Hello Kansas City, and welcome back to the Bespoke Automotive Refinement Podcast. I am your host, Thomas Thill. I am the owner, founder, and operator of Bespoke Refinement, and we just love coming on this podcast every week and talking all things cars, detailing, and Kansas City car detailing.
Excuse me. So today, we are going to be talking about a car that I have, we’ve talked, we’ve discussed this car a lot on the show. We’ve talked about the different nuances of this kind of car, and right now as we sit, I’m staring at one because we just ended up buying one.
The 2006 C6 Z06 Corvette. Now, I’m going to start by making a very bold claim that of all of the Z06s of the C6 generation, the 06 is the best. I’m going to explain why.
So, first of all, in order to understand why I’m making that claim, you have to understand what makes this car already an incredible car for the money. I would venture to say that this is, you know, it’s right at supercar level of being called a supercar. Obviously, when the car came out, you know, it went on the Top Gear track.
It lapped the track quicker than a Pagani Zonda, quicker than a Lamborghini Murcielago, quicker than a Ferrari 430. Like, it was destroying supercars of its era when it came out. The 06 of all of them was the lightest one.
It did not have magnetic ride. It didn’t have the thicker sound deadening and the thicker carpet that came in the 08 to 2013 models. So, the 06 and the 07 are the rawest.
It doesn’t have the TR6060 transmission. It has the T56, which, you know, if you want to no lift shift it, the TR6060 is the better transmission for that. But I’m still convinced that the 06-07 is the best model, the best year of the C6 Z06 because of how light it is.
It’s about 120 pounds lighter if you go with the C, the 1LZ, which only comes with the head-up display of heated seats. It doesn’t come with all the extra leather and all that. So, this is the lightest model.
The one that we ended up buying, it is a Velocity Yellow. It’s actually the second time I’ve owned this car. I bought this car back in 2018, I think it was.
I was 22 years old when I bought it. The car had, like, 20,000 miles on it. It was when these things were, like, bottom of their market.
And I bought it, I daily drove it. I took really good care of it, but I obviously drove it a lot. I put a ton of miles on this car.
Sold it to an awesome gentleman in Wichita, and he ended up having the entire car gone through. They pulled the motor out. They re-sleeved the short block.
Rebuilt everything from the ground up on the engine. Freshened up the transmission. New clutch.
Did a lot to this car. Has different wheels on it. Now it’s got the spider wheels, the C6 spider wheels, which I’m actually a fan of.
And it’s a great car. So, what are my experiences with it in the first week of owning it? Well, to start, I’ll tell you that I’ve already got one kill under my belt with it. We went to a car event.
It was, like, a little pop-up meet about 20 minutes away from here, two nights ago. It was just on the, you know, someone posted on the car spotters group. You know, they’re having a show out in Grand Valley.
And so, I took the car out there, and there weren’t, you know, a whole lot of cars there. There were probably, like, 10 cars out there. And, you know, there was a guy with a 69 Camaro with an LS.
And, you know, it was on bigs and littles. And there was a Hellcat. And the car that pulled in that caught my attention was a 2005 Dodge Viper.
Blue with white stripes. It was, loved it. Ended up becoming friends with the owner while we were there.
But as we were leaving, you know, him and I were both kind of eyeing each other, getting on the highway, like, all right, this is going to happen. So, we waited until we had an open area. We could do a poll.
And we did a 30 roll. And I got to be honest with you. I was not expecting this car to pull the way it did.
It was my first time really going wide open with this car. And second gear pull, you know, I punched it like you would if you were driving a car with 400 wheel horsepower instead of 600 wheel horsepower like this one has now. And it was pretty abrasive.
I mean, it spun all the way through second gear. Grabbed third. It still spun a lot through third.
I’d say about a third of the way through third gear it was still spinning. And I put about three car links on this Viper. So, you know, it’s interesting.
When you’re driving the car, you can obviously feel that it has way more power than it did when it was stock. But seeing it run against a car that, you know, when both these cars were new, were relatively dead even, seeing the differences was pretty impactful. Some of the plans that I have with the car, the big thing that I’ve got in store for it is, well, honestly, I don’t even know.
I started saying that like I knew. I don’t know. But with it being a 20-year-old car, it has some things on it that need updated.
You know, I think the front bumper is probably going to need to be re-sprayed at some point. Front splitter, it’s got the carbon side skirts. It needs the carbon splitter.
So, we’ll do that. Wheels, you know, I really like the design of the wheels. Not too big a fan of the chrome, but it’s kind of starting to grow on me.
So, we’ll see where that ends up. Really, it’s all just aesthetic stuff. I mean, as far as power goes, it was built by Justin Keith with Killer Performance.
So, it’s, I mean, it doesn’t need anything performance-wise because it got one of their biggest packages. So, as far as that goes, the car is pretty well good. I think some aesthetic stuff, wheels, might change the wheels.
Definitely going to do more carbon fiber bits on it because it needs it. And then it does need some paint correction on it and some updates on the ceramic coating. So, well, guys, if you’re looking to book a Kansas City Car Detailing package or a Kansas City Car Detailing service, give us a call at 620-282-0402.
You can also go online to bespokerefinement.com. There, you can check out a list of all of our different Kansas City Car Detailing packages and Kansas City Car Detailing services. If you’re looking to get more information about our Kansas City Car Detailing services, you can email us at info at bespokerefinement.com. You can also check out a list on bespokerefinement.com of all of the different vehicles we’ve worked on that have utilized our Kansas City Car Detailing packages, as well as our Kansas City Ceramic Coating and Kansas City Paint Corrections.