Corvettes on You Tube

Top Five Corvette You Tube Videos

(Plus a Few Extra)

By Paul Pollock
Publisher, The Corvette Story

Here are, after a minimal amount of research, my choices for the top Corvette Videos on You Tube.

I'm including this video mostly because I am not a fan of burn outs and burn out videos. If you wanna impress me, take it to a racetrack and show me your times for the day. But hey, that's just me.

What happens here is the owner wants to send the rear tires of his 2007 Z06 to their demise by doing a burn out. But something goes very wrong and the tires don't move a bit but prodigious amounts of smoke exit from the rear of the car. Turns out he has saved his tires by destroying his clutch!

What's the clutch job for a C6 Z06, it's gotta be north of $3,000. As one commenter said: "More money than brains!". Also note the person with the video camera walks in front of the car a couple of times, not something I would do as the car could have easilty lurched forward. Not a lot of brain power in that crowd.

This has nothing to do with Corvettes but it cracks me up. Love that dry British humor!

There is some bias in this choice as the video was recorded by yours truly. It was taken during the ZR1 Los Angeles reveal.

I got the chance to talk with Tadge and he told me that he was not aware that he would be asked to do a talk and so was a bit unprepared. He still did a good job, I think. At the end I told him I was a '68 owner and asked what he thought of the vintage Corvettes. I could see him going into corporate public relations mode, he thought about it for a bit and replied "The best Corvette is the next Corvette." A class act all the way.

There are some cringe-worthy aspects of this video, starting with the speedometer displaying 55 mph. But it is the authentic real-deal and it does, for better or worse, take you back to the early 1980s. It's will only take only one minute and 29 seconds of your life, so it's not that much of a sacrifice.

OK, the C4 Corvette is not viewed positively by some in the Corvette community, which I've always thought to be unfair. The problem seems to be that it is often compared to the C5 (introdced in 1997) which was a huge leap in terms of performance and engineering; many of its innovations are still part of the current C7 generation.

Another thing not understood by many is that it replaced the C3 (last produced in 1982), whose chassis dates back to 1963. When compared to the C3, the C4 did offer significant improvements.

This is the official Chevrolet C4 Engineering video. If you look closely in some of the shots, you'll see different wheels than what was shipped in production C4s. The same wheels apparently were considered for production and you'll sometimes see them mounted on the sole 1983 at the Corvette museum.

In 1989 the struggling VH1 music channel needed viewers. They came up with an amazing solution: Give away 36 Corvettes - one of every year in production.

Artist Peter Max purchased the Corvettes for an art project and they became known as the "Peter Max Corvettes". But they languished in various New York City garages, becoming the subject of Corvette lore in recent years.

This video tells that story of one of the most bizarre and successful advertising campaigns ever. It's well researched and accurate with the only drawback being you'll have to listen to a pitch for a computer VPN product. But that's OK, everybody has to make a buck somehow.

For further information on this amazing Corvette story, see the Hemmings and New York Times articles.

There's a program on the Science Channel called How It's Made: Dream Cars. It features awesome cars and how they are built; typically Aston-Martins, Ferrari, even the C7 was featured. I watch it as I do get some insight into modern car production. But the production is just awful. It features a cheesy rock-n-roll guitar soundtrack and a super condescending narration that sounds like a commercial.

This video is different. There are no technical explanations. It consists of scenes from the production line, showing robots and humans going about their duties.

Hollywood production types might claim that "Most people would consider this boring" and not tune in. But I liked it!

This is the number one Corvette You Tube video. It may be because it features two passions of mine: Space Race history and Corvettes. You'll note that it features a 2011 ZR1, another good reason to like it.

The race track footage at the end ties it up nicely. The funny thing is that the tail-happiness of the ZR1 exiting the turn at the end shows how not to do a fast lap on a race track. But it sure looks good!