Yahoo Autos It's the perfect time for a Corvette sub-brand, because the true Corvette is dead
Last year, as a favor to a friend, I took a 2021 Chevrolet Corvette on a three-week, 4,000-mile road trip. I discovered Detroit-style pizza and Maryland crab cakes. I found Texas has a ton of dry precincts. I saw Memphis surrenders its highways at night to Dodge Chargers doing eight times the speed of sound. And I realized that now — or soon, according to rumor — is the perfect time for GM to turn Corvette into a sub-brand of various body styles. Because the most important thing I learned during that trip is this:
The C8 isn’t a Corvette.
Is the C8 Corvette a terrific car? Yes. Do I have a few small grumbles? Yes. Can those grumbles be heard over 6.2 liters of Team America dynamite? No. In fact, the C8 is such combustible fun it deserves to be spread among new body styles.
I am only saying it’s not a Corvette. Meaning, it has sacrificed almost everything that made the Corvette an American icon, the antithesis of a certain German icon Corvette owners historically loved to pour ketchup on. And I know this because I own a 2001 Corvette Z06, which is a Corvette.
My first argument: Price. MSRP comparison has always been the go-to shock-and-awe attack on every coupe boasting similar performance. It’s the correct tactic as well, scoring the first three points. Not only did the ‘Vette win the MSRP limbo, the cost showed that the guy and gal down at the plant or the lower managerial cubicle gopher could save their money and get a Corvette in the driveway in not too long. Why pay more, they’d ask, when you could get better performance and more room and cheaper, easier maintenance for less? “And then,” they’d say, “we’ll beat that foreign junk all day in the quarter!”
Those days are almost gone.
I’ll start by giving kudos to GM’s restraint with Stingray pricing. The Stingray MSRP has gone up $4,505 in three years. When less interesting models are increasing by that much in a single year, The General deserves credit.
Here’s the yin of that. The MSRP of a 2001 Corvette was about $48,000. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the inflation-adjusted price is $67,586. (The 2023 Stingray starts at $64,500.) Here’s the yang. A Z06 cost about $56,000 in 2001. The inflation-adjusted price is $80,631. The MSRP spread in 2001 currency was $8,000. The inflation-adjusted spread is $13,000. With today’s Z06 starting above $105,000, the spread is $41,000.
It took from 1953 to 2009 to get a Corvette trim over the six-figure barrier, the ZR1. The three remaining trims stayed behind to defend the five-figure argument. Some very expensive tables have turned since then. The new E-Ray, which replaces the Grand Sport trim, starts above $100,000. Already, double the number of Corvettes live above $100,000 as live below. It’s only going to get worse for the not-yet-tycoon-or-influencer. The ZR1 trim is expected to be a double-boosted Z06, its MSRP perhaps another year of mortgage payments beyond the low-six-figure Z06 and E-Ray.
Then there’s the rumored 1,000-horsepower hybrid rumored to be called the Zora. Forget about the price, it will be cheaper to buy a new Z06 than pay the ADM on this one. And with it, come 2025 or 2026, there will be four Corvette trims that cost more than $100,000 compared to one trim below — and that one trim will be closer to $100,000 than it is now.
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