RedC7AZ

20171LE is clueless.
He bitched, hollered and complained like a 2 year old in another thread, because no 2014 C7 owners have their cars on the market for under $40k, which is where HE thinks the value is at.

jimmyb

Exactly. The C5/C6 shared the same chassis, the C7 chassis is very similar in design but very different in construction (aluminum stampings rather than hydroformed steel, it is both lighter and considerably stiffer). This guy that thinks the C7 is a "warmed over" C5 is crazy and has clearly never driven a C7. I asked him if the current 911 is a "warmed over" 996, of course, he never answered that.

I agree that the C7 to C8 changeover is going to be the largest change over in Corvette's history. I can't wait! But in the meantime, I'll suffer through driving my C7.

Jimmy

PS. This has nothing to do with nothing, but in 2010, I started my own business. I had a 2008 Atomic Orange convertible (I loved that car!) which I sadly had to sell (money was tight and you can't start a business and have an expensive toy sitting in the garage). I missed that car daily, I went without a Corvette until April 2014 when my current C7 came in (ordered in August 2013), so having lived without, I really have no patience for guys like 20171LE and all their silly prognostications. The C5 was a groundbreaking car at the time because of the construction but not without it's issues (anyone that had a C5 can write volumes about the dastardly "Service column lock" that plagued that car. Then we get the 2005 C6 (I had one) with it's fun filled "shift to reverse feature" and the advent of DBS. Folks forget that this was "bad" GM era, my 2005 had 4 DBS episodes in 18 months, and EACH time, the dealer blamed me for not shutting the car down properly! By time I bought my 2008, most of the demons had been fixed (except for the differential clutch plate binding!). Now, I have a 2014 C7, which is much faster, handles much better, has a vastly superior interior, is better looking (IMO), and has been FLAWLESS in terms of reliability. Warmed over my ***!

Jimmy

jimmyb

You would think this guy would understand inflation, supply and demand, and all the other market forces that determine what used (and new) Corvettes sell for. For a guy who claims to have talked to Corvette engineers and executives and owned at least 2 Corvettes (hmmm....), one would think he would have a better handle on how the Corvette market works. Guess not. His math could use some work as well.

Maybe he's DerStieg or Black and White, or.....PeterMJ (YIKES) back to haunt us all.

Jimmy

b4i4getit

Sales have been going down every month. Need proof ? Look at the inventory on dealer lots.

stillcrazy

GM will keep making the C/7 as long as they make a profit. They have a large investment in the C/7 so it will be a few years until they turn a profit.. The C/8 may or may not be a mid engine. GM will make a decision based on profit. If they decide to build a mid engine they will find a way around the regulations.

jimmyb

Sales of cars like Corvette have initial big sales hits with the intro of a new generation, and then taper to their more natural, normal volume.

Rather than "looking at inventory", here are REAL SALES numbers:

Calendar 2014 (First full year of C7): 34,839 units sold
Calendar 2015: 33,329 units sold
Calendar 2016 (Jan 1 - April 30): 9,512 sold (28,536 if you just multiply by 3. One would assume the GS intro would drive a good chunk of business in the last 5 months of 2016, so I would guess 2016 sales will end up at 31,000 - 33,000 units.

And finally, everyone loves to trot out the 911 so January - April 2016, the Porsche has sold 3,182 911's in the U.S. verses 9,512 Corvettes for the same period.

Jimmy

2cnd Chance

I love seeing the obscure and elusive facts.

DaveFerrari458

NO it shouldn't be a Cadillac! It's too early in Cadillac's transformation to come out with a Halo car that happens to be a Sports car! The car will not sell well IMO. Cadillac will get it's Halo Sports car one day but for now they need to work on their sedans and SUV's (and dealerships) to be on par (in perception....not so much in the actual product which is getting pretty good) with the Germans, British and Japanese Rivals.

The current Corvette name is the only brand that can carry such higher priced tags and sell relatively well. Now if they could separate the entire Corvette brand into its own and sell them side by side in better Cadillac dealership?? But that's a separate subject/debate.

Steve_R

You do realize some SUVs and pickups cost more than most C7s, right?

Ford manages to sell the GT without calling it a Mustang or any other existing model name. If that's what an eventual mid-engine GM car is meant to compete with it would be stupid to call it a Corvette.

jcp911s

GM is going through a transformation... once the re-org cleaned out all the useless, clueless, executive dead wood, they have been producing market-leading products...

Decades of p*ssing in their own food bowl will require a generational change in market positioning and perception.

But, they are now consistently putting out quality products... if they can keep it up, they'll get traction.

DaveFerrari458

Sure there are some cars that when fully loaded might overlap with a Corvette (mostly base Corvette's) but that doesn't make them GM's halo car! YOU do realize that, right??

If you're doubting the Corvette is GM's highest priced car (avg price) by a large amount and GM's Halo car and comparing the Corvette's Halo effect with a Mustang then it's worthless to have any further discussion with you! FYI....Ford doesn't have a high end brand like GM has with the Corvette so of course they would not call it a Mustang. Plus the GT has its own long history that was reborn so no reason to call it anything else.

jcp911s

I'll respectfully disagree here... I'd guess Corvette, Ferrari, Porsche, and maybe Jaguar have the most brand equity of any sports cars in the world.

Corvettes have many LeMans, Sebring, and Daytona class wins... it is arguably the strongest brand in GMs basket.

If I were a GM product planner, I would certainly use the Corvette name for any sporting car.

LT1 Z51

It's not the C8, it's the mid-cycle update. Now granted the C7 may have a larger mid-cycle update than the C6 did (which was spread over 2 model years 2008 and 2009) or the C5 (I can't even tell you the year), and defiantly the C4 (the years they removed the digital cluster and changed the bumpers to match the ZR1).

The Zora or whatever it gets called (ZERV is the program title I think) is a 2019, and a ground up redesign of the car is a 2021. Now granted the marketing folks could try to "sell" the C7 MCE as a C8 and do a generation bump, but for that you'd have already seen test cars on the road and you haven't.

C8 and the Mid-Engine are not the same car.

The C8 is the next generation of the current car. The Mid-Engine is a ZR1 replacement.

When the base car migrates to the C8, the Z06 might migrate to the Mid-Engine chassis, depends on cost and how well the Mid-Engine car does.

The Mid-Engine car is on the level of a R8 more so than a Ferrari or even the Ford GT. It's a $150,000-$200,000 car not a $400,000-$500,000 car.

You're basing this entirely on the program moving from Y1XX to Y2XX as a code name. The guy I know who until recently worked on the program (with a supplier, where I worked on the program from 2010-2012 before Y1XX launched) has the opinion that based on the changes he knows about there is no way 2018 is a totally new car.

I swear if they pull a 2008 Malibu (which is a heavily refreshed 2004 Malibu) and call it a C8 that's just bad marketing. If you do a refresh, no matter how heavily you are the same generation. When the platform goes thru a total redesign (and everything is game for change) then you are on a new generation.

DaveFerrari458

LT1 Z51

100% true, but the C6's problem wasn't that the design got old, it was that the technology of the car was based on late 1990's GM tech. The car only had a CAN bus for the ECM, TCM, MR Shocks, ABS, and OnStar, everything else used the archaic Class 2 Bus, so none of the fancy new GM electronics that were in cars as simple as a Malibu could be used. The C7 is the first Corvette to be on par electrical architecture wise with the rest of GM since the C5. Don't know why for the C6 they dropped the bag.

I hate to agree with him, but from a hard point mechanical design perspective the C5, C6, and C7 have lots of similarities. Warmed over is a harsh term, but mechanically speaking they are very similar. The powertrain and electronics tech have changed, but the formula and basic platform packaging has not. This is seen in the C7 versus C6 interior (location of door pulls for example are nearly in the same locations and orientations between the last two generations).

It's something that if you understand platform engineering you get. The Y-Body platform went thru one huge change (C4 to C5) and since then has been on incremental changes at the generational jumps in terms of hard points.

Where they have significantly changed the base frame is in material. But take a C5 frame and sit it next to a C7 frame you see the common elements.

Steve_R

Shhhhhhhh. Most don't want to hear or agree with common sense posts like that.

jimmyb

I agree 100%. IMO, the C5 and C6 drove almost identically (I had 2 of each). As much as we love to kill the press when they don't say what we want, there was much truth to them (the press) calling the C6 a C5.5....
I remember the Discovery Channel show on the C6, at one point Dave Hill is standing around with a bunch of Corvette faithful showing them that the hood on the C6 would close with one slam, instead of like the C5, where you shut the hood, and then walked around to the other side and pushed it down to latch! That was a big deal! Anyhow, there's no doubting the C7 has a lot of similarities to the C5/C6 in design and construction, but it is worlds different in driving, quality, etc....As an example, there's a road close to my house with this washboard surface that would set the cowl to shaking and the rear view mirror would totally fuzz up on my C5's and C6's, my C7 over this same stretch does neither.

Jimmy

Thanks. I know this is the internet where, when it doubt (and hiding behind a keyboard), just make up something so you can look smart/in the know/etc! However, this is also the internet where information is easily and readily at hand at the push of a key, so it's really inexcusable to just start blabbing away when you're almost guaranteed (especially HERE) that one or twenty people will call BS, and, heaven forbid, back it up with real live FACTS.

Jimmy

Maxie2U

In your opinion...

b4i4getit

Here are the first 4 months for 2016 and 2015. Numbers are going down from 2015. Hardly an opinion when its fact.

Archived Monthly Corvette Delivery Statistics

2016 Jan - 1,501 Feb - 2,116 Mar - 2,753 Apr - 3,142
2015 Jan - 2,127 Feb - 2,605 Mar - 3,785 Apr - 3,469

LT1 Z51

Did you adjust the raw numbers due to the broader market? 2015 was a record year for sales in the US.

Raw numbers are meaningless without some sort of framing