[VIDEO] Autoweek USA is ‘In The Car’ with Corvette Chief Engineer Tadge Juechter

Corvette Chief Engineer Tadge Juechter chats with Autoweek’s Natalie Neff as part of the website’s “In The Car” series where Autoweek conducts in-car interviews with high ranking officials from various automobile companies. Tadge is his Accelerate Yellow 2020 Corvette Convertible while Natalie is also getting some seat time in a 2020 Corvette Stingray Coupe.

Tadge remarks that it has been over a year since the car has been out and says the passion and interest in the car are still at an all-time high. Calling the C8 Corvette a “pandemic-proof product,” he describes the car’s demand as one of the few consumer products other than toilet paper or cleaning products to be unscathed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of the funny moments in the conversation comes at the beginning when Tadge puts down the top of the Convertible, and we see him say to someone off-camera that he can’t talk right now because he is doing an interview. While talking about the various functions of the convertible including raising or lowering it in 16-seconds at speeds up to 30 mph, Tadge proclaims himself a big fan of the new convertible. “I’ve never been that much of a convertible guy, I am in this car because it’s the best of both worlds.”

The conversation runs through a number of topics ranging from production during the pandemic to designing the car with certain parameters in mind like where to store the removable roof panel, and why there is no manual transmission in the C8. In regards to that last question, Tadge talks about some of the “benefits” that were gained by deleting the third pedal that I haven’t heard discussed previously including additional “structural efficiencies” as well as the ability to mount the gas and brake pedals straight on instead of shifting them inboard to make room for the clutch pedal.

Natalie does sneak in a question about future products like the Z06 and ZR1 and Tadge responds that the race program (Corvette Racing) is a testbed for performance and that what is learned on the track is applied to all Corvettes, and while he can’t talk about any future products, he does go through some of the changes for the 2021 model Corvette announced earlier this summer.

Source:
AutoweekUSA / YouTube

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