How fucked up the design of Corvette C7 Z06 really is? No changes in 2016 model year are coming.

The seventh generation of Corvette is far from being a pinnacle of automotive design, in fact, +General Motors managed to make the latest generation of plastic fantastic worse than the previous generation, not only not fixing issues present on C6 but adding a mind boggling number of new problems.  The biggest problem with the new problems is the fact that their cause lies in not just shitty design and engineering approach but goes as deep as the CONCEPTUAL DESIGN.

The case in point is the newest "flagship".  The concept of a car surpassing the performance of the previous flagship, ZR1 while retaining capacities of the last "track capable" Corvette, Z06 sounds like a superb concept, especially when the price is supposedly lower than the most expensive Corvette ever.

Sounds good?  Yes, this sounds absolutely fucking divine, especially when the spinmaster in chief, +Tadge Juechter serves it, with plenty of kool aid, quenching automotive thirst of single digit IQ buyers.  Had it not been for the age of information and internet communications, this motherfucker might have been able to get away with this con job but obviously this is not the case.

Problems with Corvette started to surface with Corvette C5, due to the progress in availability of internet and automotive sheep seeking comfort in so called internet forums.  As with anything GM makes, each and every generation of Corvette had its slew of problems and the only difference in the knowledge regarding the problems was the ability to share the information between car owners.

So even with infancy of internet communications, problems with C5 like defective fuel tanks, sending units, faulty ignition switches (haha), piston slap, bubbling vinyl upholstery and on and on emerged.

As it is still GM, the problems with C6 were there as well, with the addition of C6 specific problems like LS7 valve guides, leaky oil pans, etc. plus the carry overs from the previous generation (minus ignition switch problems, haha).

So has anything changed with the current generation of Corvette?  ABSOLUTELY NOT and in fact, things got considerably worse since the design of the car became even more convoluted than before.

So how about the newest flagship?  Never mind the idiocy behind picking the Z06 designation for the car that conceptually was similar to the previous ZR1, what really matters is the fact that unlike with the previous generation, the newest flagship is simply a supercharged version of the base car, instead of being its own separate platform, making the newest flagship closer to the offerings from Callaway and Hennessey than previous Z06 and ZR1.  Although this strategy is understandable from the profit margin angle, it is right down embarrassing and shameful from the performance angle.

So what is the bottom line here?  The bottom line is that this lazy design and engineering approach takes an already flawed design and turns it into even a worse piece of shit.

Here is one of the examples although there are many others but nevertheless, this is a very entertaining one..

As mentioned long time ago, the center tunnel plate incorporated on the base Stingray was outright stupid, further compounded by cramming the exhaust right below the torque tube, literally cooking torque tube bearings and providing stead heat supply to the transmission but... things got considerably worse with the new flagship.  Not only is the same idiotic plate and exhaust location still there but now, there is even more heat, and this time not to just the drivetrain but the engine itself as well, all without incorporating a single measure to extract this extra heat.

A warning to non kool aid drinking readers: note that the heat shield does not exist with the flagship in OEM shape and please disregard the stupidity of the aftermarket genius attempting to build a heat shield and then cramming a heat barrier material directly on the so called engine cooler, the incompetence of the aftermarket deserves separate entries and there is plenty of aftermarket stupidity to last for a long time.

Nevertheless, what is in the picture?  Looks like a catalytic converter (and these suckers can get very hot) right next to the engine oil cooler, rubber cooler lines and nothing less than the engine oil filter.

The oil cooler is a direct carry over from the last ZR1, same oil to coolant, finless design (unlike the previous "real" Z06, air to oil front mounted design).  The design is finless since it cannot get enough air flow to provide adequate heat transfer but still... the cooler needs to have "breathing room" to maintain its efficiency.  Even though this design worked OK on ZR1, there is a big problem here: the engine operating temperatures and coolant temperature are considerably higher than on ZR1 and thus, the efficiency of the cooler takes a giant dive.  To make the matter worse and in exponential fashion, the factory engine software retards the timing on even a rumor of engine knock and when timing is retarded, the car runs even hotter, making shitty situation considerably worse (this is why so called "cooling laps" are useless with the flagship).

To add even more insult to the injury, the rubber cooler lines are exposed to the heat from the CC and that of course means shorter life span for the hoses plus more heat added to the oil. 

To top off this truly fucked up design, the oil filter is there as well, exposed to pretty direct heat, cooking mating gasket, filter cartridge and of course, the oil itself.

Even though there are other factors contributing to high oil temperature, making 300 fucking degrees a norm for the flagship, this is certainly a great contributor to the high engine oil and reliability issues plaguing the new flagship.  Of course, if Tadge and his team were really committed to creating a high performance vehicle instead of one that relied on dyno tests to supply the senile owners with excuse to slap plaques on the car, displaying the hp and tq numbers, all of this could have been avoided but now, it is too late.  The newest flagship is  a lost cause and anything attempting to remediate the symptoms of this failed CONCEPT will fail as well, just because the concept behind this flagship is a failure all on its own.

There will be more regarding the design flaws and non existent engineering, unfortunately.

The best approach to solve the flagship problems for those who actually intend to use their car in accordance with the marketing bullshit  claims is of course to look somewhere else, there is no hope coming from anything related to the new flagship turd.