Chevrolet reveals new Corvette Z06 at LA Auto Show

Chevrolet Product Manager Shad Balch joins Yahoo Finance's Pras Subramanian live from the LA Auto Show to discuss the debut of the new Corvette Z06.

Video Transcript

KARINA MITCHELL: Welcome back. Well, we are going to take you out west to the LA Auto Show now getting into high gear. Our Pras Subramanian is there to give us insight to what the future of the auto industry is looking like for Chevrolet.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Thanks, Karina. We're here in the new Chevrolet Z06 high-performance package. I'm with Shad Balch of Chevy, Chevy product manager. Talk to me about this car. Why is it-- what makes it different than your traditional Corvette?

SHAD BALCH: So this is-- well, it's the C8, first of all, which means it's the mid-engine Corvette that we first unveiled back in 2020. But this is the high-performance variant. This is the Z06. It has the Z07 performance package on it. It has the big, high wing spoiler in the back, the front splitter, the dive planes, all of the carbon-fiber bits.

But what's most notable about this car is the engine. It has a 5.5 liter flat-plane-crank engine that puts out 670 horsepower. It is the most powerful naturally aspirated V8 available in a production car.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: So tell me about this engine. So it's only going to be used in the Corvette. How do you guys get away with it?

SHAD BALCH: Yeah, for the first time ever, it's a bespoke engine specifically for Corvette. Typically we've shared blocks or shared components in the past, but this is the first time that this engine is going to be used specifically for Z06.

And it's interesting. We've done a lot of the development work in the racing team. So the engine has been tested, developed for the past year and a half sort of hidden in plain sight in the C8.R racing team. So we're able to take what we learned from all of the racing and the competition and applied it to the car that we're going to sell to customers.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: So talking about this car, you know, we were talking about how the Z06 package traditionally is not that much more money than the standard base Corvette. Base Corvette around $60,000 right now. So how are you going to maintain that little, you know, like 15%-- I think 10% to 15% jump in price for a car that has so much more than your standard Corvette?

SHAD BALCH: I mean, that's always been what Corvette has been about is the ability to have the maximum power, performance, track capability, comfort, and convenience on the street that's attainable for people. That's been what Corvette has always been about.

And so my colleagues are-- they're experts at that. They're experts at taking engineering that we use on the racetrack, applying it to a car that people can buy in the showroom, and that's what this Corvette is going to do as well. The Z06 here is going to be the same thing. It'll be in line with what Z06 has typically been, above the Stingray model, and that's what it's about. I mean, we want people to have the benefit of power, performance, but at an attainable price.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: You know, I'm noticing a lot of this carbon fiber-- I know there's a special package here, but it's carbon fiber everywhere, and it just looks great and stunning. I feel like I'm in a race car right now.

But I have to ask you, you guys are trying to make this car work from a financial point of view, but we're also in the middle of a kind of component shortage, chip shortage. How are you guys weathering that with manufacturing this car?

SHAD BALCH: Yeah, I mean, this has been an unprecedented challenge for sure, this semiconductor issue. The good news is is that there's light at the end of the tunnel. We do have our eyes on, you know, increased resource for chips, and we've been able to turn on all of our North American plants. Our production plants, they are at full capacity now, and we expect production to increase next year, including just Q4 of this year.

So we're getting through it. We have more-- the ability to ramp up the production to meet the demand. And so the timing is right because this will be hitting the market next summer.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: So you say as things are getting better from a chip and component shortage point of view, just looking ahead for Chevy and sports cars in general, what does the future look like for that?

SHAD BALCH: Yeah, well, I think for Corvette specifically, you'll be able to see sort of the cadence that we typically do for the Corvette levels. The Z06 certainly is typically what we come out with after we do the base model. Long term, the company set a pretty stated goal of zero emissions, zero crashes by a certain date. And so at some point, everything is going to transition over into electric drive.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: So is there going to be a bridge in the meantime where we might have like a hypercar Corvette with a combination electric motor plus gas engine? You've got the gas in the back. What's going to-- must be in the front, right?

SHAD BALCH: You have to stay tuned.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Oh, man.

SHAD BALCH: Yeah. Yeah.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: OK. Excited about hat. OK, that's all you got to say. OK, got it. Got it.

I know one quick thing about the engine in the back. You mentioned that it was no surprise that this engine would come in because it's being tested on the race team in the IMSA series. How is that working? Like, how do you get the race insights to come into the production car?

SHAD BALCH: We have a development team that works on this car right alongside the racing team. So every component is developed at the same time, and our engineers knew that this car was coming back when we were unveiling the Stingray. So they were already working on this in parallel with what the race team was doing.

So if you look back, you could see when we started making public announcements about Stingray, when we started to show the race car, and what we couldn't confirm was that all of this is what was going to lead to right now, which is where this is. But that's how you do it. You keep the teams working in concert, in parallel.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: So last question here. You know, as things sort of change in the auto world and customer tastes have changed, how has the Corvette sort of survived? You know, as car people, we're very excited it's here, but how do you make it work for GM, you know, financially? But also I guess there's a marketing angle to it too, right? Is that kind of what the analysis is? That's why this car exists.

SHAD BALCH: Oh, absolutely. I mean, Corvette is very important to the Chevrolet brand. It is the longest nameplate of a car ever. It goes back all the way to the very beginnings of what developed Chevrolet into what it is, which is a full-line product offering.

This certainly is the halo. This is what brings people into the showroom. This is something that is-- it's in the American lexicon. You know, this is America's sports car, and we're very proud of it, and it's just-- it's not going anywhere.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Right, and I don't think I'm going anywhere. I'm going to sit in this car the whole time.

Karina, back over to you. Shad Balch, thanks so much.

SHAD BALCH: Thank you.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: OK, that was fascinating. Quite insightful.