The New C6 Unveiled!
ALL50 Commemorative Brick Revealed at the National Corvette Museum
The C5 Birthday Bash was the annual celebration of the C5 Corvette generation — but in 2004, it came with a major announcement: the next generation was here.
April 23, 2004 was a big day at the National Corvette Museum. Two things happened that Ray had been looking forward to.
First: the C6 Corvette was unveiled. The sixth generation of America's sports car — the successor to the C5 Z06 that had carried Ray across all 50 states — was shown publicly for the first time at the C5 Birthday Bash. The new car represented a significant evolution: sharper styling, a new LS2 engine, and a revised interior. The Corvette community got its first good look at what was coming.
Second: the ALL50 commemorative brick was revealed. The National Corvette Museum's brick program allows Corvette owners and enthusiasts to have their names and messages permanently inscribed in the museum's grounds. Ray had commissioned a brick commemorating the ALL50 road trip — 50 states, 63 days, 22,796 miles — and it was unveiled at the Bash.
The brick was a permanent record of the journey, set in the grounds of the museum where the trip had begun and ended. A fitting tribute.
Photos from the Day
The C6 Corvette — What Came Next
The C6 Corvette went on sale for the 2005 model year. It was lighter, faster, and more refined than the C5 it replaced — and the Z06 version, which arrived for 2006, produced 505 horsepower from a 7.0-liter LS7 engine. Ray's C5 Z06 remained his car, but the C6 represented the next chapter in the Corvette story.
The ALL50 Z06 — a 2003 C5 — had been built in the final year of the C5 generation. In a sense, the trip was a farewell tour for that generation of Corvette, even if Ray hadn't planned it that way.