ltomn

Why do you think that offering a mid engine corvette will drop sales by 25,000 units?? All you have to come to terms with is what is said just above: The Mid Engined Zora model will be at the top of the Corvette line up. Corvette will continue the FE line up. There is no need for them to offer their new flagship vehicle in an economy model. Why would Corvette want to dumb-down their newly designed, premier, mid engine model to accommodate an entry level buyer when there are perfectly acceptable, and time tested alternatives with a 65 year history that are also offered by Corvette?

Look at the list again (heavens, many of us have said this repeatedly) and add fiscal numbers to the list of components that are included in the CAD drawings and other sightings. This is not going to be an inexpensive car! It expands the customer base by appealing to a new Corvette buyer from a new demographic. I suspect it will enlarge the sales numbers.

Suns_PSD

There is NOT going to be a FE Corvette in production any longer. It's a repetitive product as the Camaro is a superior product that fills the same nitch.

Once the manufacturing factory, engineering, and testing is completed, the cost to actually produce a single automobile, is surprisingly low. I've read that labor costs are about $1500 per vehicle and raw materials/ production is somewhere in the $5-10K range per vehicle. The rest is to cover the back end. However you need the volume to pay for the development.

Do the math, GM can make more money selling 25K cars at $70K than they can selling 3K units at $120K. That's before you add the real money lifetime, parts and service, also driven by volume.

skank

You are clueless. Absolutely clueless.

ltomn

That is absolutely ridiculous! There is no way that GM is going to walk away from 65 years of history with the Corvette! It is a cash cow!

skank

And thats 65 years of front engined Corvette.

VETTE-NV

Plenty of points of view here. My money is on the base Corvette and GS being replaced by a mid engine car in the first couple of years, with the Z06 and ZR1 continuing for a couple of more years until those versions are also replaced by ME versions of the same.

Look at the failure of the NSX and A8. Makes no sense to jump into a low volume, high-end ME sports car. The current FE has run it's course and there will be little interest in the car after the ME debuts. Only the HP versions will continue for a bit. Corvette needs volume to succeed and that volume is not going to come from the FE car much longer.

Times change and things have to evolve to remain competitive. Regardless of the 65 year history of the Vette as a FE car, it will have to move on to succeed. People bitched when the 8-track went away too.

johnglenntwo

Michael A

I have a friend who has always owned 911s, and has been a huge fan of them. He sold his 911 recently, and while talking to him the other day, it was clear he suddenly was showing interest in the C7. He said it has an "exotic look". I don't think he is ready to buy a Corvette yet, but the fact that he is even interested shows Chevy is gaining some inroads. The ME may convince him to buy a Corvette.

I would like to see Chevy improve the service experience, and quality, bringing it closer to Porsche levels.

Suns_PSD

Instead of throwing jabs, why don't you post info that is specific as to why you disagree with my positions?

- take care

Suns_PSD

Awesome, show me the spy photos of the C8 front engine Corvette please? I'll be waiting. We already have about a 100 videos and photos of the mid engine. Leaked CAD drawings, and so forth.

Suns_PSD

Exactly, on all points.

sunsalem

That's where the rubber meets the road.
There is absolutely NO evidence whatsoever of a C8 FE...no mules, no camo cars, no leaks...nothing.
However, there has been massive hints from GM brass, suppliers, etc. the C8 will be an ME.
For fnck's sake...folks need to take a step back and look at the evidence rationally.

skank

Have you read the entire 36 page Zerv Thread or better yet I'll save you the chore of that massive groundbreaking thread. Read the list that I put together deriving the information from it. It's all there in a collated format for all the anti-front engined meatheads to read since most people on this forum are too lazy to research. I'll clue you in on this. The front engined C7 will morph into the C8 front engined Vette at approximately 2021 or 2022. By that time the C7 will have been in production for 8 or 9 years. Meanwhile we are getting a 5th model in the Corvette lineup called the Zora hopefully as a 2020. The front engine Corvette isn't going anywhere. The pure idiocy of people thinking that GM will walk away from 65 years of front engined ownership and then giving them only one configuration is idiotic. They will have both! Tadge always talks about bandwidth, so having two chassis configurations based on the same 3 section space frame system where the center section is shared by both front and mid configurations is exactly what they are doing right now. They also didn't double Bowling Greens plant to 2 million square feet to build just one model. I was up at Laguna Seca on Thursday when GM Powertrain engineers and test drivers were there with 4 Corvettes and 5 Camaro's testing the new engines for the next generation cars. I got that straight from the top powertrain engineer that was there. Of course no information was given to me nor did I expect any tidbit of info out of them. Their lips were sealed. They just said future powertrain product testing. When I mentioned the Zerv thread they clammed up and started walking away. I just have a hunch they are testing the base 6.2 OHV that is going in the ME therefore homologating that engine to that chassis for the C8R GTLM race car.

LIStingray

I don't think you understand - the masses want everything the Ford GT blended with a Koenigsegg Agera engine have, but for $65,000. And that car for $65,000 will sell - now all GM needs to do id figure out how to build it and sell it for a profit at $65k.

ltomn

It was originally a misnomer to call the Mid Engine Corvette the sole C8. There may be several autos in the C8 line! Skank's story above is classic support when making this statement. Having been at Laguna Seca and seeing 4 Corvettes and 5 Camaros. What does this suggest? That there is potential cross use of engines and that there are loads of front engine tests being conducted. The Mid Engine "Zora" is simply the first of the C8's to be this far along. It may also suggest that they could be testing the next generation of the LT1 and maybe it'll be called the LT2 engine.

Suns_PSD

People see what they want to see, as it suits their narrative. See the post below yours as an example.

Suns_PSD

None of those platforms being tested in the open were pre production next gen chassis'. They were simply current production vehicles that GM was using to test multiple power trains. Nothing about that gives any indication of a front engine C8 Corvette. They are simply testing power trains in ther available cars that they can run in public and nobody will care.

skank

This excerpt is from JoeC5 and I added it early to the List thread


Back on Feb 23, 2013, Josh Holden, program engineering manager, said in an interview....

"We evaluate engine placement as not ALL Corvettes necessarily need to be front-engine cars. Front engine still remains the best balance, best optimization of what we feel the car needs to be."

He used the world "all" and not "the". I take that to mean that in a future Corvette offering, that not every Corvette will be front-engine configuration, or that every Corvette will be a mid engine configuration, but that there will be multiple engine placements available to chose from.

That's one reason I'm inclined to believe that a front engine and a mid engine Corvette will be offered at the same time, as two distinct models.

Also, if both front engine and mid engine models are offered side by side at the same price, GM will be in competition with itself for customers. They have a better chance of bringing new customers into the fold if they offer two different models at different pricing structures.

Suns_PSD

They were simply saying that the front engine was best in 2013 because they were releasing a new front engined Corvette at the time. You're reading too much into the sales BS from about 7 years before the ME will be released. What did you expect them to say? The ME is superior and next generation but this will do for now?

I'll ask again: where are the test mules?

You talked about competing with themselves for pricing, they can build a mid engine for the same price they can build a front engine. All that having 2 distinct models would do is raise their production cost of for both models. It would raise the number of molds they have to build, the number of assembly lines they have to operate and train, EPA & crash testing. It would make both models more expensive to produce.

nyca

Will be a hard sell - tell the FE buyers to keep buying the C7 for 3 more years "as is", with no additional development - while GM goes off and invests 100s of millions of dollars to produce a ME halo car that most of the Corvette customer base cannot afford at the $100K+ price point. Good luck to them if they can pull that off, my own sense is that C7 sales will tank as buyers look at that arrangement and feel they are being ripped off of their $65-70K to buy a "stale" C7.