It’s Tuesday. Now here’s something you don’t see every day! It’s called Gigantar and it’s coming to the Illinois Rock & Roll Museum in Joliet, Illinois! Standing 24-feet tall, the Gigantar is the world’s largest hand-crafted guitar and will be mounted to the front of the Illinois Rock & Roll Museum when it arrives on January 20th. It’s currently on it’s way up Route 66 making stops along the way for photo opportunities. You can check on its progress on the museum’s facebook page.
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About Gigantar
The Heritage Corridor CVB was instrumental in assisting the Illinois Rock & Roll Museum on Route 66 secure a grant from the Illinois Department of Commerce & Economic Opportunity for a sculpture to be fabricated and mounted on the outside of our building at 9 W. Cass Street in Joliet. That sculpture, so named Gigantar by Shannon MacDonald World’s Greatest Beatles Artist, because the sculpture is a 24′ tall guitar, is in the final stages of completion and it is ready to head to her new home at 9 W. Cass Street in downtown Joliet.
Legacy Express Trucking will leave Freehold New Jersey on January 14th to bring Gigantar home with a team from the museum documenting the trip. Gigantar will stop along the way for a few photo opportunities on January 15th & 16th especially during the last leg of the trip traveling from Springfield to Joliet, IL along Route 66.
Follow Gigantar’s adventure on the Illinois Rock & Roll Museum on Route 66 Facebook & Instagram pages. #ilrr66gigantar and share your photos with us.
Gigantar’s adventure has been made possible by the Illinois Department of Economic Opportunity, Heritage Corridor CVB, Legacy Express Trucking, Old National Bank, and D’Arcy Buick GMC.
It’s Monday. We have nothing but rain in the forecast so it’s going to be one of those wet gloomy days. Yes, it’s still the middle of winter but with temperatures in the 40s we’ll be seeing rain instead of the horrid white stuff. Certainly not what we’re used to in mid January, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.
2024 Corvette E-Ray
It’s Wednesday. Hot damn tamale, baby! Chevrolet officially reveals the first hybrid Corvette—The 2024 Corvette E-Ray!
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2024 Chevy Corvette E-Ray first ride: iconic sports car look with an electric surge
It only took 70 years for the Corvette to find a little space for an electric motor. The new E-Ray is the first hybrid version of the eighth-generation sports car and the first to feature all-wheel drive.
It’s been 70 years since the first Corvette made its debut at GM’s Motorama in New York City, and to celebrate, Chevy is giving its flagship sports car a unique makeover: its very first hybrid gas-electric motor.
The 2024 Corvette E-Ray — heavily teased and accidentally leaked over the past year — was revealed today in Manhattan, just a stone’s throw from where the first model, then known as the EX-122, made its first public appearance while dressed in polo white with a red bucket seat interior trim.
In contrast, the E-Ray presents more as an undersea submersible than a weekend cruiser, with a metallic blue exterior and a body shape reminiscent of its aquatic namesake, the Stingray. You could hunt sharks in this thing.
This is by design, of course. The E-Ray is meant to usher in a new era for Corvette, including an all-electric version sometime later this year. GM is barreling toward its goal of electric-only sales by 2040, and Chevy is leading the charge, with electric versions of the Silverado, Blazer, and Equinox coming soon — and now the Corvette.
But rather than go full-electric right out of the gate, Chevy decided to ease its customers into the world of battery-propelled propulsion with the E-Ray. Sports car customers are a bit finicky, placing a premium on loud exhaust noise and the digestive rumblings of a V-8 engine. An all-electric Corvette may have generated similar bouts of existential dread as Ford did when it decided to slap the pony logo on its Mustang Mach-E.
But times, they are a-changing, or so I’m told. And Chevy sees an opportunity, especially in surging demand for electric vehicles.
“I think it’s really timely for the market right now,” said Harlan Charles, product marketing manager for Corvette. “The demands that a sports car has, both for the street and track capability, this is really the best solution.”
When the E-Ray goes on sale later this year, it’ll start at $104,2954 for the 1LZ coupe and $111,2954 for the 1LZ convertible model. Both prices include delivery charges. And production will take place at GM’s Bowling Green Assembly facility in Kentucky.
We’ve already gotten the broad strokes about what makes the E-Ray unique. In addition to the first hybrid engine, the E-Ray is also the first Corvette to get all-wheel drive. Coupled with a set of all-season tires, a brand-new wheel design, and Brembo carbon ceramic brakes, Chevy hopes that the E-Ray will be the first Corvette to avoid going into storage during the winter months.
You’re going to need those brakes when putting the E-Ray to the test. The front-axle electric motor will put out 160 horsepower, while the 6.2-liter small block V-8 engine will produce 495 horsepower, giving the sports car a total of 655 hp and 585 pound-feet of torque — enough to propel the E-Ray from 0–60 mph in a little more than two seconds. That front-axle motor gets its electrons from a 1.9 kWh battery pack which is located in the structural tunnel between the seats.
And while that’s not enough battery capacity for any meaningful electric-only driving, the E-Ray still offers a Stealth Mode for street driving. (Chevy hasn’t said what the range of Stealth Mode is, but it likely won’t be more than a couple miles.) The E-Ray isn’t a plug-in hybrid, which means its battery regains energy through regenerative braking, as well as coasting and normal driving.
There are six drive modes: Tour, Sport, Track, Weather, My Mode, and Z-Mode — all of which feature a tailored amount of electric assist. Drivers can also select the Charge Plus feature to maximize the battery’s state of charge.
Inside, the instrument cluster and infotainment displays have been adapted to provide a range of useful information related to the e-motor. Chevy has added three new display layouts: Gauges, which conveys dynamic power output from the electric motor and V8 engine; Dyno, which provides a graph of the vehicle’s power / torque across selectable time intervals; and Data, which showcases the electrical system’s performance and efficiency.
Other than that, most of what you’ll find inside the E-Ray is comparable to the current, gas-only Corvette, also known as the C8, a reference to this being the eighth-generation version of the sports car. “You know, the C8 portfolio had a really nice interior so we didn’t see a need to redo it,” said Cody Bulkley, Corvette’s performance engineer and the amiable driver of the cherry red E-Ray I got to ride in last week. “We just complimented it,” he added.
The all-wheel-drive system applies additional power to the front wheels during “spirited driving” or low-traction conditions. That’s sure to give drivers an extra boost of confidence, not only while driving during inclement weather conditions but also on the racetrack. This was a goal of the Corvette design team when engineering the E-Ray, Bulkley said.
As we drove over a cobblestoned street to demonstrate the suspension tuning, he warned me that I was about to feel the “exhilarating” combination of gas and battery-powered propulsion. There was just enough room on the busy West Side Highway for a burst of acceleration, and, boy, did it. The E-Ray roared to life — the V-8 was not shy about letting its presence known — and I let out an involuntary cackle while swallowing several curse words.
The E-Ray has a wider stance than the Stingray (about 3.6 inches in total) while retaining the tire sizes found on the current Z06, which will be indispensable in delivering all that torque put out by the hybrid powertrain. But it’s not all borrowed: the lightweight alloy wheels have a twisted five-spoke star design that is exclusive to the E-Ray.
“If people wanted to move up from, say, the Stingray, we kind of forced them into more track-oriented motorsports style cars,” Charles said. “This is still a Corvette, so people are going to want all the performance, but this is a more high-tech, refined way of getting there.”
Interested buyers will have 14 exterior colors to choose from, including a trio of colors brand new to Corvette: riptide blue, seawolf gray, and cacti. They can also opt for a body-length racing stripe in Riptide Blue if they want to indulge their sportier side.
A peek under the hood will reveal a surprisingly spacious frunk, complete with one power outlet. There’s further storage in the rear, but let’s be real: as much as Chevy wants this to be your daily driver, this is not the car you take out for a grocery run. This is for carving up canyons or doing laps at the local track.
Or, as Bulkley put it, “The ultimate car that people can get into and not be scared of.”
This is a sports car in every sense. The Corvette name has been synonymous with performance for 70 years. And with the arrival of the E-Ray, an interesting new chapter in that story has just begun.