[VIDEO] Corvette’s Tadge Juechter and Kirk Bennion Talk about the C7 Corvette at Petit Le Mans

Oct 23, 2012

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On Saturday morning, October 20th, Corvette’s Chief Engineer Tadge Juechter and Corvette’s Exterior Designer Kirk Bennion spoke at the Corvette Corral at Petit Le Mans. Tadge emphasized that the C7 is a totally new Corvette while Kirk Bennion spoke about the design and characteristics of the C7 Corvette logo that was unveiled earlier in the week.

Tadge brought with him the new logo and reiterated his points from Thursday’s Petit Le Mans press conference that this is an all new Corvette and that only two parts (not including screws, bolts and other fasteners used in manufacturing) are being carried over from the C6 Corvette.

Kirk Bennion then took his turn on the mic (and with the National Anthem playing in the background), he described how doing the cross flag work internally in Design was a “big deal”. Kirk said, “When you look at the cross flags it isn’t just the emblem on the car, its kind of evolved to where now it’s part of our ads, it’s part of the apparel, it’s used in so many different ways on the car that we have to think about all of that when we are designing it.”

Bennion described the new logo being faster looking and said that it was heavily influenced by logo used by the US Air Force which features a set of swept-back wings as well. Another important aspect was to make the logo more dimensional, with a more refined and expensive look because the logo is the iconic symbol for that generation of car.

Finally, Kirk ends his segment with this tidbit about how the logo will be featured on the C7 Corvette: “Even the way this badge fits on the next car is going to be a little bit more unique to what you’ve seen in the past as well.”

Here is the video from Saturday Morning’s C7 seminar at Petit Le Mans: