This near-enough the base Corvette. Yet
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MotorTranscript
00:00 (car engine revving)
00:03 - I'm Miguel Cortina,
00:08 Managing Editor of Motor Trend en Español.
00:11 - And I'm Kim Reynolds,
00:12 Testing Director of Motor Trend.
00:13 - So today we're gonna talk about the surprising results
00:16 that we got from taking the Corvette to the dyno.
00:18 (upbeat music)
00:21 So we're wrapping up Car of the Year
00:29 and we have the mid-engine Corvette one more day.
00:32 We decided to take it to the real MPG test,
00:34 but turns out that they don't have
00:36 the right equipment for it.
00:37 So our plan B is to go to the dyno.
00:39 (upbeat music)
00:42 - The first question was what gear ratio to use.
00:49 - Yeah, we called Chris Walton.
00:50 Chris's best guess was to do it in fifth gear.
00:52 (upbeat music)
00:59 - We did four runs in fifth gear
01:00 and then runs five and six were done in sixth gear.
01:03 I was there with Angus, Angus McKenzie,
01:05 who's our international bureau chief,
01:07 and we did ridiculous numbers.
01:09 In terms of torque, it went from 515 at the wheels,
01:13 which means it's about 606 pound feet of torque at the crank
01:18 about 558 horsepower,
01:20 which means after drive train losses, it's 650 horsepower.
01:24 So I think the takeaway here is that the Corvette
01:28 is producing about 150 more horsepower
01:31 than what GM is telling us.
01:33 We couldn't just sit on this and scratch our heads
01:36 and say, this is a ringer.
01:38 So we called Chevy engineers to find out what was going on.
01:41 - And they actually found that this engine
01:42 was well within tolerance.
01:44 So there was nothing out of sorts with this thing.
01:46 It wasn't super tuned.
01:47 It was a very ordinary Corvette engine.
01:49 So after the conversation with General Motors,
01:52 what we finally discovered is the difference
01:55 between the SAE certified measurements
01:58 that they're reporting and what we saw is the methodology.
02:03 - The engine was certified
02:05 by the Society of Automotive Engineers, the SAE.
02:09 And so the SAE acts like as a third party
02:12 and follows these super strict rules.
02:15 - A normal dyno pull, as you witnessed,
02:19 you put the car on rollers and you tie it down
02:21 and you run it.
02:23 The SAE certified method, the car doesn't just accelerate
02:26 quickly through its RPM range, but it goes through steps
02:30 where it runs at certain RPM levels
02:32 all the way up to red line.
02:34 So that's much more stressful on the engine.
02:36 It's generating a lot more heat.
02:38 So you're gonna end up with lower numbers.
02:40 - And so these 495 horsepower and 470 pound feet of torque
02:44 are given to Chevy.
02:46 And so Chevy has to stick with those numbers.
02:48 It's not Chevy coming out and saying,
02:50 our car is making this.
02:52 It's actually the Society of Automotive Engineers saying,
02:54 this is how much your engine makes.
02:57 - So which of these numbers is true?
02:59 The 495 that Chevrolet is claiming
03:02 or the 650 that we saw?
03:05 - I'm leaning more towards the 650 that we saw,
03:08 but also to make sure that the car that we got
03:11 wasn't a ringer.
03:12 We're gonna be following up with this story in the future.
03:14 So once Corvette owners get their cars,
03:17 we're gonna ask them to come into the same dyno.
03:19 We'll pay for the dyno runs
03:21 and we'll see if their car is making
03:24 the same amount of horsepower and torque numbers
03:27 that our Corvette was making.
03:29 - Right, so it's 650 with a footnote.
03:31 - Yes, with an asterisk.
03:34 - Right.
03:35 - I mean, regardless if your Corvette
03:37 has 495 horsepower or 650,
03:39 you're still getting a really good car that drives amazing.
03:43 - Yeah, a car that does 2.8 seconds to 60 miles per hour.
03:46 That's the number that really matters.
03:48 (upbeat music)
03:50 (upbeat music)
03:53 (upbeat music)
03:55 (bells chiming)
03:58 [BLANK_AUDIO]