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| HMD: Who was the architect behind the project? Was it you? Someone else?… it would be great to put a name on this guy you know? RC: Well, the system was the design of a very fine young fellow – the Chief Engineer –Tim Good. If you’ve ever seen the Callaway SledgeHammer videotape, he stars there. HMD: The project “SledgeHammer” was that Corvette Twin Turbo, am I right? RC: Right, right that's it… Tim Good was the director of the department, the chief engineer. We never had an individual that was just a turbo systems architect. The design for the Alfa system was one that reflected our past racing experiences. My contribution, typically, is from a schematic-design point of view. On this project, I suggested packaging the intercooler on top of the engine and as part of the intake manifold: It was an aircraft trick from the Thirties. But the design was a collective effort between engineering , fabrication , Alfa, and to some extent what looked good.. One of the debates we were having was over placing the intercooler at the front of the car. Normally you put the turbochargers low in the engine compartment, it’s more accepted engineering. You almost never put turbos high up in the engine, but putting them up high does make a powerful visual statement. Typically the exhausts are low, and for the exhaust to run out towards the rear of the car, the turbo wants to be low, in that line, between the exhaust ports and the catalysts. On the other hand, an intercooler needs to be exposed to air for it to continue cooling. And, so the two ideals were at odds with each other. If we were to put the intercooler at the front of the car, the turbos would have more volume to compress and more turbo lag. If we packaged the intercooler close up, we could still expose the intercooler to the wind and also decrease charge air volume. That’s why we replaced the GTV6’s plenum with an intercooler. I believe the design was not only quite attractive, but it resolved the issues nicely. I think the biggest problem we had with this project was the hood scoop! Being made of fiberglass by some barely qualified vendor HMD: The hood scoop is surprisingly heavy. It’s not just fiberglass is it? It’s got to have some metal in it. RC: No. Its only fiberglass HMD: Help me understand something with the design. Did it concentrate on turbo spooling, overall performance, or was cost also an issue? RC: Cost was always an issue, but it was not the first issue. Performance was still the criterion, but more than anything else it had to work, it had to be exciting to drive. Second to that, it had to look great! When you opened up the hood, you had to say WOW! HMD: What were the exhaust headers fabricated out of? RC: 304 Stainless steel, the best at the time, hand fabricated and hand welded. Done today, it would be 321 Stainless. HMD: How did the program end? RC: Alfa gave us an option that, after a year of production, we would review the status of the project; to determine exactly how we would proceed with the program… if in fact we were going to proceed at all. Alfa was struggling. None of their models were selling well, and they hadn’t met their projections. We knew the Milano was coming, but we had no idea if that could save them. It was a very tricky thing. The distributor came to us and said, “Why don’t you build and continue to sell the Twin Turbo on your own? We’ll service and continue to sell you the cars… no problem. Keep the project going. So that’s what the deal was. Instead of selling the Callaway Alfas to the distributor or the dealerships, we’d be selling direct to the dealers. Discussions continued about the possibility of Callaway warranting the whole vehicle. When you warranty all of those things you have lots of potential issues like wiring and other problems. I think the ARI warranty was something like 36 months for the entire car. That was fine, but 36 months of warranty from us was not practical. So, at that point we knew there would be no way for us to administer that warranty, and we declined. We had enough inventory to build 5 to 6 more Twin Turbos, so I said, “let’s build ‘em out, and stop.” HMD: So, is that when the two or three Milanos were made? RC: We made two or three Milanos, I think to see if we could extend the ‘life’ of the current pieces we had already designed. We then saw that this was going to take a redesign, and we opted out. If the standard GTV6 pieces were going to fit, then we would have considered making a Twin Turbo for the new Milano. But c’est la vie. HMD: Obviously, at the point of making two or three, you guys decided not to move forward?… RC: Well, it wasn’t that simple. I think what really happened was a matter of timing. One of the Alfas wound up going to the GM Corvette proving grounds. HMD: They maintain that the GTV6 Turbo blew the doors off the Corvette on the track, that they were quite impressed… RC: No. I’m sure that the Callaway Alfa was perhaps just the equal of the 1985 Corvette. Chevrolet’s job was to investigate competitive cars, at comparable prices to the Corvette. These people would buy vehicles that are of competitive value, and keep them there at their proving grounds for market comparisons and evaluations. It was typical War Room Strategy So, here was the Callaway Twin Turbo Alfa, that somebody at GM had enough foresight to, I guess by reading the articles and specs, to say, “Here’s our Corvette being outperformed by a ‘sports sedan’. So, they bought a Callaway GTV6. They brought it to the proving grounds, they tested it. They verified the performance numbers, then they said, “Yep, it sure does go.” Here was an in-house product evaluation team operating within Chevrolet to evaluate other competitor cars, independent from us. At that point, we’d had about 16 Alfa Callaways already built and sold. Chevrolet then said, “Hey, Callaway’s’ program with Alfa has been successful. We could build a Twin Turbo Corvette as well as the four cam LT5 .” HMD: Who said that? RC: It was Dave McClellan. He was one of the best engineers that Detroit ever produced. He was the guy that replaced Zora Arkus Duntov Corvette’s first great engineer. And then GM called us, sometime later, I think it was towards the end of 1985 and said, “We have an Alfa that you guys made here, and it performed very well, would you like to talk about a Twin Turbo Corvette?” HMD: That’s AWESOME!! So, it was truly the Alfa that made GM land on your lap. RC: It shows that the basic thinking was correct in the first place, which was, you simply won’t get the next job unless the last job is excellent. So, we’ll be forever grateful to Don Black and ARI, who were all ‘making’ us do the Alfa project, and McClellan, which got us the Twin Turbo Corvette program. HMD: Stan Fisher’s article indicated that there were about 35 Twin Turbos made… is that true? AlfaCentro would like to thank Reeves Callaway for shedding light on the genesis of the legendary Callaway Twin Turbo GTV6. | ||||||
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