those are trim pieces, not panels. And the car would look horrible with them painted body color. The carbon flash trim breaks up the painted panels. I think it was you earlier in the thread that may have mentioned the a pillars being black. That’s my only complaint about the exterior. Those should have been body color.

Regardless of semantics (trim pieces, panels, etc) the fact remains that GM could have integrated these "features" into the bodywork--rather than segmenting them into a separate piece. Doing so means that they either look like tacked on afterthought garbage (if accent colored) or a complete flub by an engineer who forgot to make the part integrated with the rest of the body work (if body colored). Either way, I find the result sub-optimal--especially when you compare the base c6 (or c5) front fender vents to the C6GS or the C7 vents.

A more recent example of this fugly trend is the 5th gen Civic type R (the 6th gen is somehow toned down slightly). I do not wish for a corvette I own to emulate boy-racer motif.

I admit, that particular example is extreme. Most don't look like that. I recall there was an option to order body color vents.
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.cor...bce9074364.jpg

There was. It was called "Order the car in black, so you can hide GM's sins".

It's a simple answer to why GM did it and that is costs. The panels are formed by presses and then the lip is added on. If the fenders had inlets that were part of the panels they would require a lot of hand labor to finish them. Most American auto builders use the press-and-add method to save money. Ferrari, Lambos, Maserati, and Aston Martin do it the other way.

I owned C3's since 1978. The C7 was the first new Corvette I wanted. It was the first one with C3 styling.


https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.cor...cb35367048.jpg

Nope. My posts are always objectively true.

How did looks become objective?

So by that logic, the fenders on the C7 should cost far, far less to produce than those of the C6 or C5--whose vents were integrated.

Sorry, but I'm not buying it.

Maybe cost increases will be passed on to the customer whereas cost savings are increased profits to be kept in case of a rainy day?

I've looked at the C5 and C6 and I don't see any intakes or holes that look like they were molded in. The front openings are nothing but rounded edges of the grill and intake openings and the rear is obviously an added-on after the panel came out of the mold. Here is a metal fender with molded-in intakes. GM could have done this to the C8 but chose not to.
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.cor...4c421e977c.jpg