Just drove off a local lot with a 2018 1LT Stingray, built 01/18, for 12% off MSRP. It was 75 degrees here last weekend.

Maybe I got the last one to come off the "old" line? It's already a "limited edition" being a 2018 and all...

 

It wasn't supposed to make sense, just as people thinking comparing January 2018 sales should be different from January 2017 sales or January 2016 sales , etc, as every January falls during the winter, thus are comparable.

The plant went back into operation in November 2017 and people could have special ordered cars and they would have been built and delivered to their local dealer for purchase during January. I'm pretty sure that GM was accepting orders from their dealers before the end of their shutdown, so they would know what cars to build when they started the assembly lines back up in November. GM does not build cars for THEIR inventory that sits in Bowling Green waiting for a dealer to buy. Every car that GM schedules for production has been ordered by a dealer. Dealer doesn't order, ...GM doesn't build.

Retail buyers could also could have purchased in stock cars that were built prior to the shut down(and there were plenty of those sitting on the dealer's lots).

Of course, selection would not be as good, but if your local dealer(not a super sized mega dealer a thousand miles away) normally had 12 new Corvettes in stock normally and they only had 4 in stock last month because of the plant shutdown, the odds of finding the exact car you wanted without ordering is about the same....nil. As for only el cheapo 1Lt being the only cars available, I just checked my local dealer's inventory(small city in southwest rural Missouri, not a huge city in the high rent district) and he has a Stingray 1 LT(MSRP $64,665), a GS 2LT(MSRP $75,530) and another GS Carbon 65 Edition (MSRP $91,705) in inventory. Another nearby dealer(small town of 10,000) 10 miles away, has 2018 Z51 2LT(MSRP $65,5230) in inventory.

Buying off the lot is always a compromise in colors, options, etc. But GM builds to fill their dealers orders and their dealers were not ordering as many cars for in stock inventory as the dealers were fully aware that they were not selling, and didn't want a bunch of expensive slow selling cars sitting in inventory.

 

Times are a changing and gone are the days where the Corvette could go 15-16 model years aka C3 before replacement, so maybe the design is getting stale or old in many buyers eyes? The new ZR-1 and upcoming C8 will hopefully change that perception if it's true??

 

I can definitely see this as a factor. I went to a dealership near the holidays which usually has a large segregated area in the showroom of Corvettes...they had so few of them, the whole section was replaced by trucks and SUVs. The remaining Corvettes were dispersed throughout the dealership, and I can safely say their in-stock product was easily less than half of the norm. Probably around 25-30%. And that was back in December.

Good that they were able to sell most of their product line, and they probably made a partial replenishment since then. However, if you have few or a limited supply, it's already behind the 8-ball from day one.

 

But, if the demand was still there, your dealership would still have a dedicated Corvette area, full of Corvettes, like he had when the demand was high. But your dealership sees the handwriting on the wall and replaced the Corvettes with other products that are selling.

Your dealer didn't cut back on his ordering Corvettes because GM wasn't building enough of them, but because his retail customers were not buying enough of them.


GM cuts production because of lagging orders from their dealers, not the other way around.

 

 

Has anyone factored in the cold weather this winter? I don't know about you guys, but I'm not thinking about new sports cars when it is 15 degrees outside and the roads are soaked in salt brine and peppered with cinders. Last winter was mild and sunny for the most part in my area.

I have a business completely unrelated to sports cars, and I see a significant decrease in sales when the weather is cold / snowy / rainy / generally disagreeable.

 

We will see. I'll be in the area this weekend, so I might stop by to check it out. The fact that they hit the Top 10 list in Corvette sales for 2017 and over doubled their sales YTD compared to 2016 (which I don't think any dealer in the Top 25 can claim) does tell me that they're not a one-and-done dealership in that category, nor was the demand lacking.

 

January might have sucked for the majority of sports cars... I increased February 2018 sales by one.

 

The “average” run is not 15-16 model years, it’s 9. The sales trend of the C7 is mirroring sales of previous generations. Peak sales volumes occur in the first two years then begin to drop off over the balance of its production years. And given the fact Bowling Green lowered the production capability per day there will likely be less of a glut then previous generations.

 

The c3's ran from 1968 to 1982 (15 model years), and the C4's ran from 1984 to 1996 (13 model years), the c5's from 1997 to 2004 (8 model years),and the c6's were produced from 05' till 13' (9 model years), so yes the trend is downward but the average since the c3's is over 11+ years, and at the end of a production cycle, many buyers hold out until the new model is introduced.

 

I call "Fake News"!
There was no January this year!

 

While the C5 technically had an 8 model year run. It was more like 7.33 as FIRST YEAR 1997 was a very short run of approximately 4 months. Combined production for the 1997 and the 1998 was 40,856. Sales were still very strong for the 2004 model year and GM produced(and sold) 34,064 of them, even with everyone knowing that the C6 was due in 2005(MY). Demand did not drop off a cliff for the C5 during it's last couple of years of it's lifespan, as the C5's first FULL year of production(1998) saw 31,084 built and in it's last year of production(2004), 34,064 were built.

The C6 was planed to be a 8 year run, with the 2013 being the first year of the C7, but the economy and GM's 2009 BK put the C7 on hold for two years. If the economy had been as strong in 2009 through 2012 as it is today, production and sales of the C6 would have been as great as the C5's.

Now we just entering the 6th year of the C7's life but that is only because GM decided to move up the 2019 production by several months. Normally June is the changeover month, Not February.

Compare sales of the C5 and the C6 at the end of their respective fifth model year of production, to the C7's at the end of it's fifth year of production.

Sales and the resulting production has been dropping steadily for the C7(with no bad economy in 2017 to blame it on) each year.

The C1's annual production/sales increased every year(except for when Ford kicked it's *** in with their new T-Bird). The C2 increased it production/sales every year. the C3 increased it's production just about every year. The C4 was the first generation where the last year's production/sales were way down from it's first years. The C5 also increased it's production just about very year as did the C6 until the economy ruined everything in 2009. The C7 is turning out to be more like the C4.

Hopefully the C8 will turn things around, but if it's a mid engine, I believe it will have an uphill battle.

 

I just knew it...this Corvette thing wouldn't last.

 

You never know. It is a fact that GM was planning to kill the Corvette back in the early 1990's.

Why, I remember when Pontiac and Oldsmobile were huge sellers and where are they now. Remember the GTO's and the 4-4-2's of the 1960's?

Not just models(like the Corvette) are gone, but the whole divisions are gone.

 

JoeC5, sales figures as announced by the manufacturer are what they ship out to their dealers, not what is sold on dealers' lots.

Foosh, makes a great point, in that total 2017 calendar year production of the C7, was tens of thousands below previous C7 years. Also, he notes the low, low on0hand inventory levels of Criswell, Kerbeck, and MacMulkin.

 

Why, yes I do remember my DD (purchased new) 1966 Olds 442 4 speed convertible!





My daily driver in 1966......

 

Loved the 1967 Olds CS 4-4-2.

 

Sales are calculated on retail sales. Not deliveries to dealers.
GM reported Corvette sales for November 2017 (3 months after BG production shut down) were 2,565 which was the highest monthly number of Vettes GM reported sold in comparison to the previous 5 months reported sales. The reason for the November reported sales increase was the large retail incentives on 2017's not an increase in deliveries to the dealers from the plant.
Also, you will notice GM sales reported for models which haven't been produced in over a year. One example, Cadillac ELR ended production Feb 2016, GM was reporting sales of the ELR during 2017.