[VIDEO] Hagerty Interviews Retired Corvette Ride and Handling Engineer Jim Mero

English aficionados may have spotted an irregularity (or several, who knows?) in Quick Shifts this weekend, specifically on third gear which was dubbed “isolation interviews” but only contained a single digital sit-down between the fine folks at SportsCar365.com and Corvette Racing Driver, Tommy Milner.

The column originally featured a second link to the Hagerty Media site but we decided that their video guest deserved a standalone shout out on your favorite Corvette blog.

The interviewee was none other than recently retired Corvette Ride and Handling Vehicle Dynamics Engineer, Jim Mero who was appropriately referred to by Hagerty as The Corvette ‘Ringmeister.

The hour-long livestream occurred on Friday and if you have that kind of time on your hands this week, we strongly recommend giving it a watch/listen.

Apart from highlighting what a great guy Jim is, a host of interesting topics are covered. Guidance counselor moment: any overachieving high schoolers out there should pay extra attention as Mr. Mero talks about how he got to the point of driving Corvettes for a living. College majors, getting into racing, and the “irregular” and often lucky path that he took through GM on his way to working the dream job on team Corvette are all covered in the opening minutes, take notes!

Jim goes on to talk about GM’s best tech, mag ride, along with other interesting topics like “what exactly is handling?” the ‘Ring (and its engineering and driving challenges), his relentless quest to break the 7-minute barrier, the unfortunate events that transpired during that quest, a bit of C8 development and “administration change,” and the value of the “modern classics” as brought up by new C5 owner and interviewer, Larry Webster before opening up for questions from original listeners at about the halfway mark.

Check out the full interview here and prepare to not only learn something but to get an exciting glimpse behind the scenes of all the work that goes into creating our favorite cars.

Source:
hagerty.com

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