We’re Sure It’s Tadge Juechter on That ZR1 Window, Ma’am, Not Frank Sinatra

With good reason, automotive journalists have explored most every nook and cranny aboard the 1064-horsepower 2025 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 since its global introduction in Miami on Thursday. But there’s something many of them missed, also with good reason: It only takes up about half a square inch, located on a left-hand corner of the ZR1 coupe’s split rear window.

It’s a tiny, round, in-shadow profile portrait of Tadge Juechter, Corvette’s executive chief engineer, who has been working on the Corvette program since 1993 and running it since 2006. Juechter is retiring this summer after 47 years with General Motors.

In the decal, placed next the all-capital-letter mandated legend of the LAMINATED SA ACOUSTIC glass, the portrait looks a little like a 1970s-era Frank Sinatra.

So ZR1 owners may occasionally be called upon by mere civilians to answer the question: “Whose little picture is that on the back of your car?”

And here’s what to say: It’s Tadge Juechter (pronounced Juck-ter, but say it any way you want, they won’t know the difference), Corvette’s chief engineer, one of only five since the car debuted in 1953. He took over from Dave Hill, and is being replaced this summer by Tony Roma, who is not the Tony Roma who founded Tony Roma’s, the restaurant chain famous for baby back ribs. That Tony Roma died in 2003. This Tony Roma was chief engineer on the Cadillac Blackwing duo and Celestiq before he got the big movin’-on-up call from the front office.

As for Tadge Juechter, he was born in Laredo, Texas, the son of a fighter pilot. He and his family moved around a lot. He landed at GM’s plant in Lordstown, Ohio, in 1977, likely just in time to see the last Chevrolet Vega roll off the assembly line. He continued to move around within General Motors, until he stopped moving in 1993 because he had been promoted to the Corvette team.

Juechter, who has an MBA from Stanford, joined the Corvette program working alongside Hill, newly minted as Corvette’s chief engineer in 1992. Juechter’s first job at Corvette was the see the C4 out the door, and help create the C5 era, which began in 1997. C5 begat the C6, and C6 begat the C7.

All along, Juechter, who grew up in a Porsche family, had been lobbying for a mid-engine design, and got his wish with Corvette’s eighth generation. It debuted on July 18, 2019, in Tustin, California, inside the U.S. Navy’s atmospheric 17-story wooden blimp hangar, built in 1942, destroyed by fire in 2023, despite all the “no smoking” signs.

After the C8 coupe came the convertible, then the Z06, and the E-Ray. Beginning with the 2025 models, all will get the little Sinatra-looking portrait of Juechter, which Chevrolet calls an “icon of appreciation,” on the front windshield glass and the front tunnel reinforcement panel. Juechter follows Zora Arkus-Duntov, Corvette’s first chief engineer, whose dime-sized portrait, in which he is wearing shades, possibly Ray-Bans, is currently featured on all production Corvette windshields.

The outgoing Juechter should certainly be proud of the ZR1, which is Corvette’s crowning glory—at least till Chevrolet actually builds the long-rumored, pre-legendary Zora model, a name it copyrighted in 2018. But where do you go, after 1064 horses?

As is always the case with Corvette: Stay tuned.