C8 Z51 2021 Coupe, absolutely NOTHING wrong after 6000 miles so far. Everything has worked perfectly love this car more than any of my 25 previously purchased vehicles over past 50 years. If I had to get rid off all my things, this would be the last thing to go. If I was to think of one single thing they could of done differently, they could of added a better finish to the flat parts of the motor area maybe a black glossy finish visible when you open the trunk/motor area.

 

amen brother glad to hear all the positive stuff... i just placed my order with macmulkin NH staus code 3000
took 9 months to get here
cant wait🤙😎

 

The event code 3000 kills ya, all you know now is you will get it. I was stuck in that for about 10 weeks, each day drug on like you were in a jail cell, and when you had an extra minute all you thought about was driving it home. I would compare the wait to being a 10-year-old a week before Christmas day. Was able to find a link here where a guy took the allocations of my month and tracked all the progress of event codes on an excel spreadsheet after everyone who posted their codes along the way, which seemed to make the wait easier for the most part. My allocation was at the end of April 2021, the car was built on 8.23.21 and was driving on 9.1.21. When or if you see your car coming off the car carrier, it borders a very emotional moment for sure at any age.

 

What kills even more is event code 4000 jail. Come Tuesday, my car will have been built 4 weeks ago but is still stuck at BGA on QC hold reportedly for the damaged wheel issue. The car is paid for, registered in my name, all taxes paid but still stuck at Bowling Green. I was so much looking forward to having it built, which it has, but now I can't even get my hands on it. I would have gladly taken 3000 jail over this.

 

why so long 10 weeks at 3000? Is it common? How long normally?

 

Seems to be no real rhyme or reason other than once the order gets into their system many logistical parameters have to be met on their end from stock of certain assembled parts, order options, colors, etc, seems they really have a very complicated system of production by the time the cars are on the truck. They orchestrate all this quite well when 2 shifts produce around 170 cars a day in total. Lol keep in mind THE WAIT IS worth every minute.

Side note, if you don't like attention, do not buy this car. You will feel like your driving around with the Kardashians everywhere you go. We went to the mall yesterday in wife's xt4 for the low key adventure since the mall the day before was just to over the top in the C8.

 

Wow, it's pretty sad when someone is estatic after only 6000 miles that nothing has gone wrong with the car. It's kinda like being married for 6 months and being glad that your wife hasn't had a heart attack at age 25! Hopefully this is not your gold standard because you'd be in heaven after owning a Lexus after more than 100,000 miles and 16 years. My C5 started acting up after about 10,000 miles and continued giving me trouble until I sold it with 52,000 miles.

I really hope GM gets their quality act together but based upon this topic and all the responses I've read, it's not going to happen anytime soon. I really wish it would, though.

 

If you're thinking I meant NOTHING has MECHANICALLY gone wrong in 6000 miles that's sad you think that way, but to further explain for those not able to figure it out:

After you've owned as many cars through the years as I have, in a short amount of time you start thinking about different aspects of the car that could have been built or manufactured differently. With the C8 I would think that most of us weren't even able to test drive it, yet thousands have placed orders and are now driving. Since you mentioned a wife, would you marry a women after your 1st date or for that matter never even dating, I think not.

The C8 fits most of us and the complaints seem very minimal under the circumstances. After a few thousand miles I find nothing wrong with this car whatsoever! It's only better than I read, or thought and It far exceeds my expectations. Do you understand that?

Cars don't fall apart like they use too, in fact it use to be expected that before a car was out of warranty you would of taken it to the dealer for certain warrantee issues many times. In 08 I owned an E60 M5 put 90 thousand miles on it in a few years, and only changed oil and replaced the tires 5 times. That was it! Even German car automakers figured it out.

 

Consumer Reports gets tens of thousands of owner survey data at least once per year. If we look at just the past 6 years, we see that the 2014, 15, and 16 Corvettes had MAJOR engine problems. Other areas that were well below average for reliability were:
transmission issues
noises and leaks
major transmission issues (2015-2016)
If this seems like ancient history to you, then you must be 21 years old.
I've been a Corvette owner for more than 34 years but have been monitoring many types of cars for performance and reliability over 40 years.
If you've never owned a really reliable brand then your point of reference will forever be at a lower "bar".

 

Why is it that forums and comments by members that have been with either the car or the forum so long seem to come off so condescending? I have never been able to figure that out. I have been licensed to drive since 1972 going on the 50th year. I think my bars height is fine and have experienced many car brands probably more than you personally. There were years where I would put 100 thousand miles on a car, then it was junked, and that happened in quite a few years in my younger days. I think my experience speaks volumes over consumer reports. I was never interested in all those years in a Corvette, made no sense to have such horsepower in a car and the center point of balance was on the front axle. I had cars with less horsepower that would outperform the Corvette all day on a road track. The C8 has changed my mind completely, for less than 100g this car is perfect and even far better than any BMW I had from 2001 thru 2018. I'm back in with GM and it will be a long time before I change. Respectfully yours,

 

You may want to watch this video from start to finish. In the end, Mark the reviewer, who had driven many, many exotic cars says that the C7 Grand Sport is a better track car. How's that for a car with a center point of balance is "on the front axle". You'll also see that neither of the reviewers have any faith in the reliability of a C8.
I have driven a 2019 McLaren 570S (track and street), a Ferrari 488 GTB (track), and a 2020 Porsche 911 4S (street). Perhaps my frame of reference is fairly high as far as performance goes.
Good luck with your C8. I'll inevitably rent one for a day but cannot imagine that it will ever be reliable in the Japanese car sense.

 

Apples and oranges. The Porsche 911 4s starts at $125K vs the ~$62K starting point for a C8. The McLaren between 2-3 times the Porsche.

If you want twice the performance of a C8 (and I don’t concede it’s twice the performance) then by all means, spend 2-7 times the cost of a base C8 and have at it. And I wouldn’t want to be the guy owning a McLaren once the warranty runs out. Not that I can afford it - the C8 is more in my comfort zone - but anecdotal testimonials indicate routine maintenance is expensive relative to the price of the car.

But that’s the great thing about this country and our capitalist economy: we are free to choose (and not choose) the things we want.

I bought my first Corvette - a C8 - on October 20th of this year. Absolutely love it. Selling it to a dealer for $10K more than I paid for it (that’s $10K more than MSRP and taxes) and am at 3000 to buy the exact same car minus the mag ride, lift and performance exhaust that I determined I don’t need during the month I’ve had it. So hopefully by January I’ll have a fun HTC for $81,075 plus taxes and can afford to use it as a daily driver and fix it if it breaks after the warranty expires. And that’s $5400 less than my original build.

I ran into a guy the other day (not literally) who was driving a Lamborghini. He said he had a C8 as his daily driver and put less than a thousand miles per year on the Lambo. Said the C8 isn’t a Lambo but is a blast to drive and depreciation doesn’t keep him up at night. That’s kind of how I feel.

I guess what I’m saying is the C8 isn’t an expensive super car but then I didn’t pay a super car price. I’m happy. If I wasn’t I’d have passed on it and found something I did like.

 

Over the past several years+ Japanese car reliability has been dropping and Chevrolet car reliability improving (at least in my experience). My wife has been exclusively a Honda owner for the past 30 years. Her current car, a 2020 Honda pilot was in the shop 4 times in the first 6 months for a known issue that affected many Honda Pilots and Odysseys. It was an extremely frustrating experience. On the other hand, my 2015 Corvette was issue free for the 6 years that I owned it. My 2018 Chevrolet Colorado had one issue (a driveshaft failure/vibration) that was replaced and trouble free since.

 

Greg, I did not say that I owned those vehicles. I rented them to see how they performed. Of the three of them, the Porsche is probably the most reliable and the slowest. All retain their value very well. I paid $52,500 with tax for the 2001 C5 I bought new. Things like a leaking diff (multiple times) and column lock failures happened before and after my extended warranty. Every 2 years the smog pump check valve in the back of the engine cost me over $230 each time because the intake manifold gasket had to be replaced and hey, we recommend that we change the knock sensors while we're in there. The last straw was the $2500 transmission leak repair with only 50,000 miles on it. I had the car for 13 years and boy did I pay to keep it going. Perhaps that McLaren is not as costly to keep after all!
Again, I loved the performance but I know for sure that had the car been a previous gen Toyota Supra, it would not have cost me so much in non-maintenance repairs.

 

Take a look below at CR's auto manufacturer reliability rankings. This is just the first page and Tesla came in 25th out of 26. How many American auto companies are among the top 10? Dodge/Ram surprised me but they are still far from the top companies. Buick does not have many models but credit is due for where they are. Honda is in only 5th place and you are correct that the Odyssey is not even better than average. Do not assume that because Hondas were great in 1997 that they will always be among the top three.

2021 auto manufacturer reliability rankings

 

Hope I’m not coming across as an a-hole, I just appreciate a decent debate.

But renting or buying doesn’t change the math in terms of cost/value/worth of a vehicle. And more expensive cars -even lower tier high
performance vehicles - are more expensive to maintain. A quick Google search reveals that a brake job for the McLaren runs $1600 per axle. Cheaper if you do it yourself but that is true for any vehicle.

The premium that folks are willing to pay for a C8 is shrinking but at one time it was high and the people who paid it thought it was worth it and those folks have been driving cars for months, and in some cases a year or more, and they wouldn’t have that car when they did if they hadn’t paid the premium. That boils down to how much money someone has and their willingness to spend it on a car and then how willing they are to pay for instant versus delayed gratification. Again, all personal choice and it varies by individual.

 

Debating is certainly different from arguing. This is more like a debate.
Tesla makes one of the fastest cars in the world, However, their models are riddled with quality defects like inconsistent panel gaps, squeaks and rattles, as well as the dreaded no-starts. This is an auto company that is over ten years old. Does the fact that people are willing to pay for them mean that they represent a great value? To those people, yes, but as I explained previously, many of Tesla owners were BMW and perhaps Cadillac, Mercedes, and Audi owners. None of these are very reliable, although quality of materials tends to be a step above those used by Tesla.
I know from being on this forum for so many years that Corvette owners tend to have other American cars. When I had my 68 C3 I also had a Monte Carlo. Many years later I came to realize that I didn't have to put up with poor quality and frequent repairs. Power became secondary to reliability. Our family car became a Lexus RX400h in 2005. (2006 model year) It was the first luxury hybrid SUV. It weighs over 4400 lbs and had lots of high-tech features. It was faster than a Porsche Cayenne yet was very efficient compared to any other SUVs in this class. After 16.5 years, it has never needed an out of warranty repair. Yes, it spoiled me and I have since been more critical as to whether something has value. Many magazine and internet auto testers have commented that GM and Tesla use buyers to continue testing their vehicles. As long as that's okay with the buyers there will never be an urgent requirement of these manufacturers to step up their quality.

 

The thing is, sports cars in general, especially those closer to the edge of the performance envelope, are typically more problematic than regular cars/SUVs. Porsches in the past have had bore scoring in the engine and other major issues, so they're not immune...I know for sure that the Cayman and 911 have a number of recalls and have had their fair share of issues, Consumer Reports for example gives the 911 an expected reliability rating of 3/5, same for the Cayman, so they're not stars in this dept. Otoh, they gave a C8 a 1/5 in this department, which is pretty harsh but this is imo due to this being an all-new platform with all-new drivetrain and so forth, vs the Porsches which are incremental improvements on incrementally changed designs. If you go back and look at points where Porsche introduced something all-new, they usually also had quality issues (i.e., bore scoring, PDK issues when it first came out, etc). Also, Chevy will warrant the Corvette if used on the track (only Z51 and presumably the Z06 variants (Z07 only? dunno)), whereas Porsche most emphatically will not, same as MB. I don't track my cars, but the fact that they'll stand behind them with track usage where the others won't to me speaks of a high level of confidence in drivetrain strength and reliability.

Having said all that, I do speak as the recipient of a brand new transaxle on my car after the rear diff developed a noticeable whine (poor shimming of the diff), so I'm not gonna claim they're rock stars in reliability, so I'm not gonna say that GM's QC is all that great, But none of the other sports cars out there are fabulous in this area, and this one's cheap to own and service (much less than a 911 or AMG GT, which are what I was looking at before deciding to take a serious look at this), and the fun-to-drive and handling factors of this car are just off the charts. Lexus reliability (and service departments!) would be most welcome here, I agree, but I've got the factory warranty extension out to 5 years and will get an extended after that if I find the company they offer it from is good. So yeah, Chevrolet could definitely use some QC improvements to put it mildly.

Also with any new production vehicle, they only have a certain number of mules they can put out there. So if you have an issue that affects 1/1000 or 1/5000 etc cars, odds are against them catching it so definitely first few years are more issue-prone than later ones, which is why this thread is keeping active. Gotta balance that out vs having the shiny new kid on the block, I knew it was a gamble and took my chances, and I still love driving it. Amazing car for the coin, no doubt about that.

 

I used to work for a company that sold oxygen concentrators. At one point, the manufacturer of the molecular sieve material had upgraded and changed the part number of this material. One of our customers was a Japanese company. They flew one of their engineers to our facility to oversee additional testing. We thought we had thoroughly tested the sieve but this engineer required much more comprehensive testing that included some (more extreme) environmental testing. I bring up this story because it demonstrates how demanding many Japanese companies are when it comes to engineering and quality/reliability.
You mention the first few years of a new generation of vehicle as being more trouble-prone but this rarely happens with Toyota/Lexus and Mazda. Remember, my 2001 C5 Corvette was the 5th year of C5.
Consumer Reports did publish an issue that included the ups and downs of German vehicle reliability. We need to abandon the mindset that this has, is, and always be inevitable.
By the way, this car will come standard with a supercharged Toyota V6. It is not really a hyper-fast super car but my guess is that its powertrain will be robust.
2023 Lotus Emira: What We Know So Far (caranddriver.com)
Another thing to consider is that often, electrical issues plague American and German vehicles. It has nothing to do with power and acceleration unless it is part of a launch sequence.

 

The only issue with my 2022 HTC is an annoying buzzing/rattle that frequently sounds off somewhere in the left side of my dash. That is accompanied by an occasional squeak that happens when I hit certain bumps in the road. It has not been annoying enough to ask the dealer to tear apart my dash to look for it, But it IS annoying. Other than that, the car is nothing short of AMAZING. I LOVE this car...