Tadge Juechter and Corvette C7 Stingray 3 mm body panel gaps-another failed promise

Back in 2013, +Tadge Juechter , the clown in charge of Corvette program at +General Motors  made several announcements that turned into a series of conveniently forgotten let-downs and effectively, reinforced his status as a bullshit artist supreme.

Among Juechter's bullshit promises were extra horsepower derived from running the Stingray on ethanol, light weight frame translating into a lighter car and of course, the reduced body panel gaps.

The official story was that in the spirit of competing with European (Porsche specifically) manufacturers and thanks to improved body panel materials, the body panel gaps would not just be consistent but also reduced as well, all the way to 3 mm which is the European standard.

So what happened?  As with ethanol, absolutely nothing happened to prove Juechter's claims.  Furthermore, not only the body panels gaps were not reduced but not even the issue of gap consistency had been resolved. 

Based on the real life examples, if there is a 3 mm gap on the Stingray, it is only as a POINT, not as a consistent distance.  In fact, the inconsistency of the gaps on the new car is so bad that would have a pretty hard time establishing any kind of gap standard on the Stingray.

To make the matters worse, like with the previous generations, the supposedly new body panel material warps as bad in the summer heat as the predecessors. Amazingly enough, the "new" composite seems to expand in the hot weather even worse than the preceding generation

Here is how this works, out in real life