I knew this 40+ years ago. I was a cc transfer (alas, to a decent but not super selective university). I was in a tough major and saw a lot of classmates wash out in the first year of cc, but those who didn’t tended to do very well as transfers.
I don’t have the data to support what I observed. I do recall studies showing that students who transferred from my cc to our state flagship (UIUC) had higher GPA’s in the final 2 years than those who were there from freshman year on. I would have kept those articles if I had thought about it 
Despite a lot of people’s disdain for cc’s, they do attract some number of students who are very academically talented and ambitious.