d go after the three six. I’d do a flack valve in a heartbeat. As much as I love

Ryan Bahrke: the 930, the 964 is just that much better to me, and it’s a much rarer car, is it not?

Don Weberg: Very much so, yeah. You throw a 930 in the garage, any kid right now comes over, whoa, they know what that is.

For some reason, it’s almost like DNA, they just know that is God’s car right there. But you throw a 964 turbo? Oh, that’s cool. They don’t know what it is. They don’t know how to respond to it. You know, the nine 30 is just legend. It is absolutely legend.

David L. Middleton: I’m going nine 30 turbo. If I had all the money in the world, I’m getting like a nine 30 RSR tribute type body, because I just love them.

And, and something about that history of that time of motorsports stuff they were doing, especially in America. [00:45:00] That’s what I like. And that’s when I think of being a kid, I think that’s the car. Like I would have loved that my dad had or something like that. And, and. Or somebody in the family and we never had it.

So I was always like, it’s that car you want it to play with to me. The nine six four. I also love it, of course, but it’s something about the nine 30. And it makes me think of maybe when my dad was a younger man, things he would have aspired for, because he said he wanted to be a doctor and it never happened.

But. You just kind of playing around

William Ross: in the Martini livery.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Right. So I’m going to pull the pin. I’m going to throw the grenade on this one. The reason it’s nine 64 turbo bad boys, you know,

Ryan Bahrke: that didn’t even factor into my decision, but you’re not wrong. That kind of made it an icon. Didn’t it?

Mark Shank: If you’re a nineties kid, you know,

Ryan Bahrke: That’s funny.

Don Weberg: Yeah. Bad boys put it on the map and I’ll tell you, working for Mecham, I got to write the description for that Porsche because we sold it. And that description writing, it’s the one that made me take notice of 964 a little bit closer because other than that, it was overlooked, you know, in my little brain, which [00:46:00] admittedly is not exactly wired to Porsche, but I never had anything against Porsche.

I just never spent a hell of a lot of time with them. But the 964 was always that. Well, the tweener, right, that one between the real Porsche and the other Porsche, right. Got it. Got it.

Crew Chief Eric: So the dark period of 9 11, it’s also sort of the beginning of the air cooled 9 11 swan song. And so again, I look at the 9 64 going wolf in sheep’s clothing, a lot of hidden things inside that car that people would say, it’s just another 9 11, who cares?

But it ushered in the 993, which like in the Corvette world, when we went from C4 to C5, it suddenly got bigger and it got hippier and it got more aerodynamic and it got more technologically friendly. 993 to me is the C5 of 911s.

Don Weberg: 993 is the C5 of 9 11? You’re obviously wrong. I don’t know what you mean there, Eric.

A lot of plastic, a lot of rounded edges. Is it the C5? Yeah, I tend to agree.

Mark Shank: You know, you really [00:47:00] impugned upon the 993. It hurt my feelings. When you said that it’s the C5 of the Porsche. So one right off the bat, I think the fact that there is no 993 that has not, oh, all right, I won’t make such a ridiculous statement.

But basically all 993s have appreciated over their purchase price from when they were made in the 90s. Any variant. So I think right off the bat, it shows how loved it has been by the community. I think it’s considered to be the ultimate air cooled version of that car. The turbo version of it did uniquely well.

Crew Chief Eric: Is the appreciation of the 993 a result of the fact that number one, you mentioned one of the two cars, the 993 twin turbo, which I’ve had the luxury of riding in is an amazing vehicle. I mean, ballistically fast. But also the 911 GT2, which was running at Le Mans, other places and the successes that it was having that everybody went, well, I can’t afford either one of those because 993 twin turbos were already six figure cars in the mid nineties.

They were [00:48:00] very hard to get ahold of. So they went, you know what? I’m going to buy a 993 and kind of live the fantasy, even though that’s not what you were getting.

Mark Shank: It still had a very competitive power to weight ratio for its time. And it was definitely a sports car. Yeah, sure. It wasn’t the turbo sure. So it wasn’t the GT too.

I think people driving it now are enjoying that kind of 300 ish horsepower type driving experience with it’s odd basket of anachronisms, which I think are, you know, To certain people that it comes across as particularly charming, right? It still has that old interior, that old dash. It feels like it’s a direct predecessor of that 1960s, nine 11.

And it feels like it sounds like when you shut the door, that like kind of. Ting noise when you shut the door. I think that through line carries a lot for the people in the brand.

Crew Chief Eric: And the reason I equate it to the C5, not because it shares the same timeline as the C5, is that, like we spoke about, C5 was a turning point for [00:49:00] Corvette.

The introduction of Jake and Team Corvette and the C5R and all the things they were doing at ALMS. And I feel like the 993 is right there with it because we introduced super cup racing and the Porsche Carrera Challenge, those organized spec racing and what they were doing on the big stage and at Le Mans, this and that.

Porsche was winning races in other Porsches for a long time, 962s 917s. But the 911 suddenly came onto the stage and the rivalry between Porsche and Corvette Even though Corvette was also fighting with Viper, which we talked about at the same time. So they’re fighting kind of a two front war in motorsport.

Everything started to heat up at this point. They fought in the trenches together and they share that the C5 It’s a page turn away from all the other cars. Even if it is the successor to the 901, it still follows that lineage. The 993 for me is a step in the right direction.

Ryan Bahrke: But I would argue that a large percentage of Porsche guys would call the 993 their favorite Porsche.

I don’t know if a [00:50:00] similar percentage of Corvette guys would call the C5

Crew Chief Eric: their favorite

Ryan Bahrke: Corvette.

Crew Chief Eric: So we talked about that on the previous episode. C5 is like the de facto go to Corvette, especially if you kind of want that Swiss army knife that can do everything. The C5 is that starter track car. It’s the show car.

There’s all the different versions of it. The Z06. Z06.

Ryan Bahrke: Yeah, true, true, true. So

Crew Chief Eric: there’s a cult following for the C5, I think in a similar way that there is for the 993.

Ryan Bahrke: See, in my mind, it’s more of the 996 of Corvettes, but it shows how much I know, I guess. It’s interesting. There’s a point in that not a lot of people are going out and buying 964s and 993s and turning them into track cars, like they are C5s or, you know.

C4s or whatever, for that matter,

Mark Shank: you’re both right. I think if your buyer is coming from, you know, how do I kick butt at an autocross or at a track event, I’m going to start doing this. The C5 is absolutely your value proposition for entering into that type of event and being competitive and doing really well.

And in that way, It is uniquely loved by [00:51:00] people who are interested in getting into that. When you look across the breadth of the people buying these cars, as opposed to the more track oriented, you know, you get into what Ryan’s talking about. So you’re both right. It’s a good point. Yeah. You’re talking about different kinds of buyers.

Crew Chief Eric: 996 would be my choice. For a starter Porsche track car, for sure. Not a nine 93,

David L. Middleton: but is that just based on price or availability or what?

Crew Chief Eric: Having coached in a lot of nine 11s over the years, the nine 96 is a very forgiving chassis. It kind of checks the legacy at the door. And that’s why I say nine 93 kind of opened the door for these newer nine 11s, you know, the wide bodies and all this.

And you can see that it’s a new lineage. It’s kind of a reboot for nine 11. But the nine 96 is where it all really leaps off from. And that chassis is much more refined. It’s much more forgiving. And then you start getting into things like GT three, and we’ll talk about that too, but I think nine 96, you can still get into them for very, very cheap money.

Don Weberg: For now, yeah, I think 996, you can still catch a bargain out there. Everyone [00:52:00] knows I like 996 and a lot of the guys on Facebook that I know who are all into sports cars are always telling me, go get it, go get it. You’re going to lose your window. Go get it because yeah, we’re losing our window. If you’ve been paying attention, 996 market, it suddenly did boom.

It just suddenly finally started climbing up. Correct me if I’m wrong, the 996. Three, the one behind Mark on that picture. What years did those come out?

Crew Chief Eric: 95 to 98. It

Don Weberg: has some 94s as well. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: A couple of them.

Don Weberg: Okay. So they, they were more of a C4 car when it comes to Corvette, they were coming out when the C4 was just wrapping up its production, C5 was beginning.

It’s good what I was going to get at the 993. I always remember it as being acclaimed by the media as it was a much more refined car than the previous 911. It was smoother. It didn’t deliver the punch that a lot of the older 911 did. There was a refinement to it. There was a usefulness to it. There was a relaxation to it.

And that was something we spoke about with C5 is it’s kind of the coupe de ville of the Corvette world. It’s much more refined than the C4, [00:53:00] much more comfortable, much more relaxed. You know, Eric, you said it yourself, the C4 and the C6 both had a sort of nervous twitchiness to them that the C5 does not have, I’m kind of interested in how the 993 with all of its refinement.

Is compared to that C5 in that regard. And if I’m not mistaken, wasn’t C5 the shortest production run, much like 993? Yep, it was. So they’ve got that in common too, which is really interesting. If you look at it again, if you start looking at the two companies in their development phase, they’re trying to figure out what’s going to sell, what’s going to perform, what’s going to do what.

And as you say, the 996 was born and what a car that was. Yeah. And the C6 was born and what a car that was. One thing I take exception with though, the 993s values are absolutely insane compared to a C5. And if you’re just looking at it from performance to performance,

Crew Chief Eric: I’d rather have the Vette.

Don Weberg: Yeah. I mean, I don’t not understand, but at the same token, it’s interesting to me how much [00:54:00] more valuable.

The Porsche is,

Crew Chief Eric: you can blame Singer for part of that too.

Mark Shank: Yeah, that’s true. That’s rich from somebody who owns a DeLorean. I mean, come on, there are some intangible things to car ownership that impairs you to the car. Yes.

Ryan Bahrke: You had a great point, Mark. It’s that emotional component. There’s that whole 30 year cycle, right?

We buy what we couldn’t afford when they came out new. To your point, Don, I mean, that 996 is just ripe to explode.

Don Weberg: I would love to get my hands on one. I really, really would. I really liked those Porsche’s when they first came out. I laughed. I couldn’t stand them. I thought they were hideously ugly with those droopy eyes.

You know, if it’s coming up in your review, Mary, like, Ooh, there’s the new box. Oh no. Oh, that’s a nine 11. Sorry, buddy.

Ryan Bahrke: And I’m a sucker for this 0. 1 headlights because the GT one had them.

Don Weberg: Yeah.

Ryan Bahrke: Right. If you look at it through that lens, they’re not so bad.

Don Weberg: Oh, well, what’s funny is for me, when the nine nine seven came out, it went back to the classic round headlight.

Yeah. Okay. Sharp. Very cool. And Mark, you’re absolutely right. 996 had the worst interior that was [00:55:00] ever developed for a 911. It looks like Silly Putty got in there and designed it for Porsche. But seeing the 997’s lights, seeing the 997’s interior, which is razor sharp, it made me like the 996 better because it was so different.

It was something that stood out from the crowd. It was something that when it came into an event, you’re seeing roundhead light, roundhead, light, roundhead, light, fried egg, roundhead, light, roundhead. You know who the weirdo is in the group.

Ryan Bahrke: Yeah. It wasn’t derivative in the same way that every other nine 11 was

Don Weberg: right.

It was the rebel. It was the outcast. And if I can bring cartoons into it, Sally from cars. Was a 996

Crew Chief Eric: before we get deep into the water cooled world. I want to ask William as an air cooled aficionado, where are you seeing people spending their money? And they, on the air cooled side of the house,

William Ross: I mean, I was going after a nine, six, four, the problem with your nine, nine, three, the only reason I say the only reason is because that’s the last air cooled.

So, I mean, that’s where it’s just got as value as that. Not a huge leap from that nine, six, four to nine, nine, three. I’m not a fan of the 993. I think they’re ugly. I just don’t like [00:56:00] the nose. You would think I would because I like the black problem, but something about the 993, I just, it doesn’t, I don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: I always thought the front was disproportionately narrow compared to the back, but that was by design. That’s how they eliminated some of the trailing throttle oversteer problems and kind of gave it that turbo look without being a turbo.

William Ross: Yeah. But then, you know, you go into the 996 4s because of the singer effect, but you know, Singer’s not the only one out there taking those and redo them.

There’s a dime a dozen now, a company doing the restomods, everything like that.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I mean, you had roof doing the BTR twos, which were nine 93 base way back when. So none of that stuff is new. It’s just, everybody goes, Ooh, ah, cause it’s singer vehicle design, right?

William Ross: The roof that won the yellowbird recreation, that CTR two era is make their own bodies.

They’re going to have to just go full bore and just start making it. They’re not going to have enough cars. I know there’s stock. I don’t know. And that’s why all of a sudden they kind of got away from their model. They started getting a little too greedy and just were building as many as they could sell.

But the problem was that all of a sudden it was like the guy that boss him, wait a minute, guy down the streets got a singer. I thought this was supposed to be unique. So it’s like, they started like with the turbo now they’re coming out with and that [00:57:00] DLS, whatever, you know, their cabinet at 80 cars, whatever.

If I realize, Hey, we got to cut down what we’re doing, but the nine, six, four, then he got you growled. Well, you know, it’s extreme wide body. There’s a lot with the nine, six, four. And I think the people of our generation in regards to those cars, because that’s when we were in our late teens, early twenties, what have you, when that was the car kind of sticks with you.

And that’s kind of, obviously I have that soft place. You want to go after, but. People go out to 993 for collectibilities, that was the last air cooled. And they just look at it as an investment. So

Crew Chief Eric: I’m glad you brought that up. Quick quiz. Do you know who bought the very last air cooled 9 11 off the assembly line?

William Ross: Some guy that’s not very funny, very crappy TV show. Make no money on it. Jerry Seinfeld.

Crew Chief Eric: We should have had him on this panel. I don’t know if he remembers where he parked that thing. He’s got so many warehouses full of cars. Let’s move into water cooled a little bit more. Obviously, we kind of fell backwards into 996.

I’m with you guys. I agree. I think that’s the sweet spot in terms of buying potential right now is buying a 996. The question is which [00:58:00] one do you buy and why and those kinds of things.

Mark Shank: I

Crew Chief Eric: Man, I try to ignore all these 996s, I guess.

Mark Shank: All right. So the bias from our host has come out.

Crew Chief Eric: Would I own one? I’m more of a fan of the normally aspirated GT3. 996 was the beginning of GT3 production cars that now has become the thing to have if you have a 911. Like a Boxster, if you take care of the intermediate shaft bearing issues, the water pump problem, and some of this stuff that, let’s say they borrowed off the shelf from Volkswagen or whatever, when they first put together the water cooled 3.

6, if you take care of those problems, those 996s, Pretty damn bulletproof.

Ryan Bahrke: They are in the nine and six turbos are especially bulletproof because they have the muscular engines. And that’s really where my money would be, would be a turbo. Because with a few mods, I mean, that’ll keep up with any modern car.

Those things are incredible for the money. And that was what the X 50 engine, right? Oh God. Yeah. They’re yeah. Yeah.

Don Weberg: What is it? The X

Mark Shank: 58

Don Weberg: option, [00:59:00] the turbos compared to what? They’re the normal,

Ryan Bahrke: the power pack versus like the non,

Don Weberg: yeah. So there

Mark Shank: was an option on the turbo called the X 58, which everybody hunts for in the secondary market.

They want to find that nine, nine, six turbo with the X 58 package.

David L. Middleton: The turbos had some of the best body style out of the nine, nine, six generation.

Mark Shank: So what is in the X 58? Is it like a GT two parts they put in the regular turbo or something?

Ryan Bahrke: I thought it was mostly air box and different power peak. Seem to remember at the time that they had more power and paper, but they weren’t really that much faster numbers wise.

Was it 50 horsepower? What was it actually? Do you know? 58 probably.

Mark Shank: Now I’m going to have to look it up. I mean, I think from a value perspective, I mean, just last week, a 996 turbo transacted on that with 29, 000 miles. Very clean guards, red coupe for 55 grand a console.

Don Weberg: That’s it.

Mark Shank: Incredible.

Don Weberg: 55

Mark Shank: grand.

Don Weberg: That low amount of money for a [01:00:00] 911 Turbo, I kind of often wonder if these are going to end up becoming rare if for no other reason they simply got beat up, chewed up, and spit out because nobody loves them.

Mark Shank: The thing that buyers have a hard time getting over with this generation is the 5 speed automatic because most of them 5 speed Tiptronic. Yeah.

Ryan Bahrke: That’s a good point. Mark, what would that car have gone for with a manual, twice that price? Number, right? Or close to it.

Mark Shank: Oh, yeah, easily. Let me actually find it.

Crew Chief Eric: The other side of that, Ryan, as he’s looking this up, what does it go for? Non turbo?

Ryan Bahrke: Well, those C4Ss can be 60, 65, 000 cars now. Can they not a nice one? And they were 30, 000 cars five years ago.

Don Weberg: No, they were just spot on and they were stuck there for the longest time. And that was that sort of boom. All of a sudden there was like a train budged them and they’re like, Oh, we’re, we’re going now, moving now.

You know, why was that? Did that suffer from 997s are going up and all of a sudden we can’t afford a 997. There was 993s, et cetera. They were untouchable. I

Crew Chief Eric: think it goes back to what William was saying. [01:01:00] It’s this proliferation of folks that are modifying 964s and 993s and Singer and all this. And so you kind of look in either direction and you go, well, the super old cars.

Are super old and they’re expensive. You look that way and go, do I want something that modern? I want a good deal. I’ve got 50 grand to spend. You buy a nine 96.

Ryan Bahrke: Right. Horses for courses. What are you looking for? If you’re looking for outright speed, you’re getting a nine, nine, six turbo with your 50, 000. I mean, that’s, there’s just no other answer to that question.

Mark Shank: I’m shocked. The six speeds don’t go for more. Yeah. I think it’s a reflection of where we are in 2024 right now, 47, 000 miles. So more than 29, but six speed, very clean. Nice, tastefully modded. Looks great. Was 66 grand. Really?

Ryan Bahrke: We’re all going to look back at this episode and say, we all should have gone out and bought one the next day.

Mark Shank: What the hell I’m buying a nine, nine, six turbo speed, like next week.

Crew Chief Eric: and if I remember correctly, nine 96. Was using small turbos, but they were variable vane turbos, [01:02:00] similar to the technology they were using on the diesels at the time over at Volkswagen. So it was really interesting where they were messing around with technology, but also using sort of off the shelf parts to make it all work.

Don Weberg: You bring up the Volkswagen parts bin and I brought up the Boxster headlights earlier and I hate to say this, but it almost feels like, and I really don’t know, but it honestly feels like Porsche was really, really pinching pennies when they brought out. Yeah. 996.

William Ross: Those are accountants building those cars, but

Don Weberg: it

William Ross: costs R and D.

Don Weberg: But yeah, it was almost like a hail Mary car when they did that. Cause they had the Boxster coming out and they were using a lot of those different parts to save money, but it’s still such a Oregon, and you’ve got a car that easily runs circles around most Ferraris of the day. Drop an LS in it! What?

Crew Chief Eric: Dude, I’ve seen weird stuff in the back of 911s.

Ryan Bahrke: There’s six of us here if we all chip in. Yeah.

Don Weberg: You know, Mark, I keep looking at that one behind you and I got to tell you, I just start salivating over that car behind you. I think that is [01:03:00] such a great looking car. And it’s funny because we brought up the hips. That came out in the SC and how that really turned all of us on.

We love those hips. And now you look at that 996 behind you, unless you get a C4 S you’re not going to have the hip. That’s what that is. I saw the nose on it and I kind of wondered, look at that body. That body is so pure. It’s so simple. It is just absolutely gorgeous. It’s like

Crew Chief Eric: a 964. What are you talking about?

William Ross: I get hungry for some sausage, a little toast.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, man. William checked out. He started taking a nap as soon as we said water cooled.

William Ross: Would I turn one down if it was a good No, heck no. As long as someone else dealt with the IMS bearing and dealt with all the stuff. As long as that stuff’s all done, you don’t have to Do it, try that thing all day, just as a daily driver.

I mean, have fun with it. Beat the heck out of it. Go cross country, just have a good time with it. Hit your events with an area like that. Great, solid car. You take care of it. I mean, I want to see if the engines are bulletproof, but they’re pretty bulletproof. As long as you take care of your stuff, that car will go a couple hundred thousand miles.

There’s no reason not to. And [01:04:00] parts aren’t that difficult to come by. So maintaining it’s that thing. And there’s a lot of modifications you can do to it. It’s such a flexible chassis in regards to base you could work from with it. You can have a lot of fun with it. Especially if I’m looking to buy my first sports car, whatever, like go to cars and coffee and go to these events and show it, blah, blah, blah.

You know, it’s a great entry to get into those without having to break the bank or take a second mortgage out on your house or anything like that, because everyone buys these cars and I think a lot of people forget to take an account. As well, I also got paid to maintain it. You know, your annual service costs on those, isn’t all that crazy.

Yeah. You’re going to want to put probably a couple of grand a year aside. Not saying it’s going to cost you a couple of grand every year. It’s going to kind of go up and down. Yeah. But it’s not going to break the bank where, you know, you got certain other brands that I have an affinity for where you got to put six, seven grand away a year, because you’re going to have that inevitable engine out service coming in.

Blah, blah, blah. You know? So it’s great card. I mean, even on those though, even if you got to take the engine out, what is it? Four bolts, drop that thing out and go. It’s a great car to [01:05:00] jump into. To have some of these young kids in their twenties, whatnot. Hey, I can jump in for some 30, 40, 50 grand. It’s got low miles, well maintained, everything’s done.

I can hit these events when, and you’ll get, I would say respect immediately. I mean, I’d rather have that to buy some like new Supra or something along those lines like that, because it’s got more character. It’s got more of a soul, I guess you could say. It doesn’t have all the BS that you got in this day and age with screens and all this kind of bullshit.

It’s a great analog car. Yeah. And you can work on it yourself. Yeah.

Ryan Bahrke: Last of the timeless cars.

Crew Chief Eric: Except for those headlights. Those are super dated. I’m sorry.

William Ross: Yeah. I think you can buy stickers or something that you can put on there.

Crew Chief Eric: The 997 isn’t too much of a step away from the 997. Six, the reality of things, it’s sort of like C5 into C6, which is what Don was talking about earlier.

So they straightened it up, they cleaned it up, different headlights and change the fenders, whatever. But at the end of the day, nine 97 DNA,

David L. Middleton: I would say that the 0. 2 was vastly different from the nine, nine, six, start to be a bigger shift between 0. 1 and 0. 2 with that generation. I mean, I’m [01:06:00] probably biased because I used to have a nine, nine, 7.

Ryan Bahrke: Good man.

William Ross: Pretty much the only car I mean, it’s, it’s longer. It’s a bit wider. It’s changed a lot in the chassis. They really improved the chassis on that. In my opinion, you know, if I was going out to buy a Porsche, I would buy a 997 series GT3.

Ryan Bahrke: That’s the one. Ultimate all time favorite modern Porsche, especially the 0.

2, but they’re just right. They’re just right.

William Ross: And the thing is, you know, that too, is you can get an RS, you can get a manual, and a GT3 RS, and you still have that option. I just think it, to me, that’d be the one I’d buy. Yeah, I mean, they’re expensive, but not talking half a million dollars, a million dollars for something stupid.

It’s an awesome, awesome car. That Metzger engine’s just, it’s the shiznit.

David L. Middleton: And also the first RS I ever was in was 997. 1, and actually the first one I got to drive. I like the 997 generation. I know that since I sold my car and I’m trying to get back in a Porsche, a lot of people have been trying to convince me to get a 996, but I just can’t seem to take the leap and get the 996.

I feel like I would like to spend more money and even get [01:07:00] a 0. 1. I get personal preference, but I think there was a really big gap between the 0. 2 and 996. And as an ex owner, I was 50 50 on getting manual or PDK. And I ended up finding a really nice PDK car, but I couldn’t go for Triptronic cause I hated that.

Yeah. I like, I didn’t like Triptronic on the Boxster it came in. I didn’t like it on the 911 and I drove it a few times. I didn’t like how the shifting wasn’t the same as when they incorporated PDK as far as going upshift and downshift.

Mark Shank: That’s what really puts some of the modern buyers off. Cause Porsche’s had that PDK for a long time now, and it’s become a big part of the brand that you can just slam through those gears fast.

Crew Chief Eric: We call that DSG on the Volkswagen side of the house, just want to let you know.

Ryan Bahrke: And those early PDKs weren’t that great.

Crew Chief Eric: No. So Tiptronic, that came out in the nine 64s. I remember with the buttons on the steering wheel, the nine 68 had that as well. Ooh, look, I can shift by pushing a button on my steering wheel.

David L. Middleton: So for me, they looked at the success of the nine, nine, six and the GT three. And they said, we’re just going to take it even [01:08:00] further. I think they got really serious about the whole GT three department. Once they stepped into the nine, nine, seven generation, you know, it was like, okay, this is profitable. So nine, nine, six, we weren’t sure what was going to happen.

And then 997, the GT3 department said, this is really profitable. We got to keep doing this and we’re going to do it bigger and better. Every time

William Ross: that’s charged people more for less,

David L. Middleton: stereo delete, we’ll charge you more.

Ryan Bahrke: So I was going to say the 996 didn’t have the nannies that the 997 by the 0. 2 had. I mean, that was a really a pure car.

There’s really something to be said about a 996 GT3. I think

Don Weberg: that’s why the 996 is such the last stop in the depot, because it was the last of the truly analog. 911, 997 came along and yeah, it was close. It was similar. It was sort of like going C5 to C6 in the Corvette world, but there were so many differences that people didn’t see beneath the skin.

And the same was there with 996, 997, but the 997 became a much more digital, a much more technical vehicle. It started losing, in my opinion, is out of that Porsche purity. It really [01:09:00] did in a drastic measure. I mean, it had been slowly losing it over time. I think, uh, the 997 was really kind of a gauntlet. It really said, Nope, we’re going this direction.

Crew Chief Eric: And even in the motorsports world, it’s sort of interesting because 9 11 kept getting better, better, and better. And the engine. Surprisingly kept getting closer and closer to the driver too. Right. Forget which generation it is. David and I talked about this at Lamar, where it’s like, you know, the engine’s facing the wrong direction and this one, you know, blah, blah, blah.

Oh, yeah, it’s not really a nine 11. It’s a Cayman all jokes aside, I started to think that it was this evolution of a bad idea. And that’s why the nine 11 had to get longer. It had to get wider. They had to keep inching the engine forward because the balance was wrong. I mean, what car still has the motor hanging out over the rear end?

Like a nine 11, only a nine 11. Back in the day, you had the Beatle and the Hillman Imp and the Fiat 850 and all these different cars. Sure. But now the 911 kind of stands alone in that department. But what I’m getting at is in the motorsport world, they kept making [01:10:00] the 911 even better. And the cars we get on the street outside of the GT3, cause I don’t want to take anything away from GT3 owners.

They’re basically the equivalent to the eighties homologated cars, where you sort of like live the fantasy that you have what the team has. But it’s not really that good compared to what they’re racing. Now, today, 2024, I think maybe less so because there are more high end 911s being sold that are closer to what is race ready.

Then there was during the nine 96, nine 97 period of nine 11,

Ryan Bahrke: I read a figure somewhere that something like, I don’t know, it’s a large percentage of all Porsche sports cars that are now GT cars. It’s not 80, 20 anymore, you know, 90, 10. It’s closer to like 40, 60.

Mark Shank: I tried to run that down. Yeah. And they don’t disclose the numbers.

Like they used to. Okay, so you can go through Stut cars. Oh, sure. Yeah. Like astute guard, like S-T-U-T-T cars.com, and they’ll give [01:11:00] you volumes by generation up through like 9, 9 3, 9, 9 6. And then when you get into the 9, 9, 7, 9, 9 ones. It’s harder to get the volumes. David looks skeptical. I hope he’s Googling right now.

And he finds something. I’m looking it up. I

Ryan Bahrke: don’t want to spread it, you know, misinformation or anything. I’ve never done that before. We’re fact

Mark Shank: checking.

Ryan Bahrke: Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Shank: I can only find approximations. I hope I’m wrong.

Ryan Bahrke: Okay.

Mark Shank: But what I was finding, there were some on websites, but they just didn’t seem super credible.

You know, I mean, I guess it was just using my spidey sense, but like they didn’t feel that detailed or structured like previous things that I’d seen. Okay. And you’re looking at like 30 ish thousand 911s a year, and you’re looking at like 5, 000 ish GT3s a year, generally over like the 991 generation. Like there was obviously a GT2 in that, and you know, there’s GT3 RS.

And so to be clear, the 5, 000 was a fraction of the 30, right? So you’re saying it’s 30, so 25 and then minus maybe 2, 000 [01:12:00] RSs, you know, however many GT2s that they sold. And so you’re looking at like, what, 20? Thousand nine 11s. Like, I don’t know. I mean, I was having a hard time finding as descriptive numbers as you find previous generation.

William Ross: It’s almost like you got to take convertibles in their own little realm, like our production number, because if someone’s buying a hard top, they’re more than likely going to be getting a GT car. They’re just buying a regular, they’re going to buy it. Convertible, which you can still get a soup or the target

Crew Chief Eric: or bro.

S yeah.

William Ross: So I guess you can maybe break down because they got so many variants of that car, but you probably could take out almost close to almost half of that production run, be like, what was your convertibles and whatnot. Those are for your Sunday guys, blah, blah, blah. You know, just want to say, I own a Porsche, not the purest guys.

We’re out there really having some, I’m going to do some driving with this, go on some rallies, blah, blah, blah. So I think that if you start breaking them down that way, then you could see that, yeah, I think a larger percentage technically would be that they’re selling this GT car. And again, that’s where they’re making above sticker and they can charge what the heck they want.

And it’s a waiting list. You gotta [01:13:00] be a special customer, da, da, da, and that sounds like

Crew Chief Eric: a Ferrari. What are they doing over there?

Mark Shank: Yeah, I know. If I can offer some purchase advice from someone who got a 991. 2 GD3. Porsche has some weird rules. So they don’t allow GT cars to be on the website. Rule number one.

So if you go to the dealer website, you won’t see a GT car. And you have to call the dealer to find out if they have what they have and what’s there. When I was in the market, this was 2018. So it was a little bit out of date at the time, but I just started calling around to all the Porsche dealers in the major markets all across LA and Southern California and through Texas and Atlanta.

And just like, if it sounds like it’s a reasonably sized city, I’m going to find the Porsche dealers and start calling. And there were definitely GT cars that are out there. Usually they were cars that customers had walked away from or something, the dealer had specked out. So most of them were absurdly specked.

I found mine in Dallas and had the only option on it that I wanted, which was the extended fuel [01:14:00] tank. It had the six speed and the extended fuel tank. That was all I wanted. The GT game is an interesting one. If you just go to your local dealer, that’s not the best way to play that game. And it’s true that the dealers are not out to provide good service.

Like the dealers are out to make money. They’re making 20, 40, 50 grand per car. Like the amount of the dealers make, even on just selling cars at MSRP is kind of crazy. Your dealer is not your friend. No. Call around. Go through the Google maps and find dealers and call around and you’ll benefit from it.

Crew Chief Eric: And I’m glad we went down this path because as Mark and I were putting the show notes together for this, it was one of the things we had in the notes was this perception of more GT cars for sale today than there is base 911s. But I think Ryan made a very valid point in that perception is reality. And so if you think about it, even if the numbers don’t fact check, When you go to a car show or you go to a track event these days or anything, and somebody shows up with a nine 11, chances are that’s a two headed coin.

You either way [01:15:00] you flip it, it’s a GT three or GT three RS. You never see a regular nine 11 or just a turbo cab or what age they sort of don’t exist, but they do exist. They’ve become so commonplace that I think the perception is. Well, if you’re buying a Porsche, you’re just going to buy a GT3.

Ryan Bahrke: And I feel like those are the ones that are perpetually for sale.

David L. Middleton: I think also some of the problem is once you get into Porsche, so if you haven’t been into Porsche as a kid, and let’s say you get into Porsche as an adult, right? What do you go out and do? You do what, what our buddy Ty did, right? He went out and bought, I think a nine, six, four cab lives by a track has a nine, six, four cab immediately realizes it’s not good enough, right?

Then he switches and he was like, all right, do the turbo. It’s a turbo. Then he starts getting like training and then he realized that’s not good enough. Then he gets into the GT platform and then he just continues to buy because he’s got the means, of course. And I find that living close to a track, when I do go to track days, or I do hang out at road Atlanta with like DCRA, the people who are just getting into track days, just getting into motor sports and they bring.

A base Porsche, or they bring maybe just a turbo and then they get put in the beginner group and they’re [01:16:00] feeling bad because they’re in the beginner group. And like everybody else in their GT cars is in the advanced group. And they spend the whole day behind an instructor. And then they start saying, well, what do I have to do?

Or they’ll get a ride along in a GT car. And then four or five months later, person of means we’ll go and get a GT car. Or they’ll go get a GT4 or something like that. And then they keep stepping up because I think once you start tracking your Porsche, you realize you need something more in the GT, like at least a modern one, right?

If you’re not doing historical racing or not doing anything like that. So I think that’s one of the reasons that you feel that you go to track days and you go to things is that. You’re seeing a lot of GT products because they are that good. They are the ones you want at a track and you’ll quickly know it.

You know, same thing for the BMW. When I first bought my original BMW, I just had an E90 and I took it to a track. And within six months, I realized I better get a track focused car, right? So I kept that. And then I bought. My track focused BMW, which had the roll cage and everything was prepared for the track.

I think that’s one of the issues, and these cars are meant to be driven. So once you get into that, you will realize immediately that you need to transition.

Crew Chief Eric: And [01:17:00] here’s where we step back to Corvette for a moment. Because people are spending six figures plus on these 911s to go to the track, whether it’s HPDE or whatever.

You don’t see GT3s club racing, right? Because that’s too dangerous, realistically. So at these HPDE events, The Corvette is sort of there. The C8 is a six figure car, depending on demand and which year you bought it and all those kinds of things. But we talked about this the last time, right? The hope and the prayer and the wish is that there’s a GT3 version of the Corvette C8 coming at some point that hasn’t existed up until this point in the Corvette world.

There’s been Z06 and there’s ZR1 and there’s this and that, but it’s always like, let’s throw more horsepower at the same chassis and tires and all this kind of thing. But you have to respect that for a minute, because when you go to the track and you look at the battles on track, you’ve got this guy in his lowly Z06 being towed by a 911 GT3 out on track.

And you look at the price discrepancy and he’s got a GM and he’s got a Porsche and you’re like, it does not compute the Corvette’s just [01:18:00] as good as, and I’m not trying to take anything away from the Porsche because it’s superior, but sort of the Corvette’s the underdog in this equation. What does it for me is that I’ve sort of been.

Tainted by the new Porsches because there’s so many GT threes and I’m like, uh, you know, they’ve achieved that hypercar status and that’s wonderful. I applaud them for it. But then I turned to look at the guy with the Corvette. And as Mark said in the last episode, that’s the dream car they’ve saved up for that.

That’s what they bought. And they got it. Kick ass car for a lot less money than the nine 11. And so now we start to diverge, but when we look at it as the every man buyer, where do you put your money?

Don Weberg: Well, if I can interject here, just a little bit, I get what you’re saying. The one thing I’m just going to throw out there and it goes on both sides of the fence, it goes in the Corvette side and it goes on the Porsche side from what I’ve seen, and I’m not a tracker.

I don’t race. I don’t do any of that. I noticed a lot of their GT3s, GT2s, GT4s, whatever the hell they are. And they’re vicious. They’re absolutely [01:19:00] incredible. But the guys that I talked to who have them, they’ve either never tracked them. They don’t intend to track them or they tracked them once, maybe twice.

And that was really cool. That was fun, but they’re done. And now they just don’t drive them. They just don’t. It kind of falls on the same side with the ZR1, the Z06, because what you’ve got is one of these cars that. As you said way earlier in the conversation, they require your attention pretty closely. I think the Corvette’s a lot more forgiving than any of the Porsches.

And I think it’s a lot more of a crossover car where if you just want to be the yuppie with the super fast, super cool looking Corvette, yeah, you can do that. You can drive that car every day. It’s not going to beat the hell out of you. Porsche is going to beat the hell out of you. And I think that’s really, really interesting.

There are so many GT threes out there on the market. There’s so many of these people that have them, but I think the majority of them are posers who want to show up to cars and coffee and have this amazing, amazing instrument of a car. And they don’t know how to use it. You know, I mean, let’s face it, Eric, if I got a GT three hell, if I even got a ZR And you took a ride with me.

You’d probably laugh your ass off because I’m not going to [01:20:00] be able to control that car as well as you would, because you’ve got more training than I do. I’m not a tracker. I don’t do that stuff. So when I look at these, you know, they wear the little baseball cap and they’ve got their little polo shirt with some sort of reptile on the breast and they’re all tucked in and they’ve got their little deck shoes and And they got their little Starbucks coffee.

They look like a stiff wind would blow them over, but by God, they’ve got the King of the Hill at Cars and Coffee. They’ve got the GT3, the GT4, they’ve got the ZR1, they’ve got the Z06, but again, I root for the Z06 or the ZR1 just because it’s a Jekyll and Hyde car. If you treat it nice, if you treat it docile, it’s not going to beat you up.

But if you want to get rough. It’ll get rough with you.

Crew Chief Eric: Did you hear that Mark? He pulled the poser card on you. You’re going to let that stand.

Don Weberg: Mark, are you a poser? I

Mark Shank: have a 991. 2 G3 with the manual.

David L. Middleton: The one with the two air intakes in the back.

Don Weberg: Yeah. The two little suckers. It’s a really

David L. Middleton: good one. Yeah, it’s a really good one.

Don Weberg: Well, that was, I was telling you, Eric, at some point we got to start telling people we have a 0. 5. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Right.

Don Weberg: So the people are like, wait, wait, you have a 11, what?

Mark Shank: It was the poor man’s 9 11 arm. Right. It was the four liter and the six speed that did me [01:21:00] in. I wanted the spoiler in the back. I didn’t want the touring pack because my nine 30 that I put on a poster on my wall as a kid had a big spoiler on the whale

Crew Chief Eric: tail.

Yeah.

Mark Shank: So that’s what I wanted. Honestly, I think there’s a fair amount of validity to what Don was saying, but I think we have to remember where we are from being under assault as a community of automobile enthusiasts, as. Kids get their licenses later and later and electric cars try to sap this element of car culture and whatnot that like, I don’t like the gatekeeping aspect of it.

Like you like your car. Great. That’s cool with me. If you like your car, you’re passionate about your vehicle. That’s great. There is something to be said for the amount of volume that they’re selling with GT cars relative to how many of those are really going to track events. Definitely. The flip side of that though, you could go in the other direction where it beats you up in a modern context.

But not relative to what like old tightly sprung cars used to do. Like I agree with that. It’s really not like my take on my GD3. You know, I did [01:22:00] some autocross and I did some stuff with it, but I really haven’t done much track with it. I take it out. I’m a morning person. I wake up at 5am, no alarm. And so Saturday, Sunday, I’m on the road by 530.

I’m home by seven. I do a little 90 minute drive Saturday and Sunday in my car. And to me, it’s everything I ever wanted. out of a sports car. And then on Saturdays, I take my SUV and I take my two girls to cars and coffee. I’ve never taken my GD three to cars and coffee because I want to take my kids. I love that.

But the point being is that like, from an enthusiast perspective with the manual transmission, I think is important because if you’re on a track, if you’re untrained, it’s a degree of a liability with a car like that, right? The weight change and the G that you’re under, like, are you going to put it in the wrong gear?

You’re going to blow your 50, 000 motor that you have to replace because you put it into third instead of fifth. It is honestly a serious consideration. I mean, I think if I was going to do more track stuff, I would have done a PDK, but I would push back on the suspension narrative. It’s like, yeah, my wife doesn’t like riding in it because it’s tightly sprung, but compared to [01:23:00] even my 85 Carrera, which admittedly I had suspension work done on it, but that was harsher than my modern 991, you know, it’s a relative term.

Yeah. The Corvette benefits a lot from its magnetic shocks. That are able to change profiles and do things differently. But I think with the mechanical differential that comes in the manual, as opposed to the electric diff, it changes the character of the car and it makes it to me, the sports car I always wanted.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, there’s one generation left and that’s the current one, the nine nine two. And as you guys mentioned, dot this and dot that. And the other thing, I mean, I remember the days of. 85 and a half because of the half year splits and all this kind of stuff. So now he’s got these dot ones and dot twos. Cause I guess we’ve run out of numbers in the 900 scale over at Porsche.

And that’s fine. They’re like software releases, right? So 992 for me is sort of like the C8, born right on the auspices of COVID. Hard to get cars in that 2020 year, although Porsche didn’t seem to have as many problems as GM did and Ford and others trying to [01:24:00] get cars out during 20 and 21. I still don’t like it.

It’s really big. It’s really wide. The Targa is probably the worst looking one, in my opinion. I mean, I’m not convinced on 992 yet.

Ryan Bahrke: Horses always take a little time. I feel like they’re just a step ahead of us. And a couple of years in, they really come into their own, but they are big. They are a little detached and I’ve driven a few of them now.

I’ve not driven the GT3, but after a couple of GTSs and some other models, T, when I get back into my GT4, all is good again. I love the idea of a 992 for a special car. For me, it’s just a little much. It’s just a little too much in every direction. A little too big, a little too detached, a little too much power.

For me personally, but I’m wondering if in a couple of years, we’ll look back at them and say, Oh man, those were really good. Like, boy, they knew what they were doing.

Crew Chief Eric: I guess it depends on what comes next, which Porsche hasn’t hinted at yet.

Don Weberg: In our previous episode about Corvette, you know, we talked about C7, you talked about how the C7 had gone as far as it could, there was just nothing else that Chevy and Corvette and GM could really do with that chassis, do with that [01:25:00] motor, do with, you know, whatever that package, it was kind of spent, it was kind of done so that they needed the C8.

I think this generation of 9 11 is a classic example of why the C8 needed to come out, because I can’t stand the new 9 11. It is just a fat toad. And yeah, it does a lot of really cool technical stuff with its top and all this yin yang doodad. It is actually pretty impressive. But, ah, the thing is just a boat.

Mark Shank: Okay, yes, the 992 is a bit of a fatty. They at least made it bigger for a very specific reason. Front suspension geometry is totally different, and that’s largely driven by what they wanted to do with the GT3, so that tells you the importance of the GT3 line relative to the car. But the only sports car, or at least car that claims to be a sports car that is bigger in every dimension and fatter would be the C8 Corvette.

So there’s that. I mean, you can’t call the 992 a big fatty without kind of acknowledging that the C8 is heavier and bigger in every way. Let’s just be fair. Them’s [01:26:00] fighting

Don Weberg: words.

Mark Shank: Are

Don Weberg: you all down over there? Mr. Shank?

Mark Shank: These are simple statistics, like you can just look .

Ryan Bahrke: These, you can find on the internet.

Mark Shank: These, you can find numbers, you can look at the wheel base. You can look at the front track. You can look the length with, no, I mean, the fact that the Carrera s. Is beating the Corvette on a power to weight ratio? That’s new for this generation. Come on. It’s about

Don Weberg: time,

Mark Shank: isn’t it? Well, we all know the

Crew Chief Eric: C8 is severely underpowered compared to other Corvettes.

Don Weberg: it is.

Crew Chief Eric: They’re going to fix that real quick. No

Mark Shank: fix. I’m a C8 fan. I’d like to be clear.

Don Weberg: We’ve also all seen the ZR1, right? You guys are familiar with the new ZR1? Oh yeah. Hello. I mean, we’re putting out train horsepower now. This is like naval horsepower. Yeah.

Ryan Bahrke: And yet that car interests me not at all.

Don Weberg: When it comes to, yeah, it’s a fatty and it comes to the C8 being a fatty and the 99, whatever the hell that Opel is over there. They’re both fatties. That’s fine. Going into the evolution and we had to change the [01:27:00] suspension and we had to change this and we had to change that. Great. Porsche took a huge step and it was an ugly step for them.

When they took the 9 11 water cool, we all know we were all there. And some of you all, you know, you pray to Portia and then you pray to whoever you pray to. When they went water, every one of you was, Oh my God. You know, it was a big deal when Mr. Mulholland started bringing his product in to cool off that little car.

But you know what, you survived and that car got better. I hate to admit it, cause you all know I love the 930 and that particular generation of Porsche, but it survived and it did better. It thrived. And I really wish Porsche would just shut the hell up and develop a damn car that didn’t sit there and say, we were developed in 1964 and we still have the 1964.

You know what? It’s old, it’s over.

Crew Chief Eric: I get where Don’s coming from with this because 9 11 suffers from the same systemic issue that Mustang suffers from. Oh, the [01:28:00] S650 blah, blah, blah, goes all the way back to Iacocca in 1963, blah, blah, blah. And they’re holding onto that legacy. And I get that versus Corvette.

When we talked about it the last time, it’s sort of like 1983, eh, screw it. Throw it all in the trash, start over again. And Corvette’s done that a bunch of times. And C8 isn’t the first time. I gotta give credit where credit is due, where GM sort of sees the writing on the wall and says, you know what, too much of a good thing, not so much.

Let’s turn a page and try something different. That’s why I joke 9 11 is the constant refinement and evolution of a bad idea. It’s okay. It’s gotten better. It’s awesome. It’s amazing. And I appreciate it for what it is because it does kick, but it’s very difficult to challenge Porsche like it is to challenge Ferrari and things like that.

Don Weberg: You’ve all seen the meme. I’m sure it comes around on Facebook. It’s two pictures put together. One of them is Roseanne Barr. The other one’s Madonna. And it says, I never thought I’d live to see the day where Roseanne Barr was better looking than Madonna. That. That is what has [01:29:00] become of the 9 11. The 9 11 is Madonna.

It had been plastic surgery so many times. It is now an opal. Look at that picture behind Mark. It is an opal.

Ryan Bahrke: But it’s still the fantasy of Madonna, right? And that’s what we’re buying at the end of

Don Weberg: the day. Unbelievable. But just

Mark Shank: for our listeners who don’t have the video feed from Patreon or whatever, what Don keeps making fun of, he’s probably the only person on the internet, Who’s made fun of the Dakar 911.

I think Porsche should get a lot of credit for making a rally version of a modern sports car. It is in a very light shade of blue, which were you, you calling it teal? Opel? Sure. Fair enough.

Crew Chief Eric: No, no, no. He meant it looks like an Opel GT from the seventies, which is just a small Corvette, but we won’t go there.

Don Weberg: It’s a C3 that got strong.

Crew Chief Eric: I see where you’re going with that, Don. But the problem is. Porsche’s flagship is the 911, and it got to the point, like Mark sort of hinted at earlier, that [01:30:00] with 928, 944, and this and that, even though maybe they were superior, the idea was to be better. They put all their eggs in 911.

Nothing shall beat the 911.

Don Weberg: Right.

Crew Chief Eric: Realistically, payment is a better platform. Form at the end of the day. But to succumb to the idea that they’re gonna do away with the rear engine, rear mount las layout of a nine 11 and go the way Corvet did with the C eight, that means they’d have to give up on nine 11 altogether and admit that the Cayman is a better car.

’cause it is. And my joke is that they finally got the nine 14 right with the Cayman, right? After so many years, that’s not gonna happen. So the question becomes. What is next for 9 11, which we don’t know, after 60 years of production, what are they going to do with the ninth generation of the 9 11, other than make it bigger and wider, or has it just become the take hand, because the take hand sort of looks like the next generation 9 11, if you think about it.

David L. Middleton: think they teased it a little bit by leaving space for a hybrid system. But also what they’re doing with the dot two GTS. So if you’ve been keeping up, they’re [01:31:00] incorporating the electrical power train. It’s not a typical hybrid in the way you think. And I think that’s the next evolution to the nine 11.

I think they’re kind of testing it out with the GTS waters and then they’re going to bring it to that.

Crew Chief Eric: A derivative of the MGU that they were trying to develop for formula one.

David L. Middleton: This is something different. They’re using the electrical power plant almost as like a torque filler.

Crew Chief Eric: Isn’t that the same idea behind the E Ray?

Isn’t it? Aren’t they doing the same thing?

David L. Middleton: I’m not sure, but from what the reviews are is, is that the way they do it is uniquely to Porsche.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, well, of course.

David L. Middleton: I mean, the E Ray has gotten very decent reviews, right? But I heard that it has a feeling of almost an NA engine with the 911 and the way they’re doing the torque filling.

So I think that’s the next evolution. Of course, it’s been working on the electrical hybrid stuff since I started an industry back in like 2011. They didn’t release it. You know, I told you there was fully electric man 11s running around the company back in 2012. There’s a reason they’re not doing it. And then they’re also looking at the landscape of what’s going on with hydrogen.

And I think they’re going to maybe stick with the seven 18 to having that fully electric, but I [01:32:00] don’t see them fully electrifying the nine 11 anytime soon.

William Ross: Yeah. They’re investing heavy in those synthetic fuels, sustainable fuel, whatever down was that Brazil built that huge plant. Uh, my thing, I hope that goes the route, you know, that, Hey, you can still build the, uh, any engine you got that

Ryan Bahrke: the Germans like South America.

Um, but

But I think that’s the work around. I think it’s that synthetic fuel because what is a nine 11 if it’s not a flat six rear engine car? And my God, when was the last time there was a, another rear engine car on the earth that was being produced? It’s shocking that they’ve been able to do it as long as they have.

And to your point, David, I think that they’ll keep dialing out the nine 11 this while still keeping it a nine 11. Exactly. That’s

Crew Chief Eric: right. Just like with Corvette, we don’t know what the future holds for Porsche. And I’m excited to see what comes next. Although I hope, maybe, like a lot of other halo cars, they find their roots again.

It’s not just Porsche. It’s not just Corvette. It’s Mazda. It’s Volkswagen.

Don Weberg: [01:33:00] BMW.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, BMW. You look at all of them. They all suffer from the same thing. They call it progress. Let’s just call it another model and sort of maybe reboot or do something different.

William Ross: I got a trivia question though. Mark, you probably know the answer to this though.

What other manufacturer did Porsche design a water cooled engine for? Oh, I

Ryan Bahrke: know. You got it? Okay.

William Ross: You don’t know this one, Mark?

Mark Shank: No, I don’t think so. I mean, I could guess, but I don’t know.

William Ross: It’s got two wheels. Harley Davidson. There you go. The V Rod.

Ryan Bahrke: Even they saw the light.

William Ross: I know they all said some of that cars were going water cool.

A lot of people don’t realize that that V Rod, that

Don Weberg: motor is a, it’s a Porsche motor. Actually, Porsche did a lot of engineering for the V Rod. It was a lot more than just the, uh, the engine. They also did the brakes. They helped with the suspension geometry. The V Rod was a real technical piece of machinery.

It’s weird to me that Harley would go to Porsche. Yeah. I know they’re a consulting company, but here’s a company who refuses to evolve. I mean, they absolutely refuse. We are not going to take the engine out of the back. We are not going to make it a mid engine. We are not going to [01:34:00] evolve at all. We are going to keep, as Eric says, evolving a bad idea.

And yet Harley goes to them and says, we want to evolutionize a motorcycle. Yeah, no problem. Let’s do that.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, Porsche and Ferrari are similar in that respect. They make the money so they can go racing, but they’re an engineering company first. They are a car company by proxy versus GM is a car company that goes racing and does engineer it’s the other way around.

And so I appreciate that. And that’s where you get into the weird stories of Porsche helping to design the Mercedes 500 E working on the Audi RS2 Avant, building diesel tractors back in the day, you know, they got all these projects and all these. Things because they’re an engineering company at the end of the day.

So that’s, what’s interesting, but that’s, what’s also confusing about nine 11. Whereas Corvette is designed for the American dream. It’s designed for the consumer. It’s designed for the enthusiasts. Not that nine 11 isn’t a lifestyle, but Corvette is a lifestyle. People aspire, as Mark said on the last episode to own a Corvette.

I’m not [01:35:00] saying that people don’t aspire to own nine 11s, but it’s different. And it’s attainable at a different way with that thinking in mind, knowing what we know now, before we sort of turn the tables for our lightning round, would you buy a Porsche or a Corvette? Does it

William Ross: matter what model?

Crew Chief Eric: No. Before we spend our a hundred grand, if you just had to pay.

Would you spend it with Porsche or would you spend it with Corvette? Porsche.

Don Weberg: As hard a time as I give Porsche. I do love Porsche. I always have. It was really working for Mecham that trained me on the Corvette and I had nothing against Corvette either. But learning about them is really what made me such an enthusiast about them.

But I still have all the respect in the world for Porsche. But I think if I had my money, if I would go with a Corvette, if for no other reason, they have proven to be more reliable on many different occasions. They are absolutely neck and neck with Porsche when it comes to performance. We’ve had this discussion before about my Ford driving across country.

I love seeing all the dealerships out there. My God, if that Corvette, anything goes wrong with it. There’s a dealership. I know there’s [01:36:00] enough Porsche dealerships out there, but look, when you go to certain States, there are no Porsche dealerships, or maybe there’s one. So you’re in the wrong side of the state and you’re going to have that tow truck.

Wow. The tow truck alone is going to cost two grand to get to wherever you’re going. Corvette, you’re going to have a lot more serviceability. Again, I do really have a hard time saying no to 996. If this is just a Porsche discussion, I go with 996 all day long.

Crew Chief Eric: All right. So William, Porsche, Don Corvette, David, you’re going to go Porsche.

I mean, that’s a no brainer

David L. Middleton: because of the, what the brand has had an effect on me personally and my career. But I’m the opposite. Like I’m the guy who would drive my RS to church and park it away from everybody else. Right. I’m the guy who’s driving, I drive like the nine 30 turbo to the coffee shop, just cause I can, I want to use my Porsche.

I don’t have that kind of money, but use it. However much I want to, and to say, damn the torpedoes and enjoy the hell out of it, because that’s all I wanted. I grew up as a kid on a bus stop and a kid where my dad picked the absolute worst cars. He would never listen to anything I said. You know, he had no idea and, and [01:37:00] me, I’m sitting at bus stops and standing at bus stops throughout my whole life, even through college, like I didn’t get my first car until college.

And then I got on my own and I’m the kid who was like, always wanted something. I always wanted my dad to have something cool. I always wanted like a cousin, have something cool. They never had it. So for me, it’s the dream of having a Porsche, the dream of Porsche ownership. And when I finally got it, yeah, I used the hell out of my Porsche, man.

I would have continued to track it. And if I had an RS or a GT3, I’m going to track it forever. And I have nobody to tell me no currently. So that’s just me. But everybody’s not built that way. I get it. And I personally, I respect what GM has done with the Corvette. I respect the fact that they’re still racing.

I respect that they’ve got programs. And as we get older, I think there’s room for all the enthusiasts. Like Mark said, I can start to appreciate that. Maybe as a kid, I couldn’t always appreciate certain brands and what they brought to the table. But the older I get, I’m like car culture in general is so great.

Absolutely. For me, it’s, it’s going to be Porsche.

Ryan Bahrke: I’m a Porsche guy. I mean, I’ve owned few now, never owned a Corvette much like David. I didn’t grow up with Porsches, but I guess it’s, it’s those intangibles. Do you like redheads versus blondes or whatever? I [01:38:00] don’t know why I just like Porsches. I tend to like the people who like Porsches and honestly, the Porsches I’ve owned have been the most reliable cars I’ve ever owned, so there’s that.

There’s a familiarity to it. Now they’re not intimidating to me. They’re familiar. They’re known. I still have a thing for his C4 Grand Sport. Do you remember those? I don’t know what it is,

William Ross: which

Ryan Bahrke: is weird because they were just on the one fender, right? But I dig those, but proof’s in the pudding and I’m just a Porsche guy.

William Ross: And I wouldn’t say once you buy the Porsche, you can buy another Porsche because it’s going to hold its value a lot better than the Corvette.

Ryan Bahrke: That’s a good point too.

William Ross: You drive that Porsche for five years, you do what you’re supposed to do, maintenance wise, either A, depending on which one you bought, it could go up in value, it could maintain value, it could go just a little bit lower.

But you could turn around and sell that and not have to remortgage whatever and whatnot to go buy the next generation Corvette because you lost, you know, 70 percent of the value to Corvette, the Porsche will hold it. So you can kind of roll the other ones too. So it’s just good.

Ryan Bahrke: William, such a good point.

That GT four behind me is worth every cent I paid for it four years ago. That’s [01:39:00] a free car. It’s a free car other than the tires, right? And the occasional oil change. It’s a free car. So you talk about a financial decision that makes sense. I mean, that’s part of it too. So all the above.

Crew Chief Eric: So Mark, if you had to do it all over again, Porsche or Corvette?

Mark Shank: Maybe slightly surprising. I would stick with my answer from the previous episode. So I was spending a hundred grand on a car. And I had to choose between Porsche and Corvette. I’d get a C7 Z06 and turn it into a thousand horsepower monster, but that’s because I have a GT3 that I love and, you know, I’ve scratched that itch.

So if I’m buying a car, I like the idea of the real high horsepower, Texas mile car, just as its own 150 mile an hour roll on that’s where the race starts.

Crew Chief Eric: I appreciate everything you guys said. I mean, I think we’re kind of split down the middle. I am personally torn 50 50. It’s sort of like Lay’s potato chips.

You can’t eat just one. I want to have every car. So I’ll take a Corvette. I’ll take a Porsche, you know, who cares? It’s all good. Got four wheels and a way to steer it. I’m all about it. But more importantly, for our [01:40:00] listeners, since we’re talking about Porsche, we already decided on the Corvettes that we would buy with a hundred grand.

But now specifically, you got a hundred thousand dollars to spend on a Porsche. I’m just going to leave it as a Porsche. You could focus on 911, but you got a hundred grand to spend. What do you buy? How do you invest your money? Do you buy a brand new 992 for a hundred thousand dollars? I

Mark Shank: don’t think you can anymore.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, let’s just say, theoretically, what do you buy for a hundred grand?

Ryan Bahrke: I would buy exactly what I did buy. Four years ago, I bought a very low spec, you know, no, that’s a GT four, but a nine 11, I guess it has to be a nine 11, right? Yeah. I would get a nine, nine 1. 2 career T that’s what I would put my a hundred thousand dollars in

Crew Chief Eric: David’s laughing.

What would you buy?

David L. Middleton: I’m laughing because that was my thought. I said 991T, that was the first thing that came in my mind, maybe to switch it up a little bit. If I couldn’t get the T, then a GTS. If I could get a GTS, the T I think is great. It really is.

Crew Chief Eric: Don, do you go 996 or do you buy a [01:41:00] 928?

Don Weberg: Yeah, I know. You knew, you knew the two I was looking at.

And honestly, reasonably practical. Look, I see the GT3, the GT4. I wouldn’t advise anybody who’s got whatever kind of money go buy one of those, because I am the kind of guy who wants to be able to drive it every day. If I want to, if I want to drive it to work, if I want to drive it all the way to Pennsylvania to go see friends on the East coast or back to California and see friends on the West coast, I want a car that’s going to not eat me up.

As I say, and Mark has kind of brought that to life. The older ones beat you up worse than the newer ones. That’s still no consolation to me. They’re still beating me up one way or the other. Honestly, if I had the a hundred grand, it’s hard for me to walk away from 996. I really do like 996 and over here in the back of my mind, there’s always the Cayman pulling at me cause I really do like the Caymans and I love the Cayman GTS.

I just know that when it came to 9 11, even the, uh, high end and the Cayman whenever I’d see the GTS package, it always caught my eye. Yeah. It’s hard to say between. All three of those cars, but I think really if push came to shove as much as I love 928 [01:42:00] And I really really do I think I would probably go with a 996 c4s.

Crew Chief Eric: William. What do you buy for 100 grand?

Don Weberg: 928 s4

William Ross: 5 speed

Crew Chief Eric: brilliant

William Ross: That’s last change left over. I can go buy myself a 914. There you go Even a beat up 911 needs some work. I’m just a big fan of 928 I think that with the s4 5 speed, you know It’s got the gremlins and everything like that. But I mean, I just think that’s just a classic car.

I mean, I just love that.

Crew Chief Eric: All right. But you got it by 9 11. So what are you buying?

William Ross: Oh, that’s right. I gotta buy a 9 11. I’d probably buy a 9 6 4 series C4 because I drive that thing in the winter, put some blizzacks on it, put some snow tires, come

Crew Chief Eric: tow you out with my jeep when you get stuck.

William Ross: I mean, yeah, you could get the new stuff, the new stuff, spray stuff.

I don’t know. I just, you know, I’d get something older, go into a, an 80s SC or something along those lines. You know, you hear that ad, you know, it’s always funner to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow. Tell them about them. It’s just got that soul and whatnot. There’s other stuff I could drive that goes faster, but I gotta buy a 911.

I don’t have something that’s gonna kind of really get you going a little bit and have some phones and just ring the shit out of it.

Crew Chief Eric: Mark, do [01:43:00] you buy back your 85 Carrera 2 or do you do something different?

Mark Shank: For 100k, I’m torn between Do I do 997 Turbo? You get away with both of them for 100k. Maybe not a 997 manual.

I guess maybe if you hung around long enough to wait for it. But I think I would do previous generation Turbo 996 or 997 depending on where the market was.

Crew Chief Eric: Well guys, it probably comes as no surprise that That I would buy an e production or e prepared 914 race car. But you know, Hey, I’m the weird guy, right?

I’m a mid engine guy. So I like Caymans, all that kind of stuff. I am a big fan of 9 11 too. I’ve grown up around these cars. I mean, literally in PCA since I was in diapers. So I am no stranger to Porsche by any stretch of the imagination, but there is a 9 11 out of all the ones that we talked about, it’s a bit of a rare bird.

And it’s not the 911 L or the R or even the slant nose and all these ones that we talked about, you know, as exciting as the 930 is, there’s one in particular, that’s super special, at least to me, and maybe [01:44:00] to a bunch of other people. And that, my friends, is the 1989 911 Speedster. This thing Is super cool.

I’ve always loved these cars. I’ve only seen a handful of them in person, you know, with the chop windshield, the canopy over the back, it’s different than the cabriolet. It’s as wide as the turbo. It’s a car that makes people want to come and talk to you. It’s a story car. And I love story cars. And it’s more attractive in some ways than a lot of other older 9 11s.

And these are stupid expensive nowadays. So if I had a hundred grand to spend and I had to spend it on the 9 11, I’m buying a Speedster.

Mark Shank: You mean you’re buying one and doing a Speedster tribute? Cause you’re not getting a Speedster tribute. Yeah, that’s right. That’s what I was going to say. Yeah, I’d buy

Crew Chief Eric: one too.

Well, there you go. That’s what I would have.

Ryan Bahrke: They are so good though. They are so good.

Mark Shank: If you’re looking to add a classic Porsche or Corvette to your collection, reach out to William at exoticcarmarketplace. com. Once you hear about cool adventures with Porsches, then check out [01:45:00] Roadshow Podcast with Brian.

If you want to learn how to drive a 911 really fast in the virtual world, then be sure to chat with David at MIE Racing. And you’re guaranteed to catch me on another upcoming episode of BreakFix. So stay tuned for that and don’t forget what should be in your garage. A Porsche! So be sure to keep an eye out for cool Porsche collections with Don over at Garage Style Magazine.

Thanks again to our panel for another great What Should I Buy? episode.

Crew Chief Eric: Like always, I can’t thank you enough for coming on the show. And I don’t know that we ever come to a consensus, but that’s kind of the point of what should I buy is we’re not really supposed to agree on what we would buy. We’re supposed to give people food for thought.

So this was new. This was different for us to do a two parter Porsche versus Corvette. I had a lot of fun. I thought it was informational. And I hope that our audience got a lot out of this too. And if you have further questions about Porsche or Corvette, hit us up on our discord, reach out to us on our Facebook group, email us.

We’d have a lot of. We’ve got experts in our wings that can get more deep into the details if you’re looking to buy one of these [01:46:00] particular cars. So thanks again guys for coming and we hope to see you in another. What should I buy? Awesome.

Ryan Bahrke: Thank you. What a pleasure.

Crew Chief Brad: Thanks for having us.

Crew Chief Eric: We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of break fix podcast brought to you by Grand Touring Motorsports. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure to follow us on all social media platforms at GrandTouringMotorsports. And if you’d like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on article at GTMotorsports.

org. We remain a commercial free and no annual fees organization through our sponsors, but also through the generous support of our fans, families, and friends through Patreon. For as little as 2. 50 a month, you can get access to more behind the scenes action, [01:47:00] additional Pit Stop minisodes, and other VIP goodies, as well as keeping our team of creators Fed on their strict diet of fig Newtons, gumby bears, and monster.

So consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com forward slash GT motorsports, and remember without you, none of this would be possible.

Bonus Content

There's more to this story!

All of our BEHIND THE SCENES (BTS) Break/Fix episodes are raw and unedited, and expressly shared with the permission and consent of our guests.

Singer Vehicle Design

As mentioned several times on this episode, Singer Vehicle Design is an American company that specializes in restoring and modifying Porsche 911s.

It was founded by Rob Dickinson in 2009, who is also known as former frontman and guitarist of the English rock band Catherine Wheel. The company is based in Los Angeles, California and produces rollings works of art using older 911s like this “Turbo” unveiled at last years Quail (Monterey Car Week 2023).

The Flachbau 964

William’s choice comes in the form of the 76 US-spec X85 Turbo S Flachbau “slantnose” examples of the 964, seen below with a 996 GT3. Do you agree?

What’s a Porsche Purist these days?

We spend some extra time with Lee Raskin (noted Porsche Historian, and subject matter expert on 356 and 550 Spyders) talking about vintage Porsche’s and his thoughts on “Porsche Purism” in today’s enthusiast world.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Learn More

Interested in buying a 911?

And if you’re interested in buying a Porsche, look no further than Exotic Car Marketplace with over 20 years of personalized service to find you the right 911 experience!

What else should you buy? Check out other What Should I Buy? Podcast episodes for more car buying “advice” 😉 And remember: the debate never ends – it just shifts gears.

Despite its consistent silhouette, the 911 evolved significantly over the years. From the 901 to the 911T, E, and S variants, each brought incremental improvements. The panel dives into the grassroots motorsports culture that fueled Frankenstein builds – mixing cams, heads, and carbs for performance gains.

David notes that Porsche’s engineering philosophy was more iterative than revolutionary, especially compared to Corvette’s dramatic styling shifts. Germans weren’t big on personalization – at least not in the early days.

With safety regulations came bigger bumpers, flared fenders, and a more mainstream appeal. This era of 911s – especially the SC and Carrera – became the poster cars of the 1980s. Ryan fondly recalls the hips on the SC as the moment 911s became “cool.”

Don and David point out that Porsche, like Corvette, began catering to yuppies. The cars got heavier, more luxurious, and less raw. But they never lost their engineering edge. Even the 930 Turbo, introduced in 1975, was a technological marvel – a six-cylinder that could clean Ferrari’s clock.

The 930 Turbo (above) was the car that made Porsche a household name. With its infamous turbo lag and brutal power delivery, it earned the nickname “widowmaker.” Eric shares a childhood memory of a neighbor with a silver 930 and BBS wheels – forever cementing the car’s status as the Alpha Porsche.

David reminds us that the 930 wasn’t just about luxury – it was about racing pedigree. Fuel injection, turbocharging, and endurance racing roots made it a standout in a sea of malaise-era cars.

If you’re a first-time collector, the panel suggests steering clear of the earliest 901s unless you’re rounding out a collection. Instead, look to the SCs, Carreras, and even the 930s of the late ’70s and ’80s. They offer the best blend of drivability, collectability, and that unmistakable Porsche charm.

And remember, whether it’s a Singer tribute or a bone-stock survivor, the right 911 is the one that makes you smile – and maybe makes your friends raise an eyebrow.

Thanks to our panel of Petrol-heads!

If you’re looking to add a classic Porsche (or Corvette) to your collection, reach out to William at exoticcarmarketplace.com. Want to hear about cool adventures with Porsches, then check out the Road Show Podcast with Ryan. If you want to learn how to drive a 911 really fast in the virtual world, then be sure to chat with David at MIE racing. And you’re guaranteed to catch Mark on another upcoming episode of Break/Fix so stay tuned for that, and don’t forget… What should be in your garage? A Porsche! So be sure to keep an eye out for cool Porsche collections with Don over at Garage Style Magazine. Thanks again to our panel for another great What Should I Buy? debate!

Guest Co-Host: Don Weberg

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the Break/Fix episode with our co-host.

Guest Co-Host: William Ross

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the Break/Fix episode with our co-host.

Guest Co-Host: Ryan Barhke & Doug Fogler

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the Break/Fix episode with our co-host.

Guest Co-Host: David L. Middleton

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the Break/Fix episode with our co-host.

Guest Co-Host: Mark Shank

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the Break/Fix episode with our co-host.

Don’t agree, let’s agree to disagree? Come share your opinions and continue the conversation on the Break/Fix Discord!

This content has been brought to you in-part by support through...

Corvette vs. Porsche: The Everyman Sports Car Showdown (Part 1)

Don W

August 1, 2024

Corvette vs. Porsche: The Everyman Sports Car Showdown (Part 1)

Welcome back to another raucous round of What Should I Buy? – the podcast segment where our panel of break-fix petrol heads debate the perfect car for a first-time collector. This time, the challenge is clear: find a vehicle that makes your friends say either “Where’d you get that Corvette?” at the next Cars and Coffee.

And what better battleground than the age-old rivalry between Porsche and Corvette? With the 911 turning 75 and the Corvette celebrating 70 years, we’re diving deep into which one truly deserves the title of “everyman’s sports car.”

The Corvette’s origin story begins not in a showroom, but on the streets of Watkins Glen. Harley J. Earl, GM’s legendary designer, was inspired by the European roadsters he saw racing there. His vision? An American sports car that could compete with the likes of Jaguar and Aston Martin.

The result was the 1953 Corvette C1—fiberglass-bodied, six-cylinder-powered, and built in a barn-like facility with no racing pedigree and minimal marketing. It was beautiful, but flawed. No crank windows, no exterior door handles, and a steering wheel that challenged anyone with a beer belly or long legs. It was more expensive than its European rivals and slower, too. Unsurprisingly, only 300 were sold that first year.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

By 1955, Chevrolet dropped in a 265 V8, and by 1956, the Corvette had transformed. Chrome, crank windows, two-tone paint, and a whole lot of American swagger. Sales jumped to nearly 8,000 units. The Corvette was finally finding its footing, thanks in part to competition from Ford’s Thunderbird – a more luxurious, user-friendly alternative.

C1 Corvette
Collection of C2 Corvettes (Pete Vicari)
Collection of C2 Corvettes (Pete Vicari)
The 1960 C1 Corvette LeMans Cars (No.1 thru 3)
Corvette Concept Car
Racing C2 Corvette Stingray
C2 Corvette alongside a C6 Corvette
The Aerovette Concept
Early C3 Corvette (Pete Vicari)
Widebody Racing C3 Corvette
Late Corvette C3
1996 Corvette C4 Grand Sport Convertible
Racing Corvette C5
Corvette C5.R IMSA/WEC (Andy Pilgrim)
Corvette C6 Z06
C6 Corvette Grand Sport
C6 Corvette Grand Sport
2005 Corvette C6.R Race Car IMSA/WEC
C7 Corvette Z51 Package
Corvette C8 Z51 Package
Corvette C8.R IMSA/WEC (Ben Keating)

Still, the C1 remained a niche collectible. As our panelists noted, most buyers today seek them to complete a generational lineup or for their visual appeal. Driving one? Not so much. They’re tight, heavy, and not particularly fast. But they’re undeniably gorgeous, especially the early models with their fluid lines and European-inspired curves.

Shopping Criteria

Our panel of automotive enthusiasts debates which Corvette model is the best investment for a first-time collector. The conversation covers a range of Corvette generations from the C1 to the C8, each with its own unique characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses. The discussion delves into specific details about the history, performance, and market value of various Corvette models, including the C4 ZR1, C5 Z06, C6 Grand Sport, and the latest C8. They also touch upon the car’s involvement in motorsport, notably the dominance of the C5R and C6R. The panel considers both modern and classic options for a budget of $100,000, debating the merits of newer technology versus the charm and modification potential of older models. They conclude that both modern and classic Corvettes offer excellent value, with the right choice depending on personal preferences and intended use.

Does anyone know about the history of the ‘Vette? Where it all got started, etc? (Check out Kip’s presentation above!)
Special Models… Z51 (base), Z06, ZR1, etc – any to look for, or stay away from?
Corvette silently adopted that “Race on Sunday, Sell on Monday” approach.
- Which is the best generation of vette for track use – looking at the numbers
- Track vs Drag Racing? Seeing more Vettes used in Drifting.
- Things to think about when building a high performance Vette?
“Sell all your shit and buy a Vette” – how many times have you heard that?
Knowing what we know now, before turning the tables… Would you buy a Vette? (or settle for a Porsche).

We have 8 generations of the Corvette to talk about. However, they can be grouped: C1, C2/C3, C4/C5/C6 because the chassis are similar, C7, and then the Mid-Engine C8. So hang in there, it’s worth it!

Highlights

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

00:00 Introduction to the Debate
00:19 Porsche vs. Corvette Rivalry
00:56 Meet the Panelists
02:02 History of the Corvette C1
08:35 Collectibility and Market Trends of the C1
11:24 Transition to the C2
12:01 Design and Performance of the C2
21:33 Collector Market for the C2
26:07 Introduction to the C3
39:10 Exploring the C3 Corvette Market
39:46 Modifying the C3: Aftermarket Options
42:15 Trans Am vs. Corvette: A Value Comparison
44:01 The Missing 1983 Corvette and the Rise of the C4
45:07 C4 Corvette: Versatility and Market Value
52:31 C5 Corvette: Evolution and Track Performance
01:10:01 C6 Corvette: Design and Market Trends
01:15:07 The LS3 Engine Update and Magneto Suspension
01:16:23 Grand Sport Market Trends
01:18:52 C7 Corvette: A Design Departure
01:21:37 C8 Corvette: The Mid-Engine Revolution
01:25:32 Corvette’s Evolution and Market Value
01:40:54 Daily Driver Debate: C7 vs. C8
01:47:41 Conclusion and Future Episodes

Transcript

Crew Chief Eric: There are so many automotive rivalries, Ford versus Ferrari, Honda versus Volkswagen, Chevy versus Ford, and the list goes on and on. But there is an extra special one in the sports car and motorsports world, and that’s Porsche. Versus Corvette, both of which recently celebrated their respective 75th and 70th birthdays.

And after all this time, is it possible to agree on whether or not the 911 or the Corvette is THE everyman sports car?

Don Weberg: And we’re here to answer that very question with our petrolhead panel to settle yet another what should I buy debate. For the first time, as part of this series, our panelists will be focused on a [00:01:00] specific set of vehicles.

In one of our two part Porsche vs. Corvette debate, we’re joined by Mark Schenk, our 90s expert, along with Corvette owners like William Big Money Ross from the Exotic Car Marketplace, Rob Parr from Collector Car Guide, and Rick Hoback from Auto Interest and Hoback Racing. And then there’s me! expert by way of my work with Mecham Auctions, who sells more Corvettes than anyone else on the planet, and I get to write about them.

Who am I? I’m Don Wieberg from Garage Style Magazine.

Crew Chief Eric: Thanks, Don. And like all What Should I Buy episodes, we have some shopping criteria. So get ready, folks. It’s time to unbutton your Hawaiian shirt, shine up your gold chains, and put on a fresh pair of New Balance sneakers, because we’re going to talk about Corvettes.

In our panel of Extraordinary petrol heads are challenged to find our first time collector something that will make their friends go Oh, that’s so you at the next cars and coffee. So welcome back to the show guys. Thanks. Hello. Hello. Hello You guys know how this works [00:02:00] listeners if this is your first what should I buy?

You know We sit and argue for the next hour and a half about what car we should buy for our fictitious first time collector But I want to kick this off by asking, does anybody know about the history of Corvette? Sort of like where it all got started? I’m gonna give you a hit. My t shirt is a big clue.

Don Weberg: Definitely Road America. In the words of Ferris Bueller, anyone, anyone?

Crew Chief Eric: So I got to give a quick nod to our friends at the International Motor Racing Research Center. If you go back into their history books, and we’ve done some episodes on this on break, fix the. Conception point of the C1 started with Harley J Earl.

It’s designer, but it stems from the early Grand Prix at Watkins Glen, when they used to race on the streets of Watkins Glen, he came to Watkins Glen to see the Grand Prix for the first time in a LeSabre and he said, it would be cool to compete in this car, but it’s too big. It’s too heavy. It’s not fast roadsters and some of the other boutique manufacturers out there.

Harley J Earl was inspired. Day one, the [00:03:00] Corvette was designed to compete against all these other cars. So what we’re going to look at over the course of this episode is how does it stack up over the years and where should people focus their attention and their money, much like the nine 11, there are eight generations of Corvette to talk about over 70 years of production.

What do we know about the C1? Is it worth collecting or is it too much hype, too expensive? Are there better options out there? If

William Ross: you’re a vertically challenged person, you can fit in it. They’re tight. That steering wheel is huge. Yeah. You got any kind of beer

Rob Parr: belly, forget about it. Or if you have big legs, forget it too.

Yeah. I can’t even get my legs on the steering wheel.

Crew Chief Eric: It started with a six cylinder, right? And then became a V8.

Rob Parr: 53 had a toll boat, six, then since 54. And was that the infamous blue flame six or something like that? Yeah. It’s the blue flame six. They call it, yes. Two carburetors. And the first year they only made about 200 of them.

1955, they adopted the two 65 V8. First year,

Crew Chief Eric: but not high performance by any stretch of the imagination. So sort of a dud when the C1 [00:04:00] first came out. So it took them, let’s say 10 years to almost get it right. And all is

Don Weberg: well. And the funny thing is when you get right into it, you end up with everybody immediately hit that thing against the Jaguar and the Aston Martin here.

You’ve got three cards with six cylinder engines, side draft carburetors, lightweight body, two seats. And yeah, I mean, they were born to compete with each other. But when you got into the original Corvette 53, 54, they would move. Oh, Hey, compared to other cars at their time, but you’re just zero to 60.

You’re still looking at something like 11 or 12 seconds, which in that day, really not too bad. When you consider the Chevy Bel Air or any of those basic sedans, you’re looking upwards of 18 seconds for zero to 60. Then you take the light weight into it. And really when you get right down to it. That first generation Corvette was actually pretty heavy for having a fiberglass body.

If I remember correctly, they still came in over 3000 pounds. It really wasn’t that light at all. It was almost equivalent to the Jaguar. And another problem that Corvette always [00:05:00] faced was when it came out, it was actually more expensive than the Jaguar. Then the Jag XK, how do you justify that when it was not as quick, not as fast, didn’t drive as well, didn’t have the panache, didn’t have a lot of stuff the XK did, and yet it costs more money.

So there’s a reason they only sold 300 that first time out. Not to mention, remember when they showed that car, they didn’t know if the public was going to embrace it. And the public loved it so much so that Chevrolet, General Motors, everybody rushed this thing into production, get it going, get it going, get it going.

So they did on a makeshift, not even assembly line, but more like a big barn where they built these cars largely by hand just to get them out. There was no marketing. They had no racing history. They didn’t go racing. I mean, it was really kind of a keystone cop. Operation when they first started. It was pretty funny when you start looking at their real history of the actual production Corvette.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, what I think is interesting about the C1 is it started as a convertible. It’s really interesting that later they’re like, Hey, let’s put a roof on this thing, because obviously we want to go racing, but then the intent was to go racing [00:06:00] from day one, so I’m like, yeah, I guess I get it, but even the C1 morphed over the years, because if you look at the later part of 1960, 61, 62, towards the tail end of the C1, Things like the Camerati Corvette that went to Le Mans and actually placed in the top 10.

And, you know, we’ll talk about that on a whole nother episode. Didn’t it get bigger though?

Don Weberg: Yeah. When you look at 53, 4, and 5 for the same reasons, they kind of fell on their face originally, which Zora Arkus Doontov wanted to correct immediately. But believe it or not, your designer that you mentioned, as well as Chevrolet itself, Did not, they did not want to correct the six cylinder immediately.

They did not want to correct the, I don’t have a crank window. They did not want to correct. I don’t have an outdoor side door handle, all these preacher comforts. They didn’t want to correct those things. They wanted a true diehard died in the world sports car that you can race on Sunday all day long against Jags and Ashton Martins and MGs and whatever.

Sales were just lagging American buyers. If they wanted that, guess what kids, they’d go buy a Jag. What? You’re going to tell me [00:07:00] Jag sold well? They outsold Corvette every single day of the week. So they fell on their face. It really wasn’t until Ford said, well, hell, we need something like that. And they brought about the Thunderbird.

Asked Ford officially? No, we never wanted to compete with the Corvette. We never wanted to do that. What they wanted was a personal luxury convertible car, but it had the crank windows, it had the exterior door handles. The vet had a radio too, but so too did the Thunderbird. The Thunderbird was useful. The Thunderbird was one of those cars that, yeah, it was sporty.

It could move okay, but you could drive it every day comfortably. You could take your mom to church in it on Sunday and you wouldn’t be embarrassed by it. Corvette was a different animal. Obviously. 1955, Chevrolet dropped in the V8. Now, why’d they do that? Did they know Thunderbird was coming out? Probably, but that was their first step.

But also Chevrolet didn’t have a V8 until 1955. They had that working against them. But remember 1956, whoa, baby, the Corvette was a whole different ball game. Yes. You had a lot of chrome. You had a lot of glitz. This thing screamed, I’m as American as Superman. [00:08:00] And that’s it. You had your VA, you had your crank windows, you had your exterior door handles, you had two Tom Pings jobs.

And what did we have? We had almost 8, 000 sold. Fantastic. The following year, you had a little bit more. And remember in 1958, huge recession year, but Corvette grew. That was really positive. You can definitely thank Thunderbird for that. Because that came along and Chevy, everybody got on board with more stuff for the Corvette.

Rob Parr: Don’s talk. I think the Corvette would have died if he wasn’t behind it. Oh yeah. A hundred percent. And the racing side, the Pikes Peak 1957 was a big year for that car. It won, it got a lot of, some racing involved in and really got inspiration.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s talk about from the collector side. So Don, William, Rob, C1’s.

Are people buying those right now? Are they sought after Mark? Are you seeing anything? I’ll bring a trailer. Like what’s the market for the C1 right now?

Rob Parr: I’ve seen it going through auctions and the 53s are picking up steam. People that have collections are picking those up. They’ve had a couple of the last two Coral options.

Crew Chief Eric: Is it just sort of. Eh, because the C2, and we’re going to talk about the Stingray here in a second, the [00:09:00] infamous split windows and all those, are those more sought after than the original Corvettes because they’re just that much better?

Don Weberg: I think they are. You’re looking at the difference of drivability. I think today’s market, today’s buyers are more interested in friendly drivability than collectability.

William Ross: I think People that are buying that C one, probably the biggest reason, in my opinion, they’re balancing out or completing their collection. I got C2, C3, I need a C1. And I said, they didn’t build too many and especially ones that are nice and collectible, they don’t need tens of thousands of dollars of restoration work.

But I think a lot of those people buy it because, well, I need to have it complete my collection. I got every other one. I need that one. I think that’s what they do just so they’re lined up. They look nice.

Rob Parr: We have on our cover, we have a 57 Corvette, black with a silver code, red interior, gorgeous. And people are buying them for the look.

I mean, they’ll put them on a trailer, take it to an event and drop it right off. They’re not driving them around. It’s really purely for collectability.

Don Weberg: Building on what both of you are saying. I’ve got two friends, one’s got a 53, one has a 54. One of them. You’re [00:10:00] absolutely right, William. He bought it because he did have a C two.

He had a C four. He had very little Corvette. He just wanted a C one. He drove it, he hated it, and he never drives it. He just can’t stand that car. It’s terrible to drive. The second guy is more of a blue collar guy, and he like me, and I totally agree with him. I always thought the 53, 4 and five was one of the most beautiful cars Chevrolet ever built.

I just thought it was. Gorgeous the way they laid that car out. Very gorgeous.

Crew Chief Eric: It is and it has those same sort of fluid lines like the 356s and the Jags and some of the other cars of the era that you mentioned. Those really kind of bulbous roadsters that were out there. You mentioned the Thunderbird and that was more of a luxury convertible.

Whether we dive into was Ford trying to compete or trying to keep up the Corvette sort of stood alone. If you look at American sports cars made by the big manufacturers, there weren’t many at all. Like Corvette was sort of a new territory. They got it wrong. Then they kept refining. And so they didn’t just keep going.

Can it, which was awesome. So somebody had the [00:11:00] vision and the tenacity to say, you know what? Okay. The six cylinder, let’s get rid of that. We got to add door handles, all these kinds of things. We’re going to keep making it better. If you look at the C1 all the way up to 61, 62, when they started to phase it out, it went through a metamorphosis.

Like you line up the 54, 55, 56, you know, sort of like that Johnny Cash song. They’re just interesting. And if I think I was a C1 collector, I’d want to have almost one of every year. If I was that nerdy about C1s, but we do have to kind of move the story forward into the C2 into this sudden golden age of Corvette, which was interesting because it’s Corvette versus the world.

There’s nobody else. Mustang didn’t exist. yet. Chrysler still hadn’t figured its muscle cars out. That hadn’t happened yet. Corvette was in uncharted territory against Porsche and Ferrari and Jaguar and all the Europeans that we already knew. So C2 was a ground up redo, carries nothing over from the C1, right?

Other than maybe some rear trailing arms or axles or stuff like that. But As far as chassis and design [00:12:00] go, it was a redo.

Don Weberg: Yeah. The C2 was a groundbreaking car.

Crew Chief Eric: And what’s interesting is the C2 for Mark and my generation, I don’t want to put words in Mark’s mouth, but that’s the Corvette I fell in love with because when I was a kid, the C4 was just still sort of new and we’ll get to the Barbie Corvette as I like to call it as we go along here and the C3, because it looks so much to me like the Trans Am and stuff of that time.

Jokes aside, the C2 was just so striking. It was angular and the split window and it’s deceptively large, but then it’s really small when you compare it to other cars and it had hips, but it didn’t, it was straight and sort of set slab sided and every angle you look at it, it sort of changes, it’s mystical in a way.

It just sucks you in. It’s such an interesting and unique design. There’s not another car ever that looks like a C2 Corvette.

Mark Shank: And you forgot. Oh, yes. Yes. Geez. Maybe the coolest thing a car can have. C2. You’re right. It’s the golden age. Like you mentioned earlier, Eric, like where are these things selling?

Like if [00:13:00] you compare a C1, C2, C3, C3 gets thrown off by the L88 from a transaction price perspective. Take the L88 out of the data set. You struggle to find a C3 that sells over a hundred grand. You look at C2s and there’s just tons and tons of C2s that transact over 100, 000. And your C1s are in that 50 to 200 type range.

It coincides with the demographic boom, the baby boomers coming of age. So it becomes this thing that they want when they actually get some disposable income in their 40s and 50s and 60s. And so it had that benefit to it. But I agree with you. Like to me, the C1 was this kind of GT cruiser type car. And the C2 was, to me, it was a sports car.

It was badass. And it was, it looked angry and fast.

Don Weberg: You’re right. The designer C2 knocked people on their butts. It was like nothing they’d ever seen before. But remember they had to play a little catch up because in 1961, the E type was born and there was a car that just, I mean, just talk about a gorgeous car.

It does everything right by [00:14:00] design. And like the Jaguar for the first time ever, you could have Corvette as a hard top coupe. Yeah. That beautiful sloping roof with a split design, a boat tail. Yeah. Well, of course, if I’m remembering correctly, that was

Crew Chief Eric: Earl, Harley J Earl.

Don Weberg: Huge fan of those early Bugattis or the boat tail cars from the thirties.

And that’s where Boattail came from.

Rob Parr: Right. Shinoda was the designer of that car. And, and Guntholf totally inspired it. But we’re

Don Weberg: forgetting one other designer who was huge on styling. In fact, if I’m remembering correctly, he was actually the first one on deck to help Harley J Earl style the Vision.

Shinoda is the one that finished it off. And that is Peter Brock. My understanding was Peter Brock was first charged by Harley Gerald to help him style the vision, which he did. Then he left. Why? Cause he had to go work for Carroll Shelby. Then Shinoda stepped in and he finished off the design. Shinoda though, he was with Corvette for a long, long time, but to your point, it was the first [00:15:00] time you can get Corvette in a coupe, which what makes it again, much more user friendly.

It had a larger interior, which again, made it more user friendly. I mean, I’ll put it this way, six foot three, 330 pounds. I don’t fit in a lot of cars. I fit in a C2, not tremendously well, but I can get in it and I can drive it. C1, I really can’t drive that car. It’s just too tight for me. So they increased everything, but the styling to your point, Eric, you could look at that car all day long and still find new nuances that turn you on about it.

When you look at the side profile of a C2, you have that razor sharp edge that breaks the car almost in half. And you have this undercut, which is incredible. If you look at the 70 to 81 Firebird and Camaro, it too had that sharp cut. But what’s funny is when you look at De Tomaso, Ghia was huge at using that line right down the fender.

You even saw it in the Granada for God’s sake. So I think that car, just by a styling standpoint, was just [00:16:00] absolutely salivating. It was wonderful. And knocked it out of the park for sure. It was fantastic. Plus you had that 327, which was as flexible as a rubber band. I mean, that thing would do all kinds of crazy stuff.

Rob Parr: course, Dunkelhard had the 327, came out in 62, and that really added a lot of performance and added more engine options. So you could have more power. And then they started fuel injection. I think back in 57, I want to say.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s what they call the fuelies, right?

William Ross: Yeah. The fuelie. Yeah. They’re Rochester mechanical fuel injector.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. Which you make more power by throwing that in a box and putting carburetors back on, right? Yeah.

Don Weberg: We have the 23 and 57 when you fuel injected it, if you did what they called the Duntov PAM, and when you did the heads, You could make 283 horsepower that today doesn’t sound like a hell of a lot. I mean, I think my Ford flex makes more than that right now.

No turbo.

Crew Chief Brad: I mean,

Don Weberg: that’s what it’s doing, but for 1957 to make one horsepower per cubic inch, that was a huge, huge deal. Remember those mid to late fifties, who is everyone chasing was [00:17:00] Chrysler. They had those monster Hemis come on the C300. Well, what was it named after? 300 horsepower. And what was it? 331 cubic inches.

Then it was 354. Then it was 392. I think was the last of the, those Hemis. So for Chevy to come out with a small block that made 287 horsepower. And let’s not forget, even the big fat Bel Air weighed a lot less than any Chrysler you put it up next to. So when you have 287 horsepower with a lightweight body, And let’s put that in a Corvette.

Now your Corvette has graduated more to compete against the original Jag, Aston Martin, and of course your aforementioned Porsche and all the Italians. I hate to say it. They were terrified of Corvette. They don’t admit it, but when you do the history and you look at the Italians knew what Corvette was before Corvette knew what Corvette was.

It’s one of those situations where, you know, you have a father who sees his son and the father knows. He’s never going to be like me. He’s going to be an artist. He’s going to be some, and the father is not necessarily disappointed. It’s telling, and yet the son has no clue, no clue yet [00:18:00] what they are going to.

Potential

Crew Chief Eric: is yeah, exactly.

Rick Hoback: Definitely more drivable. Even the later C2s versus the early C2s. There’s a big difference there and just some drivability. They’re all similar, but maybe the bushings.

Crew Chief Eric: I remember seeing an early C2. And it was up on jack stands, no wheels. And I’m like, oh my God, drum breaks all the way around.

You gotta be kidding me. Guys, race these cars. Like you’re out of your mind.

Rick Hoback: Yeah. They’re just not as enjoyable. Later ones are better.

Don Weberg: When you go see two, you really, really get to see Zorak or Stuntal’s handiwork in there because for the first time. And I believe it was 1963 with that whole new chassis.

You had a four wheel independent suspension. Yes. You had the four wheel drum brakes, you know, GM moves at a glacial pace. You know, be thankful. We were able to get a four wheel independent suspension, but the chassis was completely retuned. And Zora had a lot to do with that retuning.

Rob Parr: How does it compare to driving a C3 in your opinion?

Or is there any noticeable difference?

Rick Hoback: They’re similar. I think the C3 probably drives better. I’ve probably been spoiled on some of the ones I’ve driven too. I’ve driven some original ones and then some of them had [00:19:00] been gone through with, we’ll say OE style or basic aftermarket bushings and stuff, put back in them.

And then I’ve driven some race versions, which is a whole different class. I think they’re similar. I think the three seat drives a little better. Better. And then obviously when we get to the C4, it’s drastically different. They’re all fun.

Crew Chief Eric: And we’ll talk about why that’s important. That lineage starting with the C2 carries through some other cars.

And like we said before, the C1 sort of stands on its own. And then even though there’s been eight generations of the Corvette, that can be kind of lumped together, but we’ll get into that as we go along. So one of the things I want to sort of just pick apart on the C2 is C1 was sort of like, well, okay.

But if you look back. And this is where it gets fuzzy for me because it’s not my generation, but I look at it and go, wow, that’s a cool car. I see some of these historical pieces, some of these movies, and you hear stories about how, like they were given C2s to astronauts and then celebrities were driving them.

And then you got guys like Mark Twain. Donahue behind the wheel and Parnelli Jones. And it’s like, wait a second, who was [00:20:00] behind the marketing for C2 Corvette that suddenly turned it into America’s heartthrob sports car. How did that happen? Zordonta backdoored

William Ross: everything. Cause there was the gentleman’s agreement for that period that the manufacturers wouldn’t support racing or put that into it, but.

Duntov backdoored everything to teams to help support them to do that. And if you’ve got a race team, you’re getting free stuff. That’s what you’re

Don Weberg: going to use. I mean, case in point, you brought it up, Eric, the Comorati Corvette. There were three other Corvettes entered that year in 1960. 1960, that was toward the end of the C1’s lifespan.

As William is saying, those three Corvettes, they were not backed by General Motors. They were backdoored. I saw Arcus Duntov and dealerships and some of his fun guys in the parts counter building these cars specifically for competition. But I think those are the cars that really, especially for racing aficionados, I think those were the four cars that 1960 at Le Mans, they were the four that [00:21:00] really.

But Corvette on the map, because up to that point, as far as I can remember, Corvette really wasn’t competing all that much, but for the most part, it was pretty quiet. It was, you know, a bunch of privateers at Riverside, et cetera. And then all of a sudden here’s these four that show up at arguably the most grueling race that we have.

They all did pretty good against the world’s best sports cars with the world’s best drivers. Here are four Corvettes, four Yankees that come out of nowhere and say, we’re here to play. We want to play ball too. We want you to take us seriously. But I think that’s what put them on the map.

Crew Chief Eric: So I’ll actually want to turn this back to Rick and Mark for a second, because Mark was talking about how C2s are transacting in the collector world.

And there’s a lot more of them than I think we realize. There’s tons of them in collections. You see them at car shows, you see them at car week, you see them in private. Do they hold their value when they’re modded? Are people still resto modding them? Has the C2 hit a point where it’s now unobtainium, you’re better off with a virgin one.

Where are we in the collector [00:22:00] space with C2?

Rick Hoback: The demographic of who likes them and who was around them in the age group and their availability of having plan to buy one. I think there’s way more C2s than C1s on the market for sale and they were affordable. I mean, I’ve owned three of them and I was picking these up for a quarter of the price of a C1.

C1s weren’t even in my range. I would have bought one. Couldn’t find them. Couldn’t afford them. They were way different than that C2. So I think those are some of the reasons there. I don’t want to call them better. They’re just more available, more collectors have them in their collections. Digging

Mark Shank: through some of the data on bring a trailer and comparing the generational sale, they kind of track the volumes.

You’ve got more than twice as many C2 transactions on that as you do C1. The C1s, they’re in a more narrow band in the 50 to 100k range. They certainly have ones trading in the 100 to 250 for particularly, uh, special stuff, usually 53s, kind of first year. Collector items. Whereas in the C2s, your 67 and your 63 split windows [00:23:00] are the ones that really demand the premiums.

And those are the ones that are in your 300, 000 range, but there’s a bunch, right. You know, just looking at the transactions. It’s like, if you just have one and it’s in good, reasonably original condition, then, then it’s a very valuable thing, but they had good sales volumes for the other years.

Rob Parr: I’ve noticed a couple of things about the C2.

I frequent the Corvette forum quite a bit. And I find that the convertibles sell for less than the coupes. It was for a while, the big blocks were going from a lot more, but now some of the people, because of the handling and the heavy weight of the 65 at 396 and 427 and six and seven, some of the people are going back to this 327 motors.

Because the handling, it’s just easy to drive corners better, but yeah, definitely convertibles. If you’re trying to find one for a better price, you’re going to be better off getting a convertible than a coupe.

Rick Hoback: My 67 that I currently still own that I am probably looking to sell this year because it’s a pro street professionally built and done drag car.

By a gentleman that owned multiple, I [00:24:00] forget at one point, I had like 14 Bloomington gold Corvettes, which is the top of the top Corvettes in his collection, a gentleman named Mark Tate. I bought this car off of, I worked on his team when I was a kid and they taught me a whole bunch of stuff. So I’m hoping that the modded market is still holding on.

But to be honest, I had a 1967 big black car that was all original. It would probably be worth three times as much, at least. This car still may be worth up to 100, 000, but an all original one would be 300, 000. I see a lot of these cars coming out in the autocross world and honestly the road racing world a little bit, but more in the autocross world.

Guys are finding beat up bodies and throwing chassis or tons of suspension pieces underneath them. There’s a lot of them. I mean, if you go to a good guy’s, uh, event, you’re going to probably see four C2 Corvettes running versus all kinds of other stuff, including, you know, the C5 Corvette is a lot of good guys and they race each other.

And I watched Danny Pop this weekend in his 1972 [00:25:00] Corvette beat everybody, including C5s. In the autocross. So I think there’s a lot of action with that C2 going on coming out of Barnes. People are finding them. They’re just beat down and haven’t been on the streets in decades. That’s really what we’re going to continue to see.

People will try to restore them, but some of them, I just, I think the pro touring world is going to start gobbling the really bad ones up and people are going to start modifying these things right or wrong. I don’t know the values in an original, but they’re only original ones. And once they’re not, it seems to pull the pricing down quite a bit, unless you invest a ton of money to make them extraordinarily original.

Don Weberg: You might be seeing a lot more pro touring modified vehicles out there, but when you go back in the day, that chassis was world class, and coming off the C1 into the C2, what really made that car? Well, hell, the whole damn thing. I mean, you had a body that was spectacular. You had a choice of a real hardtop body.

Poop for the day, there was nothing that could touch it in that price range. Yeah. The Jag was there and the Jag did damn good, but the Jag [00:26:00] was finicky and the Jag was still a six cylinder car. So for that torque, you weren’t going to beat the 327, not with that car.

Mark Shank: You know, the C3 is a different beast because it was around for so long and they actually did sell the snot out of it throughout the seventies, 40, 000 units a year, and just a ton of them sitting around, but it’s not as love of a model.

By any means.

Crew Chief Eric: And that’s a great segue into 1968 at the birth of the C3s.

Don Weberg: And the C3, yeah, they were selling in volume, but they were entering the dark era of the 1970s. You had your emissions controls. You had your efficiencies worried. You had your heavyweight bumpers. We were going into a whole experimental era for the government’s demands.

And yeah, we weren’t sure what we could do. Corvette still held it alive. They were relying heavily on the C2 chassis. Which gives you an idea of how good it was. They didn’t have to change very much for the C3.

William Ross: That motor sit back behind it for an axle. Is there a little bit? No,

Rick Hoback: it’s kind of right there.

It looks like it would sit back [00:27:00] because the hood’s so long. It’s not really, if you’re kind of stretching for like, is it close to mid engine? Not

Don Weberg: really. The C4 is the one that brought that engine back into the firewall. That said, you had this drastically changed body. Again, the 427 segued into the 454, but we had the LT1, which was an incredible 350.

So now you’ve got almost the power of a big block, but in a small block package revved like crazy. It was a fantastic car. I think the C3 is one of the most amazing Forbats ever made. If for no other reason. All the advances it gave to the point to where they segwayed over into the next Corvette’s body style.

Crew Chief Eric: C3, the longest production run of a Corvette by any stretch of the imagination. The only one that comes even close to that after that is the C4. But C3, 1968, All the way to 1982. And as you said, Don, based on the C2 chassis, continuing to evolve that, but we sort of got that long hot dog sheet, right? And that’s why I always equate it [00:28:00] with the Trans Am.

And I know that they’re not similar, but there’s so many design cues and so much design language that’s shared between the Trans Am. The Firebird, the Corvette at that time, it’s the T tops, it’s the rake of the windshield, things like that. Now, the early C3s with the little bobtail, with the 427, with, you know, Mako shark nose, because if you look at some of the Corvette prototype that came out in between, you know, there’s the Aerovette and all these other things that they were working on at the time.

Those early C3s were really cool, but as they got older, 20 plus years of production, you’re like, they got bigger and they got heavier and they got rounder and they, you know, started to hide the five mile an hour bumpers and all those kinds of things. So C3s, good, bad, or indifferent. Are they the soft spot in the market?

Are they even worth considering? What can you do with the C3?

Rick Hoback: So for me, I segment the C3 into like two groups, 68 through 72, the chrome bumper stuff, kind of the evolution of that C2, they still have very sharp lines. If you look at the front and rear haunches and the way [00:29:00] they designed it, they still have very sharp.

Edges when you sit in one, like you can see the front fenders rise up over. It’s just a great view from sitting back in one of those cars. The dashboards are amazing and see one, two, and three. I think there’s some of the coolest dashboards that have been out the waterfall design down the center. There’s a lot of cool things about those cars that they designed into them.

The C3 got that fiber optic connected to the lights to kind of show you what’s going on inside the car. And I really enjoy, like I said, the early, the first four years that 73 has got a half a Chrome bumper. It’s got a Chrome rear and a fiberglass rubber front, whatever you want to call that. And then they kind of did get a little bit, I don’t know, boring, I guess.

I mean, they can be exciting, but I kind of draw that line in those first four years of, to me, those are the ones that. Either I choose to focus on, or you know, my family maybe birthed me into that. And Chrome is where it’s at. And anything without Chrome doesn’t

Don Weberg: count. And it, it’s interesting that if you look at the C3, especially the earlier one, you’ll see the evolution from C two.

Yeah, those [00:30:00] haunches, they were in the C two, they’re just much more pronounced in the C3. The C3 was like a Batmobile. I mean, that thing was just. all over the board. And when you looked at it from the side, you had that what they call the coke bottle body shape. But when you talk to some people, no, they see a woman laying on her side, you know, they see that half hourglass shape, which is very interesting.

So they made the Corvette very voluptuous. And when you look down on the top, Again, you have a sort of hourglass shape. That car is incredible.

Rick Hoback: I’ve come in the last couple years to like the later years more but I still don’t love them as much as the first four years and I just am kind of okay with the Rest

Crew Chief Eric: and i’m with you those later ones.

I always kind of fall back to the movie with Mark Hamill and Annie Potts, exactly. Right? Like how much more gaudy could you make a C3? And that’s the movie that sort of does it for you.

William Ross: I’m a big fan of the 81 Corvette because my dad actually bought my mom that car. And she had that. And I love those things.

I remember riding in the back, no back seat, but in the [00:31:00] hatch, you know, back days, it didn’t matter. My brother took his driving test in that car, but I always have a soft spot for those. I’d love those too.

Crew Chief Eric: And every time you see one of those, it reminds me of like something from Death Race or it’s just, I don’t know.

I can’t get over it.

Don Weberg: Believe it or not, when it comes to the C3 outside of the LT1, my favorite one was in fact, the 82. The last of the generation, the gaudiest, the biggest fenders, the aero flares every which way, frost fire injection on the side. That car was so proudly in your face. I am trash. I had to love it.

I just absolutely had to love that car.

Crew Chief Eric: Having driven Trans Ams and stuff. It’s just like, God, are these cars. So alike to me

Don Weberg: now, you know eric you brought up trans am you brought a firebird camaro, etc And isn’t it interesting and nobody wants to talk about this. Sorry guys I am a trans am guy to the core trans am hot corvette a lot about downforce and that was something that You just don’t hear about because if anything, Corvette taught Trans Am.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Who was the first one to be [00:32:00] wearing all the skirts for downforce? Who had the spoiler? Who had all that stuff? Sorry, guys, that was Trans Am. And why did they do it? They figured out that downforce is a good thing and it would hold those Trans Ams down. Trans Ams were heavy enough to hold themselves down.

They didn’t need a hell of a lot of help. Corvettes did, and that largely came from the Pontiac school.

Rob Parr: You know, it was interesting you mentioned that, Don, about the Trans Am, because even the formula that you could get a 400 engine, even a 455 up until 76 versus Chevy dropped the 454 after 74, and you could get a Pontiac 400 all the way up to 1979.

So it was actually ahead of the Corvette in some ways. And they fought him a long time ago. It was a battle inside the General Motors.

Don Weberg: Yeah, the Trans Am was definitely Corvette’s number one enemy in terms of, you know, the two brothers who fight all the time, you definitely had to fight. I mean, I mean, let’s face it.

It was Pontiac versus Chevy for a long time, you know, Trans Am and Corvette were really where it came down to neck and neck. And yeah, they had the 455. They had the 400, they had the four speed. They, I mean, they were, and the [00:33:00] downforce again, when it came to the aerodynamics and a lot of people made fun of Trans Am, because it was so garish.

It was so outlandish. It had all these scoops and flares and spoilers and wings and whatever. But when you drive a Trans Am and I mean, when you actually, and okay, Eric and Rick, because both of you were race car drivers, I’m just a putz who’s running around trying to piss off cops. When you drive it around trying to piss off cops, you realize, God damn, this thing really does hold the road.

This thing anticipates your every move. And then when you move over to a Corvette, you feel that DNA. You feel that and you wonder, okay, who had it first? Was it Corvette or was it Trans Am? Nobody wants to talk about that, but it’s the truth. And the one with all the flares and all the scoops was the 82, which is ironic because it was, Probably the slowest one that they ever made

Mark Shank: easily fixable now

Don Weberg: when you get in that 82 Because it’s so slow.

It holds the road really really well Rick if you haven’t had the opportunity get yourself an 82 and get out there on that track and you run the bejesus [00:34:00] out of it Now don’t mind when the beetles outrun you because they will right they will but you’re gonna look cooler Losing. Okay, you’re going to look cooler losing.

Rick Hoback: My C3 is a little bit, again, if you don’t know by now, guys, I like to modify cars. My 68 has full suspension from van steel. It’s a big block car, but it’s a more powerful big block and it has a pro charger on it. It’s very rowdy. And so I don’t really stick to the purest, even though again, they’re worth more money, but I just can’t do it.

I think I enjoyed the C2 experience a little bit more, but it is nice to have the variety of having those big front wheel wells that pop up over everything else when you’re driving a C3. That fender view alone is worth the price of admission. From

Crew Chief Eric: a performance perspective, let’s say taking a C3 to the track or to autocross, I mean, I grew up watching my dad compete against early bodied C3s.

Well, 914 versus a C3 Corvette, that was like David versus Goliath, but they were amazing to watch those [00:35:00] guys drive those cars at speed to see the footage of the early days of C3s at the track. But I don’t see them anymore. I don’t see them really at car shows that often anymore. What’s happened to all the C3s?

They made them for so long. Where have they all gone?

Don Weberg: That’s a great question. And I think right now, especially if you look on the market, except for the C4. You can get a tremendous bargain for a C3, even some of the earlier ones, even the LT1s, they’re getting up there as the big blocks are.

Mark Shank: They’re almost all basket cases though, that’s the thing.

It’s not like the car that got maintained. But I’m with you by the way, I just would like to point out, I would rather a pre emissions era C3. Post emissions era C3? Yeah, 1982. All the way. Full stand. Full mullet. Mullets are back now, by the way. Like, you see all these teenagers just running around with their damn mullets?

They have no idea what they’re doing. Put that kid in an 82

Don Weberg: vet. He could afford it, too. When you go back to the 70s or those extreme early 80s, too, remember we were all crippled by Emissions, efficiency and [00:36:00] safety. Corvette was trying to keep its head above water. Corvette was trying to be the performance car of America.

And that’s just my 10 cents, but you can get one hell of a bargain. You really can.

Rob Parr: Well, you have to understand too, in the, in what we call the Malays era, you had situation where. They were having this transition, the luxury car versus a sports car in order to keep it going and keep continuing to produce those units,

Don Weberg: you know, I keep rooting for the LT one 70 or 71.

The first year for the LT

Rob Parr: one, and

Don Weberg: then 72 was the last year. And 72, if I remember correctly, it was the only year available with. Air conditioning, which Rob plays right into your conversation of, we had to make them more luxurious because we’re selling a high end sports car. We can’t justify the price because it’s not so fast anymore.

The LT1 kind of held that flag, but it came with air conditioning in 72.

Crew Chief Eric: Now here’s the funny part about the C3. I have grown to appreciate it more. As I’ve gotten older, maybe it’s cause, you know, you lose taste buds as you get older, you know, you like more bitter things and you look at the C3 and go, you know, it [00:37:00] doesn’t taste so bad, but realistically the design language of the C3 changed so much in those 20 plus years.

You had the T tops, you had the convertible, you had the fixed roof coupe, you had the one with the glass in the back. Like there’s these things that carried from the C2 all the way into the C4. Those rear lights. Especially in the later C3s became iconic to Corvette from the C4 onwards. That was not a design cue from the early cars, those four round rear taillights.

And so what I’ve noticed about a C3 is I check the door at the plane Jane, you know, with the rally wheels. I’m like, I’m not interested in those. What I’m interested in are the lowered wide body GTU M suspension. Bondurant, there’s these crazy Resto modded c3s, especially in black the c3 looks really good and i’ve come around on them And every time I see like another sima c3 or something on, you know, one of these restoration shows on netflix [00:38:00] I’m, like man, I want a c3 but is it worth it?

Rick Hoback: No Financially, it’s not. I’d say that almost about any car. They’re never worth throwing 20, 30, 50 grand at. Never. But, they are cool. I do agree with that. When you widen the already wide body, or the wide appearance, and you make them fit a big tire, you lower them down, you make them look real sexy, throw in a couple hundred extra horsepower, they really are cool and fun.

They really are. If you just want a cruiser, the 180 horsepower, Perfect. If you want to have some fun, they can be very fun. They really can.

Rob Parr: The trick is to buy one that’s already been done and only use the next person buying it because you never get back the money you dump into it. Very true.

Don Weberg: You’ve got to be really careful with those LT1s because yeah, a lot of them are trashed out.

And the LT1 had a lot of very special parts in that engine that made it do what it did. If they’re not rebuilt correctly, you’re ruining the whole thing. And that’s really tragic.

Rob Parr: They’re going up to 70, 000. I mean, the value of those are really [00:39:00] going through the roof right now. We’ll probably hit six figures in the next couple of years.

Crew Chief Eric: Wait, wait, wait. You’re saying one of the most. Special. C threes is under a hundred grand. Isn’t that a bargain? Yeah, that’s a bargain. Yeah. So how soft is the C3 market then? Like how cheap can you get one of these things?

Don Weberg: Think about a regular C3. My God, if you go to 1975, if you get a 75 C3, what? Mark, Rick Rob?

All day long. 75.

Rob Parr: Five. 10. 15,000.

Don Weberg: 10,000 For a mint condition? One. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe 12. And yet you’ve still got the chassis. And you’ve still got the look. So to Rick’s point, you could modify the bejesus out of that Corvette and you’ve still got a great chassis already, but if you make it even better, guess what?

You’ve just taken a 10, 000 Corvette. I don’t know how much money you’re going to dump into it, but all of a sudden you’ve got a performance car.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay. So, so Rick, I know it’s not worth it, but what’s the aftermarket like on a C3? How moddable are they?

Rick Hoback: They’re pretty good. So there’s a company in Florida called Van Steel that makes almost anything you need to put underneath those things.

They make remarkable, beautiful. Stuff I’ve [00:40:00] raced against cars. I’ve driven a few, but I probably raced against more that have pretty simple packages. I mean, they use the same frame and typically like the same arms, but they’ll put a really good set of like JRI shocks under it, they’ll do some spring adjustments.

They’ll do some solid bushing or blocks in the back of them to kind of soak up some of the rubbery, squishy stuff. And they’re fast stock brakes with a good pad. They are really fast specifically on an autocross. I mean, road course is a little different, but on an autocross, they can compete. They’re a lot of fun.

Don Weberg: Are you a sinner because it’s no longer original? I don’t think so because you’ve got the darkest era of Corvette and now you’re making it fun. Now you’re making it more enjoyable. Now you’re making it. I mean, Eric will tell you all day long. I’m more of a handling guy than a speed guy. I really don’t give a shit about horsepower, torque, all that stuff.

It’s fun. It’s cool. I grew up Fiat. Believe me, I have the art of driving slow mastered, but I know about handling. And I think that’s why I celebrate the 82 Corvette so much, because if you drive one, you’ll see [00:41:00] what I’m talking about. They’re absolutely incredible the way they’re put together. I don’t know if it’s that whole last of the breed thing or what, but they’re You take a 74, five or six, modify it to where it’s just fun.

I’m not even talking about competing with racing or the under thing. Make it fun. If you’re keeping

Mark Shank: her on the road, then you’re doing a good thing, right? I mean, especially for something in that volume, I think in the C3, you know, look at sales volume. So the biggest year was 79 sold over 50, 000 Corvettes.

So I think those late seventies models. A 1979 four speed looked really clean, clean interior, look good on bring a trailer. Not exactly the most value conscious buyers on bring a trailer transacted just two months ago for 13, 000.

Crew Chief Eric: What?

Mark Shank: That’s a lot.

Crew Chief Eric: What? To me, that’s a steal. I can’t buy a WRX for 13 grand.

Are you kidding me?

Mark Shank: I mean, and you know, yeah, of course, if you’re not in California, you can rip all the emissions crap off that. And I mean, without even doing any real modifications, you can [00:42:00] make that a nasty, nasty platform.

Crew Chief Eric: You should buy everybody a C3 for Christmas. It was

Mark Shank: clean. It looked good. It was black.

I mean, it’s not amazing. I’m not trying to say it was made, but it was clean. You know, the good interior was clean and all together and looked good. It wasn’t like torn and ratted out or anything at all.

Rob Parr: You know, what’s interesting now, going back to the Trans Am versus Corvette. Is the fact that the Trans Am in 1979 is worth easily double the price of a Corvette, the nicest Corvette, unless you have an anniversary model from 78, you might get a little closer, but they always were lower in value.

They never came back up to the hype amount when they were back in the day.

Don Weberg: The Trans Am though fell in the shadow. If you remember a few years ago, when. Mopar went absolutely psychotic. You couldn’t touch a Cuda. You couldn’t touch a Challenger. You couldn’t touch any of that. Well, guys, realize, well, I’m not going to spend that on the Charger, whatever it was.

I’m not going to spend it because of whatever reason I’ve got. They started scoping out the Trans Ams. All of you will remember for the longest time, nobody wanted a Trans Am. That was the Rednecks muscle car. That was the Maserati of the trailer park, the car nobody wanted. It was [00:43:00] embarrassing to have a Trans Am.

Now, all of a sudden, and I think largely because of those Chryslers, Grand van got caught up in it and all of a sudden the prices are going up. Rob, you brought it up too. They, in my opinion, they were the last of the Mohicans, man. They had their 400 cubic inches in 1979. If you had a four speed, you had a Pontiac 400.

If you had the automatic, you had the Oldsmobile, which is a very, very durable motor. It’s just not very exciting. The Pontiac. Had more pep to it. Long live Burt Reynolds! Yeah, and it’s true. Smoking the bandit put those cards on the map.

Crew Chief Eric: And I don’t want to open Pandora’s box here, but that sort of legacy for Pania continues in 1982 with the advent of Knight Rider.

But we won’t go there. Cause I know that’s an hour long presentation to itself. But what I want to do is jump us sort of now into the digital age, because we could probably talk about CA3 for the rest of the night and what we could do with it and where we could go with it. And I think there’s a lot of potential there.

So I want to put a pin in it, but 1983, I think a lot of our [00:44:00] listeners may or may not know. There is no Corvette. In 1983, there is only one in existence. Apparently, allegedly it’s at NCM and it ended up in the sinkhole when the middle of the museum collapsed or whatever. It was a prototype in 1983, but there were no Corvettes built in 1983.

The first year of the C4, a whole new car designed from the ground up yet again, like the C2. But taking some of the design language from the C3 forward into the digital era in 1984 and what I like to call the Barbie Corvette, because Barbie was associated with the C4 Corvette. A lot of things were associated with the C4 Corvette.

You started seeing it on television. You started seeing it with celebrities, much like the C2. Suddenly there’s this marketing machine behind the all new Corvette. And one of the things I’ve learned, and I’ve come to respect about the C4 Corvette, and I’ve coached in a lot of them, you know, with its funky digital dashboard and all this fun stuff, there’s a lot of restomotors, Mark Talley being one of them out west, you know, Gotham Garage and all that.

A lot of [00:45:00] guys love to harvest the C4 to build other things, because it’s probably one of the most versatile chassis. The Corvette ever built? Am I wrong in this?

Rick Hoback: Part of it’s the A arms, the leaf spring design. I think they lend themselves very easily to, we’ll call that the pro touring world, or other vehicles.

Plus I think it’s the time frame, as those were kind of expiring in the later 90s, the pro touring really started picking up. I think people were just scavenging those pieces off of a high, high, high performance vehicle in their minds. And putting it in their older vehicles. It was good timing and a great product.

Don Weberg: The C4 is to Corvette what the C2 was to Corvette. The chassis was completely re engineered. It was a whole new car from the ground up. It was very exciting. Chevrolet dumped a lot of money. Into developing that car. And if I remember correctly, part of the reason you mentioned 83, they didn’t build it.

They had a huge changeover. It was such a drastic changeover. They couldn’t go [00:46:00] into production.

Crew Chief Eric: The retooling costs and everything.

Don Weberg: Yeah. The assembly line loan went through such a absolute change. It was incredible. But also the key bar roof suddenly became a Targa. And what’s interesting about that, that wasn’t supposed to be the C4 originally was supposed to have.

And there was one guy at Chevrolet and one guy specifically at Corvette and they both had the same idea at the same time, but came from different schools of thought, one guy was looking at an ad and he saw a Trans Am and he saw the T bar and, you know, it was a dealership ad, whatever, but there’s that T bar.

And he thought, you know, Corvette should be better than Trans Am. We shouldn’t have to rely on a T bar roof. We should have full open section up there. That’d be better. The other side of the factory, there’s another guy. Who’s watching Magnum PI and he’s seeing that Ferrari 308 with the open roof. And he’s thinking that is what we need.

That is exactly what we should be doing. And as it turned out, they had an engineer who was very big on Porsche. Well, gee, golly, gosh, guess who put the Targa on the [00:47:00] map? Portia. So you had these three minds coming together and they realized, yeah, yeah, yeah, we got to get rid of that bar. Let’s open this up.

Well, how do we do that? Well, you got to stiffen that frame. You got to stiffen that chassis. You got to stiffen that body. A lot of re engineering went into the Corvette, which slowed it down again. So you had the factory on one side, slowing everything down, and then you had a slight re engineering of an already seriously amazing chassis.

I mean, that chassis was so amazing. But when they brought out ZR1, there was not a lot of modifications that had to be done. No, they really weren’t,

Crew Chief Eric: but we’ll get to ZR1, but I want to turn to William for a moment and I want him to explain to us as a previous C4 owner, how did you make the transition from Fiero to C4?

What was that like?

William Ross: You know, done with college and whatnot, and I wanted to get a car. At first I was going to get an M3. I was at the dealership and I looked at M3 and the sales individual was attractive. I asked her out. She said, no. So I said, all right, I went and bought a C4 vet instead. [00:48:00]

Rob Parr: Man. Yeah.

William Ross: So I got myself a black on black six feet, man.

That thing was crap. I met my wife with that car. I think it was great. It was a great car. It wasn’t like crazy powerful. I mean, 300 horsepower now, but I mean. Still a crap load of fun, man. I had some really good times at being 24 years old and having that car and single.

Crew Chief Eric: Oof. You were pretending to be Ian Ziering in the 90210, you know, showing up in the black Corvette.

William Ross: yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Did your mullet get longer or shorter when you went from the Fiero to the C4?

William Ross: Oh, it got shorter. No, my Fiero, man, my mullet, I even permed that thing, man. Make it curly. I bleached the top and then like I’d make it permed. in the back. Oh, yeah, man. But

Crew Chief Eric: we make fun. It is par for the era. But the reason I bring up the comparison between the Fiero and the Corvette is you went from a mid engine sports car unique into itself to this front mount rear drive near 50, 50 weight distribution.

Cause they were shooting for that back then, you know, again, like Don said, alluding to Porsche and the nine 44 and [00:49:00] some of the other stuff that was happening, you know, around the world in that type of vehicle design. What was it like making the jump? Did you enjoy driving the C4 more or did you kind of look back and go, man, that Fiero was a lot more fun?

William Ross: Well, you got to understand. I also, I had a Mustang GT between those two. Oh

Crew Chief Eric: boy.

William Ross: I’ll put it this way. If I had my options looking at, and I’m not worried about price looking at, but if I, it was a beautiful Fiero GT 88 with the fastback look to it, not the notchback, I had a notchback one, or a C4, but I’d probably take the Fiero.

Cause like to Don’s point, it’s not about the speed stuff. That Fiero handled. Like a go kart, no horsepower, but that thing was so fun to drive. So fun to drive. I mean, it was small, it was tight, you know, and it’s unfortunate that they got killed off from my understanding. You know, they had something going in the works that was going to be the next generation one that was going to just be phenomenal.

They’re going to fix everything more horsepower. I mean, just do what they want to do. Basically be a mid engine Corvette with the Pontiac badge, but [00:50:00] I ain’t happening. So I just went by the wayside. I love that for him. I mean, it’s just, it’s phenomenal.

Crew Chief Eric: And I’m glad you went there because that is something that we’re going to talk about, even on the Porsche side of this conversation, it’s that point at which no other car in the fleet can outperform, let’s say the nine 11 or the Corvette.

They’re not the flagship because there’s other cars. In the portfolio, like the Cadillacs and this and that, they can generate more revenue and more prestige and all this, but from a sports car, from a performance perspective, you don’t want the little brother outperforming the flagship sports car because Corvette, at this point, C4.

You saw a ton of people get behind the C4, like we mentioned earlier, just like the C2. Now you had Bondurant cars and you had guys like Andy Pilgrim and Johnny O’Connell and Brutal Roots. I mean, you name it. All these famous names running C4 Corvettes. They were freaking everywhere. Everybody had a C4 Corvette.

There were series designed around that car in the 80s. [00:51:00] Nobody’s going to build anything from a GM parts bin that’s going to be better than the Corvette. Even if the C4 by today’s standards is sort of a dog at 300 horsepower, it wasn’t really anything to write home about even then, because everybody else was making 300 horsepower as well.

Think about the middle eighties. Nissan’s making 300, Porsche’s making 300. Everybody’s making all these power numbers, but we got this new Corvette and people are rallying behind it. And it’s exciting.

Rob Parr: I had an 85 Corvette. And it had a very quirky four plus three transmission. The early ones had a lot of problems, a lot of recalls, and we’re kind of trashy, unfortunately.

Crew Chief Eric: Here they have horrible rear main seal leak problems and all sorts of issues like that.

Rick Hoback: You just have to watch the electronics. The electronics are real tricky. Those digital dashboards are so cool. They’re very Knight Rider. But man, there’s a lot of wires. And the thing I don’t like about cars of this era or GM or whatever, is when they started to be so technologically advanced that they almost made them so difficult to work on so much stuff in their [00:52:00] redundancies and one thing fails and it’s pointing you in 17 different directions to try to fix it.

They’re a little quirky, but a little goofy, but they’re neat. If you sit in one, they sit differently. You sit like in an inside a bathtub, like your arm. It’s almost resting on the door sill. It’s a very unique feel. I do enjoy driving them again. They’re not fast by my definition. They’re just not fast, but you can make anything fast, but they’re fun.

Rob Parr: They’re beautiful cars. They wrote nicely. In fact, I had driven a Fiero and it was felt similar to the Corvette, even though it was rear engine and less power. Chassis wise it felt similar, but

Crew Chief Eric: the question is, is the C4 second longest running production Corvette ever? They made a gajillion of them. How soft is the market?

Are they worth owning today? And what can you really do with a C4 Corvette?

Rob Parr: The secret sauce for the C4 is to get a 96. With a six speed because you have 330 horsepower also comes in the, in the grand sport version, the grand sport version costs 40, 000 now to buy on a used market, but you can pick up a 96 with a six speed in the teens.

That’s the real secret of all [00:53:00] that whole era to get that one year.

William Ross: What’s nice with the 96 too, it’s got the widened back end. It’s got the ZR1 body base. Is what it has on it. I agree to it. If the 96 way to go. Grand sports are gorgeous cars.

Crew Chief Eric: If the market is soft on a C4, C4, C3, where’s our investment money going?

William Ross: If you want to take a C4 and just do whatever the hell you want, just buy the hell out of it, whatever, you know, 94 or older. I like Rob said, you know, 96, especially if you’re buying the grand sport, even got the collector edition one, those are the ones, if you’re going to want to buy it, keep value. But again, you’re not going to drive it a ton because you don’t want to be putting the miles on it.

They look phenomenal. I love the paint jobs on the grand sports. They just look great. But if you’re going to go 94 or older, I mean, you could have at it because I mean, they just build a crap load of them. There’s so many aftermarket things out there you can do with them. Companies that can supply you with whatever the hell you want.

Mark Shank: Absolutely. They’re a modern car. They’re fast. They’re fun. They’re dirt cheap. One sold last month, 40th anniversary edition, six speed, 80, [00:54:00] 000 miles, pretty clean all the way around. Six grand. Six? Six grand on bring a trailer.

Rick Hoback: That’s super cheap. So I just worked on a 93. Again, nothing that comes in my place is normal.

So it has like 23, 000 miles and a supercharger on it, like a Paxton stuffed under the hood. Sat for like 10 years and they’re really debating whether to sell it or to fix it. And I’m like, well, if I fix it, you’re going to have thousands and thousands of dollars to fix it. Nobody wanted to work on it because they’re a nightmare to work on.

Especially with this much 1990s antiquated technology.

Mark Shank: It’s very cool.

Rick Hoback: And the only reason I really took that on is because I had built one prior with similar same stuff on it. So I was familiar with everything about that. Era of performance parts true speed parts from that era But I’m blown away by your six thousand dollar price tag because I was trying to talk to them about pricing and i’m like I don’t know if you’re gonna get what you want out of it, but it could if you get the right buyer [00:55:00] I didn’t know I don’t I don’t need anymore, but they end up keeping it.

I fix it for them They keep it. They drive it. They love it But six grand is a steal for that

Mark Shank: era of car. If it’s transacting for that on that, then what are you going to find on Facebook marketplace or, or whatever?

Crew Chief Eric: All right. So the grant sports untouchable in some respects and the ZR1 is as well. Don mentioned it earlier.

The ZR1 was sort of the crescendo for the C4. We’re going to throw as much horsepower as we can, all the good stuff, all the bells, all the whistles. And even more special paint than the grand sport. It came in some really amazing colors. Like one of my favorites is C4 ZR1 holo green, which is a dark, dark green.

It looks black from far away. Absolutely gorgeous. You know, special wheels, the whole nine yards. That’s where we started to see the Genesis. Of things like the Z06 and all these other packages. Yeah, granted they always existed in the Chevy catalog, but those GSs, you know, ZR1, stuff like that. Now we’re starting to see these new evolutions of Corvettes and make them, you know, more special sort of like Porsche has.

But the one thing I can’t get over. I look [00:56:00] at them and I respect them because I grew up around those cars, the Corvette of my generation and Mark’s generation, but I look at them now because there’s one in my neighborhood. I passed this guy drives it around. It’s like his daily driver and he’s always working on it and whatever.

He enjoys it. He drives it, but I look at it and it hasn’t aged well. You know what I mean? It feels like something from the eighties. It’s like looking at a tape deck and you’re like, yeah, that’s cool. But you’re like, that’s not cool. At the exact same time. Am I wrong? Am I crazy?

Don Weberg: I think what you’re dealing with is what we call the Aqua Velva syndrome.

Oh boy. Aqua Velva has been around since world war one, basically. And let’s face it, we grow up. Our dads use it. We hate it. We have polo. We have whatever. And ultimately we end Velva at some point in our life because works. I really think that’s where C4 is going to go because right now, I damn right. Okay.

That car is as eighties as they come. There’s only one other car that might be more eighties, maybe two, and I’m not going to get into them [00:57:00] for Eric’s sake, but that car falls right in there with those two other cars, C3 when C4 was brand new, C3 was okay. Break out the bell bottoms, break out the mullet, break out the gold chain.

Let’s get some chest hair going on here because we’re going back to the 70s. It was a horrible car. It suffered from the same problem Trans Am had. It was do 70s. Nobody wanted anything to do with it. And now here we are, the C3 and the Trans Am are both, damn, that’s cool. But the C4.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s why I say it’s like Malibu Barbie.

It’s all plastic. And you look at it, it’s all sort of one piece of fiberglass, but at the time it was space age, right? It was different. It was new. It was sleek. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s aged well.

Don Weberg: So you’re saying, is it worth buying? I do think it’s worth buying. I really do. And I am a C4 fan and I don’t really fit in them very well, but what they did for that chassis was art.

And yes, those 90s C4s, if you can get one, oh my God, they are a game changing car. In [00:58:00] fact, if you drive one of those late C4s and then you drive a C5, there’s not a hell of a lot of difference. And in fact, I would venture to say, I’d rather have the C4. It’s got more personality.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t think people realize the C5 carried over much like C3 did from C2.

So it’s sort of this repetition. We’re going to use the C4 chassis. We’re going to build the C5. We’re going to make it awesome. The only thing I think the C5 suffered from design wise was what I call the marshmallow syndrome. Everything from the nineties was soft and pillowy and just gooey. And C5 is that to me, that’s just me personally.

Don Weberg: The C4, where it loses its aqua velveness is the fact that the C5, the C6, and I’ll even go as far as to say the C7, every single one of them goes back

Crew Chief Eric: to the C4. It’s like this. never ending story of just generations of Corvette after that. In fact,

Don Weberg: I just had an argument with a guy about this the other day.

As a Lamborghini fan, again, nothing against Ferrari, but I really do love [00:59:00] Lamborghini. I have a problem with Lamborghini though, which is they’ve got to stop chasing the Countach.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Don Weberg: Ever since Kuntosh, the Diablo, well, it’s still got that flat front end. You can see that its father was Kuntosh. Well, then there was, what was the one after that?

Crew Chief Eric: Murcielago and the Gallardo. Murcielago,

Don Weberg: that’s the one I’m thinking of. Same thing, long front end, funny little doors. It’s still, you know, that its grandfather was Kuntosh. And then there was Aventador, which you know, its great grandfather. Now it’s the same thing over at Corvette. They built C4 and it was like, holy cow, we have hit the formula.

And so the C5 comes along much improved, much better car, but it still uses so much of the C4. The C6 used a lot of the C5, which it all goes back to the C4. So while we still see the C4 as Aqua Velva, much like C2, it begat the C3, even though they look nothing alike, underneath they were all the same. And I think that’s where C4 is going to come on real strong here at some point.

Nothing against [01:00:00] C5. As you say, it’s a marshmallow car, the C5. I don’t know. It’s kind of the tweener. You know, the C6 came out and was like, now we got a car. But the C5 was like that stop gap of hold on guys. We’re building something better.

Crew Chief Eric: But it’s a hell of a car. It’s the car I go back to every time to people that say, I want to go to the track or I want to autocross, or I want to get into road racing and the, what should I buy?

You should buy a C5. That’s what you should buy. But I feel that the C5 sixes and sevens got tighter. They got more jet fighter. Like you’re in it. Those cars remind me of what Mazda did with the third gen RX 7s. You sort of put them on like a glove or a pair of pants. So C5 did have a short lifespan, right?

97 to 2004. And we don’t need to get into production numbers, but what I think really puts C5 on the map, two things. Zero six. Yes,

William Ross: with a notch back. Love it. If I could buy another Corvette, that’s what I wanna buy. I love that

Crew Chief Eric: car. The fixed roof coop is another thing we can argue about for a long time.

But I think the other thing is really kind of stepping [01:01:00] away from the Firehawk series, the Bonderant series, all these series that were designed around C four. Now GM comes to the table and says. Have you met Jake? Would you like to be introduced to Team Corvette? The C5R puts Corvette on the global stage in a big way.

I mean, they were already winning races. We know that they were competitive, but not until C5 did they just basically give the full bird salute to everybody and say, we’re here to kick ass.

Rick Hoback: I agree. That C5R was amazing. I mean, it got everybody’s blood pumping. And if you liked Corvettes or like American muscle car, sports car, whatever, you really gravitated towards that thing.

That thing probably sold a lot of C5 Corvettes.

Don Weberg: I would venture to say that car converted a lot of people to like Corvette. Even 911 diehards, whatever your sports car was, you saw that C5R and you thought, Whoa, wait a minute. It really was a game changer. Again, going back to [01:02:00] 1960, those four Corvettes at Le Mans, those were the ones that made people stand up and take notice of, Whoa, maybe Chevy’s got something here.

I think the same thing happened with that C5R.

Crew Chief Eric: There is something to the sound of the C5R and the later C6 and C7Rs and so on. Suddenly you’re like, wait, what was that? You don’t just hear the car. You. Feel a C5 are on the track. It’s just got this, it’s like an AMG Mercedes. It’s like in you when it’s going around and the previous Corvettes didn’t have that, yeah, they had a great sound, but it didn’t affect you the same way at the racetrack, you know, when you’re there in the middle of all of it.

So I think that’s part of the hype, but also there’s a new rivalry that comes to the table, which I think really sets Corvette apart. It was no longer. Corvette versus the world, especially Corvette versus Porsche, it was Corvette versus Viper. And you saw that with C5 and it was amazing. I mean, I remember being glued to the television watching what I thought at the time was one of the hottest battles in, you know, ALMS and [01:03:00] Le Mans and all these different series that they were competing in against each other.

Dodge versus Chevy. I mean, mind blowing stuff.

William Ross: Yeah. I always picture Earnhardt, senior and junior racing that Daytona. It always sticks in my head with that car.

Crew Chief Eric: A hundred percent. And unfortunately things turned out the way they did for Dale senior. But oddly enough, C5 also sort of died just shortly thereafter.

So it’s sort of weird, like. How all that worked, but I think C5 left this whole new impression. You know, they talk about what you imprint on, you know, we imprinted on C4 or whatever, but the C5, holy crap, that’s just a game changer. But would I buy one today?

Mark Shank: The C5s that sell for money are actually bodied as C1 or C2.

They do one of those conversions. Like they take the C5 chassis and they put like a C1 or C2 body on top of it. And then you can sell it for 150 K. Of course, you probably spent 200 grand building.

Crew Chief Eric: So where does that put the base model? Let’s say Z51 versus the Z06 in the [01:04:00] market. In the

Mark Shank: last 12 months, we’ve got 181 transactions on bring a trailer for C5.

It’s kind of funny. Like your Z06 is transacting for the same as you’re like commemorative edition convertible. You know, they’re all kind of in the mid twenties.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s really good for a Z06.

Mark Shank: So the early C5. The higher mile ones going for in the teens, 95 percent of transactions are between 20 and 40 K most of them between 20 and 30.

Crew Chief Eric: And this is why we say as a starter track car, they’re fantastic because you could go out today and buy a spec Miata for 30, 000, or you could buy a Z06 and slap tires on it and do nothing else for 30 grand. And go to the track. I think I would only look at a C five at the lens of I’m going to the track and I want a cheap track car.

Rick Hoback: Yeah, I was gonna say, I wouldn’t have one for a daily or just to drive around. I probably would, to be honest. If I had a really clean one, I’d drive it for a daily and drive around. But you’re right, it is a today track car. For people that are [01:05:00] starting out, want to have one car that they’re going to have for the next 10 years at track or want to upgrade from their Miata to a real car.

A Corvette. Oh, so yeah, I think they’re very affordable. They’re very durable. They’re phenomenal cars. They’re not terribly difficult to work on. There is a lot of engineering stuff in that package. So there are some quirks and some difficulties. If you’re going to change a clutch, it’s a major. Job versus changing a clutch in a traditional car, Camaro or a Trans Am or something.

It’s a lot more intensive because the transmissions in the rear, but you can see the engineering behind these cars. You can feel the engineering granted. They are a little squishy when they’re stock. The seats are terrible. You know, there’s some stuff that makes them soft and poshy and squishy, but for a couple bucks, you can get all that stuff out of there and have a fantastic track car.

Fantastic.

Crew Chief Eric: Not only that, the numbers that C5 was able to put down, you know, the 400 400, we talk about the LS2 and all this kind of stuff. But you’re talking [01:06:00] now a Corvette that isn’t some specially prepared Calloway or a sledgehammer or something making a gajillion horsepower. Like they were doing in the C4s.

You’ve got a, from the factory, 150 plus mile an hour car that can do way better than 150 mile an hour. But now you’re putting up big numbers and they’re fast. But they were also really heavy. And the reason I bring that up is I’ll never forget the ad campaign for the C6. When they were teasing it, they’re like, we’re going back to our roots.

We’re making the Corvette light again. The C6 is going to come in at like 3, 000 pounds or 3, 200 pounds. I was like, how heavy is the C5? Is it not made out of fiberglass anymore?

Mark Shank: A lot of cars ballooned in weight in that era because of the crash testing requirements that came in the late 90s. And this was the first one they designed to work with.

So I think it would make sense that the C6 got lighter than the C5. They had more time to figure out how they were going to react to the crash testing and they were able to take some weight out of it to make that happen.

Don Weberg: I always thought that [01:07:00] was a funny thing about Corvette and I said it for the C1.

They’re not light. They’ve never been light. I really don’t think Corvette has ever been considered light. As a DeLorean guy, I’m constantly getting hit with. Oh, well, those cars were so heavy, but they were 2, 800 pounds. I mean, they were nothing compared to so many other point is for 1981. I think the Corvette came in at 3, 300 pounds, almost 3, 400 pounds.

Corvette had never been light. And that’s what I always thought was weird about Corvette. I got this glass body. It weighs nothing yet. The darn thing still weighs as much as a Firebird.

Mark Shank: It was small, small footprint, small car. I mean, yeah, it didn’t have a 32 valve cylinder head, adding weight, you know, it had some things that would help it lighten up.

I’m not sure how much weight that fiberglass really saved.

Rick Hoback: They’re pretty robust. So a lot of the stuff in the Corvette was probably a little overbuilt. They used a lot of materials that were light. There’s some magnesium in them. There’s a lot of aluminum in them from the factory. The fiberglass could have been a little lighter, but in the later, in the, in the C5s, like the Z06s had like lighter glass in them for a few pounds.

The [01:08:00] engineers really did a lot to lighten them up. And I think it was a lot of, I don’t know if it’s marketing. Yes. They, they were still over 3000 pounds, but they were a beefy 3000 pounds and like the knuckles in them and the arms are strong and they’re thicker, they’re aluminum, but they’re still thick and take a lot of abuse.

If Corvette really took the stance of let’s lighten it up, they definitely would have come in under 3000 pounds easily. But because they wanted them to be robust and strong and durable, I think that’s where that extra heft, those couple extra hundred pounds are just for durability.

Don Weberg: Yeah. And I think it was worth it because, I mean, let’s face it, you put on a watch and it weighs 20 pounds.

You think a whole, I’ve got a hell of a watch here, you know? And when you drive a lightweight car, you feel it. You don’t want to feel it when you’re paying that much money for a Corvette. And I don’t care what I’m a C5R. We’re just talking about the doctor wants to commute to work in his midlife crisis car.

And it’s an automatic transmission. Corvette, they don’t want to spend that kind of money and feel vibration. They don’t want to see the hood, you know, flexing around. They want to feel quality. They want to feel something nice [01:09:00] and Corvette delivers it. I thought they all bought Cadillac XLRs.

Crew Chief Eric: So I thought that was the point, right?

The kissing cousin. Yeah. C4, baguette, C5, C5, baguette, C6. C6 is. It’s still sort of the same evolution. I think it got physically smaller. The C5 to me, when you line them all up, it’s big, it’s wide, it’s long. It’s also exaggerated by that very flat rear end, which became a design cue for all the Corvettes from the C4 forward.

It’s like, well, the pencil broke at the back. We’re just going to just make it just a wall with these four round lights in the back. So C5 is in my opinion, kind of soft. And then we get C6. We go back to those razor sharp edges, angular corners. And then we get rid of the pop up headlights for the first time in like Corvette history.

Since the C1, C2 through C5, we’ve got rollovers. We got pop ups. We got, you know, all this stuff. And we go to the fixed headlights built into the bonnet and the fenders and all this kind of thing. Is

Mark Shank: it

Crew Chief Eric: [01:10:00] me?

Mark Shank: I feel like it’d be scary. When the C6 looks like a C5, I’ll agree, right? I mean, the ZR1 and everything with the C6 was a huge deal, you know, and obviously the C6R was great.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s sleek. It looks modern, a supercar of the time, right? Corvette’s trying to elevate itself. I feel like

Don Weberg: it transcended more than just chassis, et cetera. When you look at. The two interiors between a C5 and a C6, the C6 has such better detailing, such better materials usage.

Mark Shank: C5 to C6. The C5 is a very 90s interior, right?

To me, anyway.

Crew Chief Eric: C5 felt like you were stepping into a Beretta or a Trailblazer or anything else that was on the GM assembly line at the time. It

Mark Shank: really does. Every time I think, I’m like, C5, C06, like, that’d be a blast. And then I’m like, wait, I don’t want to sit in that. Like, no, I’m with Don. If you’re going to actually drive and sit in the car and move around, the C6 is a much nicer cabin to be in for sure.

Rick Hoback: It is. I mean, they’re all evolutions, right? But I think it’s very, very, very similar to the C5. [01:11:00] It’s almost like a 55, six and seven Chevy. How. You can tell it’s the same, but they’ve changed the body a little bit, evolved the engine, there’s more horsepower, it’s an upgrade from an LS1 to an LS3, the transmissions are a little more robust, they’re just a little better, a lot of the parts transfer between the two cars, the two generations, you can take almost All of the parts and swap them.

The knuckles, the knuckles in the C6 are a little bit stronger, but they still fit C5 and vice versa. It’s almost like a half generation change for me. There’s a change, but it’s not as dressed as a C7 or the C4 change. C4 to C5. Pretty good change there. C6 to C7, pretty big change there, but I think that C5 to C6 is pretty muted.

It’s just kind of an evolution of more horsepower, a little more refinement, a little more robust, and keep that train going.

Crew Chief Eric: They’re same, same, but different. It’s sort of like, you can make your bed and it looks nice, or you can go all out and do, you know, the hospital folds and the cuffing and the turndown service.

It’s different. The same bed, it’s the same sheets, it’s the same bedspread. And [01:12:00] you’re like, man, it looks so much better. Right? So it’s sort of like taking that wrinkled shirt that was the C5 and sort of stretching it out and pressing it and going, here’s what we can do with this before we completely go insane with the C7.

Rick Hoback: That’s a good way to put the wrinkled shirts. A great analogy for that one. Feeling

Mark Shank: personally attacked right now, my wrinkled shirt. But no, but I mean, the C6 to me is very similar with the exception of the models, you know, that were obviously unique to that generation.

Crew Chief Eric: But the one thing I walked away with from C6, and I’ve heard it from plenty of owners that track them and I’ve experienced it myself, they’re extremely Twitchy the C5 being bigger and heavier and just longer.

It’s a much more planted car. It’s not as nervous. That’s the word I like to use for a C6. They’re nervous, right? They’re always on edge. I never was comfortable in a C6, but C6 prices. So Mark, all the data you’ve brought to the table so far has sort of represented the C3s, the 4s and the 5s as the soft spot in the market.

Mark Shank: Value for dollar and performance. I’m probably with you in [01:13:00] C5, particularly if you’re thinking track.

Crew Chief Eric: When I’ve looked at C6s, it feels like we’ve suddenly turned a corner and the Corvette got expensive. Is that still true today?

Mark Shank: Almost same number of transactions C5 to C6 months. Much broader spread. And I think we have the 01 to thank for that.

It’s a hundred thousand dollar car. It was when they brought the 01 back, right? Obviously the first one.

Crew Chief Eric: Since the C4, yeah.

Mark Shank: So they bring it back. It’s supercharged. It’s, for its time, crazy town power. You can get a C7 Z06, which is more horsepower than your C6 Z01, for less than you can get a C6 Z01. I think that’s because the C7 had heat problems from the factory, which really kind of dampened the aftermarket and dampened the resale values.

And it had a reputation for being very tunable. So there’s lots of thousand horsepower and filter, whoever tuner aftermarket. I can remember being sold for 15 K under sticker new when they were just sitting in dealer lots and not moving. Those were usually [01:14:00] the automatics. So I do think that it’s easier to fix those heat soak issues now with aftermarket parts for cooling.

And so it’s not necessarily a flaw. That is something you’re really going to have to deal with as an owner. Now, it’s really just that reputation that’s harmed the transaction value. So your C7 06 transacting for about 60K, C6 01 transacting around the 80K range, at least then bring a trailer with some miles on it.

They go over a hundred gay if you didn’t really drive it at all. The C6 Z06, though, is a really special car. Yeah. I mean, those selling for the mid forties. There’s been a bunch of them this year, just in May, they sold three on bring a trailer, 40 4K, 40 2K, 40 4K. The last one was 12,000 miles, $44,000, and that’s a hell of a car for $44,000.

Crew Chief Eric: Is there any delta when you step up to something special like a grand sport?

Rob Parr: What I have is a six B with a grand sport. Which is actually a track car. Quite an amazing vehicle. I’m doing a [01:15:00] few slight mods to it, but it’s been a very fun car and you can feel it nicely. You could get the L, the Ls two with 400 horsepower.

And in 2008 they updated it to the LS three, which has 400, was it 35 horsepower with a dual tone exhaust? And your grand sport has the magneto suspension, right? It does not. And actually I’m, as I’m looking on the Corvette forum, I’m better off with that ’cause you can’t get parts for it. GM is phasing parts out.

This is the aftermarket hasn’t picked a lot of them up. I’m better off without it because there’s people in there bleeding for parts and they have to get used parts.

Crew Chief Eric: And the reason I bring it up is I actually drove one with just regular coils and one with a magneto suspension, both C6s at NCM and I prefer.

Bird, the coil spring car. I just didn’t like the way the magneto worked. Everybody says it’s amazing, but for me, the response, it was only delayed, but sort of numb. It was missing a little bit of road feel where yeah, maybe the coil spring didn’t perform as well, but it just felt so much more reactive to me.

Like it communicated to me as a driver better. So personal preference, [01:16:00] but to your point, I didn’t hear too much more. About what people were, you know, were they ripping the magnetos out and putting regular ones back in? Because again, it’s unobtainium type of stuff. It’s a good idea. I feel like it was a fad.

I don’t hear about it on any of the other manufacturers anymore either.

Rob Parr: Well, they continue the production on those later on. But the thing is, that’s me. If you’re driving a lot on the street, yeah. Like you and I, if you’re gonna go, you’re driving on a tracker, you’re just gonna go out on the weekend. You don’t need it.

Mark Shank: So I’m seeing a disproportionate number of UNT transacted grand sports. They go for auction, but they don’t meet the minimum. And so 3LT Grand Sport, which is heavily optioned, right? Not a cheap option package was bid up to 29 grand on bring a trailer a few months ago, but didn’t go higher and it didn’t transact.

I’m not seeing a lot of grand sports in the closed sale. So one grand sports, 48, 000 miles, six speed 3LT, again, heavily optioned, sold for 31, 000 on. Bring a trailer just a couple of months ago. It’s kind of the only one I can find that completed it.

Rob Parr: I’m not ready to sell it right now. Even for a [01:17:00] C7, I have to very hard to consider trading up to a C7 and paying one and a half times when I pay for the C6 and you can get a pretty good bargain than C6 is right now.

Crew Chief Eric: So that being said, even the C6 is a really, really good value.

Mark Shank: Yeah. I think since you’re such a track guy, you appreciate what the Grand Sport brings to the table. It adds a lot of chassis and capability and it already has. A motor that exceeds the vast majority of the world’s talent in regards to their ability to extract something, which I think is another interesting point.

Again, as you start getting into the later generation, can you really push a T six, the zero six on a track, whether it’s 505 horsepower, or god forbid, a zero one or a C 7 0 6, whether it’s 650 horsepower. That’s starting to get into the realm of like, you know, are you buying your Widowmaker, hope your life insurance is sorted out, like, do you have the ability to acknowledge where your talent envelope is and where the car is relative to that as somebody who personally owns a car who far exceeds my talent, I have [01:18:00] to respect that car’s ability.

Don’t pull on Superman’s cape. Cause I wouldn’t know what to do with it. I think from a track perspective, an enthusiast perspective, the Grand Sport represents a really unique value proposition because it’s undervalued by the market. But because of that, it doesn’t really transact for more than a Z51.

Like it’s five, 6, 000 more than your Z51. That’s the best 5, 000 you could ever spend. You can’t turn that Z51 into a Grand Sport for five grand with carbon fiber, fenders, and all of the stuff that came with that Grand Sport. So there’s no way you’re doing that for 5k seems like 5, 000. Well spent, especially if you’re going to take it to a track.

So I didn’t start this conversation with you thinking that the C6 transport was a really great idea, but now that I’m kind of, now I’m kind of there and I’m like, yeah, that’s actually five grand more. Why wouldn’t you spend that? Like, that’s a really great deal.

Crew Chief Eric: Now let’s jump forward. C7. When I first saw that car, I said, did this just roll off the Universal Studios lot for the next Transformers movie?

[01:19:00] Because it is a step away from everything we know about Corvette. It is so angular. It is so different. It is so sharp. It’s striking and not necessarily in a bad way or a good way. And the irony of ironies. Designed by the same guy that designed the Pontiac Aztec. So that angular design language comes from years of study.

And there was a lot of hate on the C7 because the classic thought, Oh, it should look like this. And it’s not a Corvette, but it is a Corvette. It’s so muscular. It’s so this, it’s so that. I

Rick Hoback: hated them when they came out. Ugly to me. So foreign. So not Corvette to me. And then I drove one and it was all over.

It was the greatest Corvette I ever drove. It was the greatest car I’d driven at that point. possibly. It was really amazing. And then I don’t know if it made me realize what they built or why they built it that way.

Don Weberg: Well, you know, I was like you guys, when C7 first came out, I just thought they ruined it.

You know, you have a 280Z roofline, you have the rear end of a Camaro, you just ruined it. Well, as time went on, I saw more and more and more of them. And [01:20:00] gee, golly gosh, I am so in love with those cars now. It’s unbelievable how much I love C7. I call

Crew Chief Eric: it the C7. Subaru effect. You hate the current one, which makes you love the previous one, but you hated the previous one because you love the one before that one.

Right. And the WRX has the same problem. And I think Corvette is starting to begin to realize that as well versus the Porsche where the 911. You look at it, you go, it’s still just a nine 11. It keeps getting a little bit longer, a little bit wider. The lights are a little further, but it’s still just a nine 11, right?

Corvette has gone through these changes. It’s gone through these evolutions.

Rick Hoback: I don’t know. It won me off driving that car made me love it.

Crew Chief Eric: I became a believer when I went the first year. C7 came out, I was at National Corvette Museum, and were there coaching owners of brand new C7s. That car, for me, could do no wrong.

It is absolutely amazing. It was like, after all these years, it took them 50 plus years to get that formula [01:21:00] right, and C7 was the answer. So if you check kind of the cramped cockpit, Pit jet fighter interior that it has at the door. Although you could fit really well in those things. It’s an amazing, amazing car.

And it just got better with every package that they added to it. ZO six and ZR one and everything else.

Rick Hoback: I have one. I love it. It’s fantastic. I like the way it looks. When it first came out, I would have said the C5 is better. I think I’m crazy now because the C7 is way sexier than the C5. But back then, when I first saw it, no, I preferred the C5.

Crew Chief Eric: So do you say that about the C7 because of the C8? We’re going to get to that. We’ve been holding off talking about the mid engine Corvette. Is it because that’s so different yet again that you look at the C7 and go, well, that’s so different. Corvette that’s still front mount rear drive.

Rick Hoback: I think the timeframe that I hated the C7 was longer than I hated the C8 for some reason, but that C8 is so impressive.

It’s so unbelievably impressive. If you gave me a [01:22:00] choice of racing somebody for a million dollars, but I take a 650 horsepower C seven, you know, the highest horsepower, one of the C seven stock, everything stock, or the brand new C eight stock. I think I can go faster in a C eight stock if that gives it any type of, I mean, it’s 200 horsepower, 150 some horsepower down in power.

It makes up for it. All day long.

Crew Chief Eric: So what I think is interesting about C7, the price point when they launched it, they were basically giving that car away. If you were lucky to buy a C7 in the first year, today you are sitting pretty. Because what we didn’t realize as consumers, and when I stepped out of that car the first time like you did, I turned around and I looked at it, And I said, that’s worth every penny of 80, 000.

And it wasn’t an 80, 000 car at that time. It was a 60, 000 car.

Rick Hoback: 58, 000. I think

Crew Chief Eric: it was insane. They were literally giving them away for that kind of money. And I’m like, finally, they built a near six figure sports car. They’re there. They’re almost there. I kind of said in my head, they’re going to get there with the ZO [01:23:00] six.

But I also feel like even though Chrysler had. Pulled back Viper. It was no longer on the track. That rivalry had died. I still think there was a little tit for tat happening, because if you look at the Viper ACR, the very last ones, they were finishing up as Corvette C7 was coming online. And it’s sort of an answer to that because you’re like, who did they build this car to compete against?

Cause it wasn’t against the 9 11 anymore.

Rick Hoback: Yeah. I don’t know if you’re wrong. I think nobody told Corvette that that rivalry was over. I think nobody gave them the memo that ACR is dead.

Crew Chief Eric: In respect to that, they built a brilliant car. It lasted one of the shortest, if not the shortest run of Corvettes, period.

Because the C8 is not done yet. It’s only been around for four years. So C7, five years, and that’s it. As much as I didn’t like it, like you in the beginning, at the I said, I can’t believe this. They finally got it right. And now that’s it. It’s done. It’s over.

Rick Hoback: Yeah. It’s a shame. It was gone, but they came out with something better.

They came out with something better, but it really was cool.

Crew Chief Eric: Do you think [01:24:00] C7, they could have evolved that same design again? Could it have continued or was there? The C7 just that good that there was nothing else to give.

Rick Hoback: I believe that I believe if they were to evolve it, it would have been like the C5 C6 where it kind of transitioned and just was better.

They could have added more horsepower, little bigger tire. Wasn’t much more to do with suspension. I think it was at the apex. I think it was good as it was going to get.

Rob Parr: And I’ve been in a C7. I’ve never driven one. I’ve ridden in one. I’m told it’s because the last analog car was a C6. People were selling C7s to go back to C6s, again, because they missed it.

Just a lot of fun, even in a base coupe.

William Ross: I’ve been a passenger in one. Yeah, I mean, it’s got creature comforts, everything like that. And I haven’t been in like one of the ZR1s or anything like that. It’s a

Mark Shank: very well engineered car. I still love the idea of the C06 C7. The ZR1 C7 still transacts Sells for more than it was new over MSRP because it’s the last of the front engine.

They fixed the heat problems by the time they got the ZR1. I think they put 87 radiators in the ZR1. You know, so they fixed [01:25:00] the heat soak issues and it was tunable and you could add power to it. And so it just has this great reputation as the last one. The Z06 though. It’s half the price of the 01 and it is not half the car, as long as you’re not going to kill yourself, realize what you’re buying, right?

It’s a wide relative to its total wheelbase and length. So it’s going to have some kind of snappy handling characteristics that you need to be cognizant of, especially when it has 700 horsepower.

Crew Chief Eric: But it’s got a lot more smarts in it than the earlier Corvettes did.

William Ross: Yes. It’s got computers. Don’t turn them off.

The nanny’s on. So at what point internally was that decision made C8s? Mid engine.

Rick Hoback: What else? I mean, they made carbon fiber. I mean, what else? They can’t do much more other than a whole bunch of weight out of it. I mean, they had 650 horsepower. It’s never enough, but that’s enough for a stock car.

William Ross: 650 horsepower in that car.

You know, you got a lot of cars with that horsepower. I mean, that’s stupid horsepower for the street. We don’t need that. You have to wonder if the C8 was going to be a front engine again. It would have been interesting to [01:26:00] see how they would have, I mean,

Mark Shank: how would they improve on that C7? The C7 is going to have an interesting journey.

Relative to its aesthetics, I think it’s one of those things that’s going to look severely dated very soon. And I can see my kids being like, ew, they like it now give them eight or 10 years or something. But then the GTV six or, you know, other cars, they were maybe a little extreme and styling for the time.

And then they got very dated and then they became cool again. I can see it being cool again, 20 years down the road or something. I think there’s something to be said for just being the last generation of the front engine. Assuming that that’s the direction the platform continues to go in. And that will probably help the C7 from a value perspective for a long period of time.

William Ross: Again, for the money though, I mean, I go back, I buy a C5. I mean, why spend the money on a C7? I just don’t see it. No, that’s

Crew Chief Eric: just me. Oh, that’s where you and I differ, my friend. I have C7 all day long. I’m a believer. That’s for sure. C5R, C6R, C7R, multiple. Times over and over and over again, champions of [01:27:00] ALMS and IMSA and Lamar and all the pro racing series that they were in.

I mean, unstoppable team Corvette for 25 years, just kicking butt and taking names. We decide to go mid engine and I don’t think a lot of our listeners maybe know. And I wrote an article about this a couple of years ago. C8 is not the first mid engine. Corvette, it was in the works going way back in the day.

There’s three previous prototype attempts at a mid engine Corvette. They just couldn’t ever get it right. There was just something technologically not there that, which was mind boggling because you’ve got people like Porsche and Lotus and Ferrari, and you name it. That had been building mid engine cars for a millennia.

At this point and Corvette can’t figure it out.

Don Weberg: Mid engine has always been a ghost in the background at Corvette. And it was a seed planted by Zora. We’ve got to do this. You’re going to have weight distribution, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, I don’t think it was so much engineering or technological.

I think it was general motors and Chevrolet thing. Great idea. It’s a fantastic idea. And we [01:28:00] would have the penultimate sports car on the road, but you’ve got to think of our buyers and you’ve got to think of our dealership network. Who’s going to service these cars? Who’s going to fix these things? Who’s going to pay to fix these things?

When you hit a Corvette buyer and you say, yeah, you just paid. X number of dollars for your Corvette. You’ve saved money over a Porsche. You’ve certainly saved money over a Ferrari. You’re doing good. You’re ahead of the ball game and you got a performance car that will kick butt all day long. Oh, but we got to change the spark plugs.

And guess what? Motor’s got to come out. That’s going to cost money. We got to disconnect the transmission, the suspension, all the labor, labor, labor, labor, labor. Oh, and while you’re in there. You know, let’s start singing the European song they’re famous for. While you’re in there, let’s just rebuild the whole damn car.

American buyers, especially going back to the fifties and sixties. No, they don’t want to hear about that. So I think GM and Chevrolet kept hitting those brakes on Zora, hitting the brakes on anybody who wanted to talk about mid engine, and that is why. William beloved Fiero was killed because it was getting way too [01:29:00] dangerously close to being an ultimate sports car.

They equipped it with a V6. They were talking about turbos or superchargers in a mid engine sports car that costs way less than a Corvette. Corvette couldn’t have that. So they put a contract out on Fiero and that was the end of Fiero.

Crew Chief Eric: The same story for the GNX and a bunch of other cars are trying to take a stab at the Corvette, right?

Again, that shall not pass. That is, this is not going to happen. The point is. It’s an evolution of an idea, a dream, a passion, right? So C7 was the end of an era, and then we brought about C8, the first production mid engine Corvette. Like Rick said, I first saw it, I didn’t like it. I don’t think a lot of people like it.

I don’t think a lot of people still like

Mark Shank: it. Wish they’d stuck with a six speed, but I personally, uh, personally like them.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ve talked to folks and they’re like, yeah, it’s not a Corvette. It looks like an NSX. Oh, it looks like a Ferrari. It looks like this. It looks like every other hyper car. That’s being produced by McLaren, you name it.

They all look sort of the same because when it comes down to aerodynamics, there’s really only one shape when you have a mid [01:30:00] engine that sort of cheats the wind,

Rick Hoback: the technology really makes that car fast. It is so smart. If you put a novice driver in each one, they’re going to be faster in the C8. C8’s gonna save them, you know, from killing themselves.

Those things are smart. I mean, those things are like Tesla Corvettes. I mean, they’re just smart. The C7 was still, I mean, it was smart, but man, it had some brute force. I mean, there’s a difference between, I guess

Crew Chief Eric: Everything’s a nail when you’re carrying a hammer, is that what you’re saying?

Rick Hoback: Yeah, it’s a baseball bat versus a sword.

It’s similar. Way different. One can slice and dice and the other one can just beat things up.

Mark Shank: There feels like there’s a gap in the Corvette portfolio which maybe they’ll fill this generation. They have this amazing opportunity to make a GT3 like car and they’ve started to fill that with their naturally aspirated Z06 being the monster of an engine that it is.

Now give me a real proper six speed transmission that’s geared appropriately for the car [01:31:00] and just eat the gas guzzler tax. My

Rick Hoback: personal big disappointment with the C8, the horsepower being down, I’m a horsepower guy. I like to use horsepower. I don’t like to use horsepower in a straight line. I like to use it in twisties, and I like, I like too much horsepower.

So not enough horsepower, which they’re fixing, which is something I love, and then not enough front tire. They don’t have huge front tires. I know there’s less weight up there, there’s this, there’s that, but come on. You gotta put a tire, it starts with a three. three in front of a Corvette, in my opinion.

Mark Shank: My kids light up every time one drives by the car.

I enjoy seeing them drive down the road. I hope they sell 30 to 40, 000 of them a year. I really do.

Crew Chief Eric: You know what kills me about the C8 and even the C8R? It’s the sound. With C4, Five, it’s suddenly transcended. And it’s like, you could pick a Corvette out amongst everybody else on track or on the road, or it just had this tone to it.

You know, I remember those videos. We’re going to fire up the C8 for the first time. And they uncover the car and it’s in this satin silk red thing. And they [01:32:00] fired. I’m like, Oh my God, that sounds like a Ferrari 360. Like, what is that? It’s awful. It’s like two little four cylinders running together because the way they split the exhaust, even at the track, whether it’s on TV or In person where I’ve seen him at Lamar, I’ve seen him at petite Lamar, you know, all these kinds of things.

It’s like, ugh, like I can still pick it out, but it’s harder to pick out from, let’s say the Ferrari two 96 and some of the other ones that are running alongside of it, you know, and I’m just like, it just irks me. And that’s what makes me say to myself, it’s, it’s not really a Corvette. Sort of like the new Fiero, right, William?

William Ross: And the interior of those things is horrendous. That center thing is just weird.

Crew Chief Eric: With the buttons on the passenger side. I don’t get it.

William Ross: Try to separate the cockpits to make, I don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: They made some weird decisions on the design too. Like, The trunk has to fit a set of golf clubs and who’s making these rules up.

Don Weberg: Keep in mind though, when it comes to those golf clubs, remember who first really started pushing that was Nissan with the three 50 Z convertible. The [01:33:00] big thing was you had to have. Ability to put golf clubs in there. Well, it

Crew Chief Eric: started way before that. Nine 11 kept. Well, you could put a set of golf clubs in the front of a nine 11.

William Ross: Right. Drive by the country club and tell me how many Corvettes where you count on your hand with gonna play golf on zero. Right.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, that’s what I’m saying. I’m sure they exist, but it’s silly. It’s a silly design requirement.

Don Weberg: Yeah. No one’s buying it. You think that’s why they do it? I think they’re having fun with it and they’re just making fun of the silliness.

I don’t think they mean it seriously at all.

Crew Chief Eric: Ferrari doesn’t do it. McLaren doesn’t do it. None of those mid engine cars are like, Oh, I got to carry a set of golf clubs. Really? No,

Don Weberg: no, I really think they’re doing that as joke. I really do. I think the only one who actually meant it seriously was Nissan.

Maybe Porsche took it a little bit seriously because a lot of doctors. Drive Porsches and a lot of doctors play golf.

Crew Chief Eric: And I’m still not sold on the look because there’s certain design language that they carried forward from even the C4. If we go back that far, it’s that slab rear end. And I kept making the joke that the backside of a C8 looked [01:34:00] no different than a Camaro at the time, right?

It was hard to tell them apart. If they were going down a straightaway, you know, between a ZL one and a C8. But what I found interesting was redesigner of redesigners, Chip Foose. Did one of his things during COVID where he sat down at his desk and, you know, him and his camera, they sort of asked him if you were going to do this in your own way, how would you do it?

And when he was done with it, he was able to pull from the C2 and make the C8 look more like a C2 and it was gorgeous. Now, granted, it was all pen and ink or whatever, but I’m hoping. That maybe they take from other designers and say, we can continue to improve the C8. This is just the beginning, sort of like the C1 we’re starting over again.

It’s not so great, but maybe the next one, the C9 will be even better.

Don Weberg: Yeah. I think that’s what you’re faced with your point though. I think the C8. It right now has ugly duckling syndrome. You look at Corvette, when they emerge, the C4 was the one I remember because I was there when that car came out. I [01:35:00] remember the oohs and ahs and wows and holy cow.

But I also remember, Oh my gosh, this thing’s a piece of garbage. It’s a piece of junk. Because guys were not used to it. They weren’t used to that exotic looking of a car compared to the C3 and certainly compared to the C2. I think C8 is faced with that right now. And my wife and I were just behind a C8.

And as we pulled up to it, she said, is that a Corvette? And I said, yeah, that’s the C8. She said, boy, that rear end really needs some work. I said, yeah, there’s a lot going on there.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s probably the worst part of that car. Hands down.

Don Weberg: But I think you’re right though. I think Chevrolet, I think General Motors.

They will smooth things out. They will make things a little less Ferrari, a little less McLaren, and a lot more Corvette. And I think they need to do that. And, and I do think, in fact, I know C7 and C8 have both alienated a lot of loyal Corvette customers, but they’ve engaged a lot of younger customers.

Crew Chief Eric: And that’s just it.

So the target demographic for the C7, C8. Are the people that saw [01:36:00] C4 when it came out that now have the earning potential and let’s say the discretionary income to afford a Corvette, and they’re not going to buy that C4 that they saw as a kid, they’re going to buy the new hot one that’s full of technology and gizmos.

What also plagues C8, let’s put the design stuff away for a second. We talked about how C7 was that 75, 000 sports car, although it was a Under sticker at 58 when it debuted in the Z 51 package and all that kind of stuff all day long. That was that near perfect, near 100, 000 sports car that GM had created.

Then CA comes out and they said, well, uh, it’s COVID because it came out in 2020. The world’s shut down. Nobody can get one. So we will offer it for 65 grand. Put your orders in today and don’t take delivery till 2022. And then suddenly the price went up and a friend of mine got a C eight and he kept it for a little while and he wanted to flip it.

He ended up paying something like $92,000 for it before all the destination charges and all this kind of thing for just a [01:37:00] Z 51. Base C8. So obviously they’re going up from there with the Z07 and all these other things that they’re going to build. The question becomes, is the C8 a six figure sports car right

now?

Crew Chief Eric: Is it really as good? And I know on track, yeah, the gizmos it’s technically better to put down a faster lap time, but for the consumer dollar, is it really as good? A car to have in your garage is let’s say a C7 from maybe that investment standpoint.

William Ross: I just looked online. You can buy a 2024 with 700 miles on it for 66 grand.

Crew Chief Eric: Where? That’s

William Ross: cheap. You know, out in the Amherst, the guy down there was 759 miles, somebody that’s looked at it as.

Crew Chief Eric: Were they fire sailing it? Cause they can’t move it. What’s going on?

William Ross: It’s got yellow colors, but I mean, if you know what I like, they’re a bunch of them on there for under 70 grand.

Don Weberg: I think we’re all thinking the same way, which is C8 is a great engineering idea.

It’s a fantastic car for Corvette. Bye. I think C seven for a long time is going to be a much better investment than a C eight. Oh yeah. If for no other reason, [01:38:00] it’s the last of the front engine Corvettes. Yep. It’s the very last one.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s like a 9 93. It’s the last of the air cooled nine 11.

Don Weberg: Exactly. The air cooled Porsches, my God.

When the 9, 9 6, the one that was first water cooled when that came out. Yeah. 9 9 3. Oh, you couldn’t touch them today. I mean, would you rather have a Ferrari, a Lamborghini? Cause they’re in the same price bracket, basically. I think C7 is going to be that. I love C8. I do think she’s a little ugly, but I see good things happening.

I think Chevrolet will clean up C8.

Crew Chief Eric: Here we are. We don’t know what the future holds. Nobody has a crystal ball. The C8 is still an infant. They’ve been making changes. They’ve been fixing recalls, different wheels, different packages, paint schemes. You know, they have the IMSA C8. R edition, which has nothing to do with the actual C8 R, you know, you’ve got the E Ray, you’ve got some other stuff, blah, blah, blah.

Mark Shank: I think the advice we haven’t given the Corvette sells insufficient bump, particularly, you know, the C5 and it’s done really pretty well for itself in [01:39:00] the last 20 odd years. There are enough people out there for whom it is their dream car. It’s the last car they ever want to buy. Last fun car they ever want to buy.

And so they just dropped so much money in it that they’re never going to get back. And so I think if I’m really giving advice to somebody on this, if I were to do it, be really patient, it might take you two or three years to find the right vet, but be patient, know what you’re looking for. Don’t be afraid to transact and you probably will have to let a few get away that a year later, you’re kind of like, I should’ve bought that.

Why didn’t I buy that? I was so dumb. But then the next time something like that comes around, you have the courage to pull the trigger and not wait. Cause there’s always a little bit of FOMO in that game of, but what if I find something else six months from now, 12 months from now, the thing that brought it home to me, just looking through these transactions is apparently one of my jobs on this podcast is to reference bad data.

Is this C5 06 that sold a few months ago and bring a trailer for 25K. This guy has so many mods on it. It’s all [01:40:00] supercharged and just built out suspension and everything. It’s like, this guy spent so much money on this stupid car and it doesn’t sell for any more than any other Z06 that’s being sold. You added 0 in value to that car in spite of everything that you dumped in it.

And if you just kind of have the patience, if that’s what you want, you know, maybe you don’t want to deal with it. You want a track car and you don’t want a super truck. Okay, fine. But even then you could look for somebody who really spent the money on the suspension and spent the money to get it set up, right.

Because it is in volume. It is such a dream car. It’s not like a BMW M3, which sells in good volume. It’s kind of like you’re a successful executive and you have kids and you want something that’s kind of fast. You get an M3. Like no, the Corvette is end game. So many people. And because it’s their end game, they’re not afraid of putting money into it.

Cause they’re gonna drive it until their hip goes out and they can’t shift gears. It’s this dichotomous advice of don’t be afraid to wait, but when you find something, don’t be afraid to pull the trigger. And that is the needle you have to thread for yourself.

Crew Chief Eric: But it comes down to this, because this is what should I buy.

And let’s say you have 100, 000 to [01:41:00] spend. Do you buy a C8? Or all things being equal, taking the extremes off the table, like the LT1, like the ZR1s, like some of the split window stingrays and things like that. And you’re just kind of looking at Corvette and you got a hundred grand to spend. Do you buy new or do you buy old?

And if you buy old, what do you buy?

Rob Parr: I would probably seriously consider a C7 ZR1 if no money was no object. Price has gone way through the roof on those. They’re selling for more than they cost when they were new.

Don Weberg: You know, it’s such a gamut. You’ve got a hundred thousand dollars to spend. You want a daily driver.

Well, I’ll tell you the C5 is sort of the bastard child of all of them. But that one night in Malibu.

Oh God.

Don Weberg: No, seriously. If you’re just looking for a daily driver to go back and forth to work in, the C5 is fantastic. I mean, it is really a fantastic car, but that said, you got a hundred grand. Got a little bit more money to play with.

Is it worth getting a C8? Honestly, I, I don’t know. I don’t know. Is it daily driver friendly? Let me throw that out there. And Eric, you’ve heard me make this argument before when it comes to certain other cars that [01:42:00] are two seats with nothing behind it. There’s nowhere to put your stuff in a C8. There’s nowhere.

You’ve got to put it in the little cubby holes and whatever and hope to God you don’t have too much stuff. A C7? Well, you’ve got a station wagon’s rear end. You just throw it over your shoulder, you’re done. Uh, even with The convertible, you’ve still got that area behind you. You’ve got a lot of space. So in terms of daily driver, I think your C7, C6, C5, I don’t know if I want to go C4.

All of those, I think would be much, much more forgiving, much more enjoyable, much more practical daily drivers than a C8.

Mark Shank: One of the things I like so much about the Corvette platform is there are so many really great cars for less than a hundred thousand dollars. So that’s my first. Kind of reactions to our quick take.

So, okay, I’m going to spend a hundred grand, you know, number one, this is what should I buy? So for C1, I will go with the 1962, three 27 black silver cove red interior. If anyone listening is curious, but I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love a C4. I feel like the C4 made Corvette cool. Again, the C3 [01:43:00] was so long in the tooth.

And if you look back at the press from the eighties, The C4 was a big deal, but the C2 was certainly the golden age. I would totally agree. You know, I’m probably on the hunt for a ZR1, a C6, C7. I’m going to spend a hundred grand. Might be hard to find the right one. ZR1. But yeah, I would probably try and be patient and hope the economy continues to kind of be a little weak and not impact me personally so that I can pick one for a hundred grand.

Because I think that makes a lot of sense. Having said that, if I’m really struggling to find a ZR1 for a hundred K, Man, I would be so tempted to do something foolish with a C seven zero six. I wouldn’t pay a hundred K to get it, but I could end up spending that money to get it to something being really silly.

You’re not going to get that money back. At least not till the market changes a bit. You could build one of those Texas mile car. You could do 150 mile an hour roll on car. Like you could do so many silly, silly things with that

Crew Chief Eric: platform. William, it’s not big money, but it’s six figures.

William Ross: This is my daily driving and I got to spend the whole [01:44:00] hundred grand on just the one car.

I’d buy the C8, you know, the technology’s there, the comfort’s there, everything’s there. You can have fun with it. I mean, it can do a lot, wear a lot of different hats. If that’s what you have to use, it’s not going to kill you. It’s not going to beat the shit out of you. You know, if you get a C5, I mean, you’re going to buy a 6 speed, you know, those clutches are kind of heavy and then dealing with that fucking shift skip shit.

Crew Chief Eric: I forgot about that. Oh my God.

William Ross: That was always a trick I had my C4, too, was either rev it up a little higher, so you delete it out or whatever. But yeah, I would just. It’s annoying, but you know, Hey, you got the a hundred grand buy a really nice C6 and then spend some extra money, buy a beat up C5 and turn into a race car, buy a bunch of stuff.

But you got to buy the one for a hundred grand. It’d be a C8. Rick, what do you think?

Rick Hoback: I don’t speak daily driver very well. I prefer driving race cars as daily drivers and the a hundred thousand dollar price points a little tough because I think you’re right. I think if you have a hundred grand, you just buy the newest, latest and greatest, the C8.

Probably.

Crew Chief Eric: Maybe. Sort of. Yeah.

Rick Hoback: [01:45:00] I can’t daily driver in my head. I can’t compute that. Does not compute. What I’m hoping happens, and it’s more than 100 grand, I’m hoping they make a 900 horsepower ZR1C8. For me, that checks every box for me. It checks a warranty. It checks enough horsepower to keep me satisfied.

It checks a lot of boxes. The technology would be there and I don’t have to modify it.

William Ross: Wider front tires too.

Rick Hoback: Yeah. Wider front tires. The ZR1 would definitely have wider front tires if they followed the same format they always have. And you can’t talk C2 and 3 as daily driver. I think I would, I don’t know, daily driver’s gotta be C8.

I think you almost have to rephrase that question. Like, what would you do with your 100 grand for overall? Then it gets really complicated because then I’m looking at C2s.

Crew Chief Eric: So we’re used to doing this on What Should I Buy? So we go a little offensive. So I’m with you. I’m right there with you. And so here’s what I’m thinking.

There’s a lot of things I will put up with and I won’t put up with. And inside of the construct of daily is, yeah, I got to take it to work. Maybe I have a backup car, [01:46:00] probably not going to drive in the winter. I’ll have a second car, but I want to go to the cars and coffee. I want to take my wife to the ice cream parlor.

You know, those kinds of things. Like you’re going to use it. It’s not going to sit. In a mausoleum somewhere, not a museum in a mausoleum, dying a decrepit death, disintegrating on a garage floor. I want to drive this car. That’s what I mean, what we’ve always meant by that daily car. Right? And so I look at it two ways.

If I’m going to go modern C7 all day, Z06. Done deal C7 in that charcoal gun, metal pewter, whatever you want to call that gray that it came. Oh, it’s gorgeous, right? With the right set of wheels all day long, but I got a hundred grand to spend and I want a Corvette that I’m going to call my own. That’s going to be different.

Maybe have some money left over. I actually think after all this, I’m going to buy a C3 and I’m going to restomod it, put some wheels on it, lower it, side pipes, fenders, just do it upright. And I think I could make a C3. A really cool air quotes daily driver something I could take to work something I could cruise down the [01:47:00] highway I could do a mountain run with it.

I could go to cars and coffee. I could go get ice cream with my daughter I think I could go either way vintage or modern and there’s probably money left over at either end of that discussion

Mark Shank: Yeah, i’m feeling you I’m feeling I like that answer. It’s probably better than mine because the c3 also just it gets so little love So it would be so awesome to see one that was just done really really well And that somebody really just put their money and passion into to turn something that’s worth it when you know what you’re looking at and you walk up to a car and you just see the little things right and you’re Just kind of like man that guy loves that car.

I hope he you’re not going but like I don’t I don’t mean it It was like maybe he’s gonna have a heart attack next week. I can buy it from the sprinter

Crew Chief Eric: Right on, brother. That’s what I’m talking about. Real quick shout out to the International Motor Racing Research Center who sponsored this episode. And by the way, you have the opportunity to win a brand new C8 Corvette.

You can enter their sweepstakes by visiting racingarchives. org and then clicking on sweepstakes in the top right corner where you can be entered to win a 2024 [01:48:00] C8 Corvette. C8 Z06 with the Z07 add on package. And if you don’t want the Vette, there is always a cash option and the proceeds do benefit the IMRRC Upper Watkins Glen.

Don Weberg: If you’re looking to add a classic Corvette or Porsche to your collection, then reach out to William at exoticcarmarketplace. com. Learn more about local events and shows where you can meet other Corvette owners by touching base with Rob over at collectorcarguide. net. And if you want help building a Corvette for all sorts of occasions, look no further than Rick at Hoback Racing.

And you’re guaranteed to catch Mark and myself on another coming episode. So stay tuned for that. And don’t forget what should be in your garage Corvette. Thanks again to our panel for another great, what should I buy debate?

Crew Chief Eric: Like we mentioned in the introduction, this is part one of two. Next time we’re going to talk Porsche versus Corvette and go through the generations of 911.

I hope you enjoyed this. There’s a lot to educate yourself on in the world of [01:49:00] Corvette. I think you can go down rabbit holes on every generation. You got eight generations. Pick from just some amazing stuff out there. Absolutely amazing cars. If you haven’t considered a Corvette before, I think more people should be looking at them.

There’s a lot of really, really great deals out there. And with that guys can’t thank you enough for joining us again and look forward to seeing you in the next. What should I buy?

Rob Parr: I’m going to take off, but I appreciate your including me. And if you do a sequel to this, I’m happy to be a board.

Don Weberg: Thanks guys.

Thanks. Good to meet you, Rick. Take care of guys.

Crew Chief Eric: We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Brake Fix Podcast brought to you by Grand Touring Motorsports. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure to follow us on all social [01:50:00] media platforms at Grand Touring Motorsports. And if you’d like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on article at gtmotorsports.

So consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com forward slash GT motorsports, and remember without you, none of this would be possible.

Bonus Content

There's more to this story!

All of our BEHIND THE SCENES (BTS) Break/Fix episodes are raw and unedited, and expressly shared with the permission and consent of our guests.

Learn More

What else should you buy? Check out other What Should I Buy? Podcast episodes for more car buying “advice” 😉 And remember: the debate never ends – it just shifts gears.

Then came the C2 in 1963 (below), and everything changed. This was a ground-up redesign – new chassis, new styling, and finally, a coupe option. The split-window Sting Ray was unlike anything else on the road. Angular, aggressive, and dripping with attitude, it became the poster child for American performance.

Under the hood, the 327 V8 delivered flexibility and power. Fuel injection had been introduced in 1957, and by 1962, the Corvette was making serious horsepower. The C2 wasn’t just a looker – it was a legitimate sports car, capable of taking on the best from Europe.

Zora Arkus-Duntov, the “Father of the Racing Corvettes,” played a pivotal role in transforming the car into a racing contender. Though GM officially avoided motorsports, Duntov backdoored support to private teams. The 1960 Le Mans effort, featuring the Camoradi Corvette and three others, put the car on the global map.

Meanwhile, astronauts, celebrities, and racing legends like Mark Donohue and Parnelli Jones were seen behind the wheel. The Corvette had arrived – not just as a car, but as a cultural icon.

C2 in the Collector Market: Still Hot, Still Climbing

Today, C2s are highly sought after. According to our panelists, they transact more frequently and at higher prices than C1s. Split-window coupes and big-block models command serious premiums, often exceeding $300,000. Convertibles tend to sell for less, and interestingly, some collectors are gravitating back to the 327 small-block for better handling and drivability.

Resto-mods and pro-touring builds are also gaining traction, especially for rougher examples. But originality still reigns supreme in terms of value.

As the episode wrapped, the conversation began to shift toward the C3 era – launched in 1968 and spanning the emissions-choked 1970s. With high production numbers and declining performance, the C3 faces a different kind of legacy. But that’s a story for Part 2.

Stay tuned for the next installment, where we dive into the C3, C4, and beyond – and continue our quest to crown the true everyman’s sports car. Is it Porsche or Corvette? The debate is just getting started.

Thanks to our panel of Petrol-heads!

If you’re looking to add a classic Corvette or Porsche to your collection, then reach out to William at exoticcarmarketplace.com. Learn more about local events and shows where you can meet other Corvette owners by touching base with Rob over at collectorcarguide.net. And if you want help building a Corvette for all sorts of occasions, look no further than Rick at Hoback Racing.

Guest Co-Host: Don Weberg

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the Break/Fix episode with our co-host.

Guest Co-Host: William Ross

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the Break/Fix episode with our co-host.

Guest Co-Host: Rob Parr

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the Break/Fix episode with our co-host.

Guest Co-Host: Mark Shank

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the Break/Fix episode with our co-host.

Don’t agree, let’s agree to disagree? Come share your opinions and continue the conversation on the Break/Fix Discord!

This content has been brought to you in-part by support through...

1...202122...63 Page 21 of 63

<img class="tdb-logo-img" src="https://www.gtmotorsports.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/CROPPED-1.png" alt="Logo" title="" width="2597" height="573" data-eio="l" />GTMSpreading Motorsports Enthusiasm - since 2014

<img class="tdb-logo-img" src="https://www.gtmotorsports.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/CROPPED-1.png" alt="Logo" title="" width="2597" height="573" data-eio="l" />GTMSpreading Motorsports Enthusiasm - since 2014

<img class="tdb-logo-img" src="https://www.gtmotorsports.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/CROPPED-1.png" alt="Logo" title="" width="2597" height="573" data-eio="l" />GTMSpreading Motorsports Enthusiasm - since 2014

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Spotlight

Synopsis

Transcript

Highlights

Bonus Content

Learn More

And you can customize your next trip to the Detroit Area or make a donation today by logging on to www.motorcities.org or following them on social media @motorcities on FB, IG and Twitter, along with @MotorCitiesNHA on YouTube.

In Detroit:

In Dearborn:

Beyond Detroit:

Engaging the Next Generation

This content has been brought to you in-part by sponsorship through...

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Spotlight

Synopsis

Transcript

Highlights

Bonus Content

There's more to this story!

Learn More

Evening With A Legend (EWAL)

ACO USA

This content has been brought to you in-part by support through...

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Spotlight

Synopsis

Transcript

Highlights

Bonus Content

There's more to this story!

Stefy Bau: Breaking Barriers, Empowering Girls in Male-Dominated Industries (Break/Fix Podcast)

Learn More

Global eSports Games Opportunity!

To learn more about how you can join them as they revolutionize the motorsports and esports landscape be sure to logon to www.initesports.gg or follow them on social @init_esports on Twitter, @initesports on FB, IG and on YouTube!

Sim Racing for All: Breaking Barriers, Building Futures

Sim4STEM and the Future of Inclusive Motorsports

Guest Co-Host: Trevor Marks

This content has been brought to you in-part by sponsorship through...

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Showcase: Car Week 2024

Automotive, EV & Car-Adjacent News

Bikes

Domestics

EVs & Concepts

Japanese & JDM

Lost & Found

Lower Saxony

Stellantis

Tesla

VAG & Porsche

TRANSCRIPT

Highlights

Ferraris of Monterey Car Week 2024

The Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix

UnCOOL-wall!

Would you like fries with that?

There's more to this story!

This content has been brought to you in-part by sponsorship through...

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Bio

Notes

Transcript

Livestream

Learn More

Consider becoming a Patreon VIP and get behind the scenes content and schwag from the Motoring Podcast Network

This episode is sponsored in part by: The International Motor Racing Research Center (IMRRC), The Society of Automotive Historians (SAH), The Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Argetsinger Family – and was recorded in front of a live studio audience.

Other episodes you might enjoy

Michael R. Argetsinger Symposium on International Motor Racing History

This content has been brought to you in-part by support through...

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Bio: Ken Yohn

Bio: Kristie Sojka

Synopsis

Transcript

Livestream

Bonus Content

GTMSpreading Motorsports Enthusiasm - since 2014

GTMSpreading Motorsports Enthusiasm - since 2014

GTMSpreading Motorsports Enthusiasm - since 2014