C6 Corvette review/Top Gear needs to get its facts straight!

http://www.sleepy-fish.com/sleepy/Top_Gear_Corvette_lo.wmv

They keep saying it has leaf spring suspension. It doesnt! It has a transverse leafspring, not leaf spring suspension! It has upper and lower A arms with monotube shocks. I think top gear just wanted to badmouth the american car, even though it was one of the faster cars around their track.

 

I agree they wanted to badmouth it, but what is your argument again? It clearly uses a transverse plastic leaf spring to hold the car up.

 

They said it has leaf spring suspension, which implies that each wheel is suspended by a leaf spring and a shock absorber, but this is not the case with the corvette. It has a transverse leaf spring which is far different. Also, i have never heard of a car with independent rear suspension having leaf spring suspension.
Below you can see a picture of leaf spring suspension. Below that is a drawing of the C6 rear suspension which i cut out of a cutaway drawing.
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The corvette has used that same design for at least 20 years. By now, it must be the only car to use any kind of leaf spring - so I consider the it to use a leaf spring suspension (albeit quite sophisticated) as much as any truck.

 

I drove one the other day and I have NO IDEA how they have the NSX beating it in a drag race unless the guy driving is awful at launching the car. Having just driven both here in the past month I can say that there is no way the Vette is slower at anything the the NSX. Good old Brits sure did a lot of hating on the car but in the end just like always its damn fast. To my amazement ahead of a GT3 on that board they have.

 

GT3 time was in the wet. Oh, and Top Gear should be seen as entertainment. Not "journalism". The drag race was obviously the most staged thing ever. It's obviously the clips they used weren't from the same run (one of the clips actually shows the C6 behind the TVR but the NSX is nowhere to be seen). Not to mention they have multiple drivers and didn't mention times.

 

When the stag drove the vett, he was all over. I don't think he practiced with that car at all, its an awsome car. The latest one, they are putting down the new porsche. So they don't care they are just haters.

 

Or maybe you just dont know how to really drive the NSX.

Nonetheless, I would imagine in a drag race the NSX would lose to a C6 9/10 times. It really depends on the driver. With all the TQ the vette will spin its tires all over, while the NSX will just go.

 

Look at Tim's pic again.

 

That is um.. sorta the point. If you have a good driver, he will always do better in the Corvette than he would do in the NSX. The C6 is simply a faster car in a straight line. I would also tend to believe it is a faster car in the corners.

Meanwhile it did 1:26.8 on their little track... and it did that with the absolute sloppiest lap they have ever done around their track. I wouldn't be surprised if that time could of been somewhere in the high 1:24s to just under 1:26. Either way it competes with the Gallardo at 1:25.8. And that means whatever suspension it uses, whatever engine it uses, it is up-to-date.

Technology may be "old" but then the technology behind a pistol is old and it will still kill you. Meanwhile the corvette may be "old technology" but it will still destroy "more advanced" cars around the track. When it comes down it the more advanced technology is the one that goes around the track faster. And by that measure the corvette is quite advanced technology.

 

That's a big problem with this video journalism actually. We don't know if the time they quoted actually belonged to the lap they showed. No way in hell they only do one run for the lap time.

 

Have you driven a new Vette...you could bog it off the line and just pull through the gears and beat a bone stock NSX in the 1/4. The NSX I have driven multiple times is a computech supercharged car and I know that on the g-tech she is 4.3 0-60 and 12.7 1/4 with me driving or the owner. The new Vette is easily that fast bone stock. My logic then concludes there is no way a stock NSX is going to beat a stock vette. Just my 2cents.

 

Jeremy clarkson just hates anything american, period. he'll bash america every chance he gets. i'm suprised he actually bought a GT.

 

You shouldn't be surprised... you should just admit you were wrong when you said he hated American cars.

 

I'm guessing you've watched the program to be making these kinds of comments. In which case you should know their times dont mean ****.

For god sake they class the weather as dry, wet or very wet. Take no account of wind conditions. Probably dont care about the fuel in the car (amount or type). Check if they got the stock tyres or the manufacturer pulled a fast one and put track tyres on the car. Who knows if this weeks stig is the same as last weeks. I could go on forever.

Find some more reliable figures if you want to know how good the car is over the twisties.

And Clarkson's hates and dislikes change constantly. They have little to do with the nationality of a car, but more to do with the piece he's doing at the time. For gods sake the man gave the H2 a good review.

Personally I hate the new top gear format. The original format had the right balance of Journalism/Entertainment. You got to see the cars for more then 10% of the program. And they pioneered the sarcastic/witty/informative/truthfull analysis genre in a way no one else has managed to replicate.

Rant over, thanks for reading

 

I've seen this episode, it's one of the few top gear episodes I've seen, and it made me want to puke how much it was trying to be like "TRL" on Mtv. The only thing that would have made that episode worse was the inclusion of Carson Daly.

 

Please. Have you actually seen his reviews or read his articles? Here is a recent article he wrote about the C6. I'll just give you part of the first page where he blatently writes how he feels about americans and the US.



August 29, 2004

Corvette C6
By Jeremy Clarkson of The Sunday Times
A vulgar plastic pram - I love it






There is a great deal in the news these days about the forthcoming election in America, in which an incoherent man with eyes that are suspiciously close together is up against a man with an enormous chin. Why? We aren’t treated to daily updates from the elections in Lesser Micronesia, or Holland, so why are we inundated with every last utterance from these super-buffoons?

A cynic might say that the newspapers and television stations maintain permanent offices in America and need to keep the staff employed with something. A more rational person would explain that this is more than a national election. It’s a plebiscite to decide who becomes leader of the free world.



Okay, well if this is the case: if he really will be my leader, why can’t I have a vote? Why should I leave the choice to a bunch of tobacco-chewing backwoodsmen who aren’t even bright enough to mark the voting papers properly?

I mean it. If the president of the United States really does think he’s the leader of the free world, then the free world should have a say in who gets the job. That’s me, you, every Indian, every Russian, every German. And yes, every Iraqi too. All of us.

But no; our fate is in the hands of a people whose IQ is generally smaller than their waistbands. A people who’ve trawled their 263m citizens and come up with Bush and super-chin as the alternatives. A people whose soldiers wear sunglasses while trying to defuse trouble on the streets of Baghdad. You’re not Jean-Claude Van Damme, you idiots. Take them off. Let them see your eyes. Or are you like the president? Do you only have one?

As a sort of protest about everything, but the sunglasses thing most of all, my wife recently decided to purge everything American from the house.

At first, I suspected this would be a long and painful task that would send us back to the Dark Ages, but do you know what? Most of the electrical equipment is from Japan, or Germany. The furniture is largely Italian or British. And pretty well everything else was made in China.

All I could find that bore the legend “Made in America” was my toothbrush, which makes you wonder what they’re all doing over there, apart from cleaning their teeth.

Computer software seems to be the answer. Because so far as I can tell, my laptop’s brain is just about the only American-made household product that I simply couldn’t do without.

Out in the drive, however, it’s a different story. We have a Ford Focus, which is American, a Volvo XC90, which is American, and next March I will take delivery of a Ford GT, which has a British steering rack, a British gearbox and Italian brakes. But I know I’m fooling myself. That’s American too. And so is the subject of this week’s column. The new Corvette C6.

It’s billed, like all previous Vettes, as a sports car to rival the best from Europe, and I hope you don’t mind if I snigger politely at this point.

America has never really made a sports car, because while we were hanging it out to dry on Welsh moorland roads, or Alpine passes, they were racing between the lights on Telegraph Road. And for that, you don’t need a pin-sharp turn-in. You need muscle.

And that, contrary to what you may have been told, is what the Vette’s always been about: it’s a car so pumped up on steroids, it would be unable to make a drugs test without falling off its motorcycle. It’s a car with arms like Schwarzenegger but a penis like a shrivelled-up little acorn.

I once span an early incarnation of the previous Corvette off the road while charging round the only bend in Arizona. But no ticket was forthcoming from the attending police officer because, in his words, “these things spin so damn easy, you could park one outside a store, and when you came out it’d be facing the other way”.

http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,12529-1235587_1,00.html

 

Man Clarkson is a winner...I always just marvel at the people that think all great cars come from Europe, or the twisty roads of England. To bad for the past years no one by American cars have dominated LeMans from 99-2004(C5R and Vipers) with the exception of 2003.

I just dont understand why they are so anti-vette over there as they are one hell of a car for 60k. From what I have seen on the new Z06 it will eat almost ever car out there alive. 500bhp+ from a 7.0...its going to be a hell of a car with amazing torque. If Clarkson wants to throw it out when getting rid of his American stuff he can throw it to me.

 

There is no way. The NSX had more than its fair share of trouble trying to eek its way by an LS1 equipped C5.

Just look at the trap speeds, your talking a good 8 to 10mph difference between the C6 and the NSX, that's more than a give away right there. Hell an average of 104 to 106mph for the NSX... I'v seen bone stock 03/04 Mustang Mach1's trap that, so I know there's no way in hell an NSX is going to even hold a candle to the C6. It's not like were talking about unskilled drivers here either.

All in all, the minute I would have read that crap, I would have tossed the mag in the garbage, because thats where garbage belongs, or flipped the channel as soon as I could reach the remote, that's for sure.

 

Off subject but what does your name stand for?

 

Have you actually seen his reviews and read his articles? Because it appears your being very selective.

If you search through some more of his articles you'll find him praising the GT or the H2. Going on about some American myth based cliche BS vis a vie cruising route blah blah

And then a few weeks later you'll find he's slaughtering the 911 and Germans. Then you'll find him singing the praises of the boxster and German engineering.

Infact he often slags off the British car industry too (not that theirs much left).

Point is he's a satirical journalist. If he's going to do a negative article, he'll make negative comments about everything associated with the topic. If he's going to do a positive article the reverse will be the case.

If he hates Americans and American cars so much, why is he buying a GT? Why does he sing the praises of the Focus?

 

I don't see him calling germans or his fellow brits as having "people whose IQ is generally smaller than their waistbands." Did you read the article? With the exception of his cars, he is protesting american products. I don't know why you guys are defending him when I'm just saying exactly what he's published.

 

The Focus is a European Ford car.

 

I like the point you made. Even if the technology is dated, if it's applied successfully what does it matter?

 

I agree. Even using the word "dated" is often misrepresentative though. DOHC/OHC is older than OHV. Yet the former is considered "more technologically advanced". Successful (utility per dollar) application is the hallmark of great technology.