It really is no secret that the latest generation ‘Vette has been an absolute home-run. Thanks to both how phenomenally the Corvette legacy has been built over the past six decades and to the unprecedented level of performance it offers, the C7 Corvette is without question a world-class sports car.
It’s hard to argue that with each succeeding generation – in regards to performance relative to its competitors, fit and finish, and technological evolution – the Corvette just gets better and better.
However, reality always lurks in some form or another, waiting to rain on all of our blissful, Corvette-loving parades. In this case, it’s the numbers – the June 2016 Corvette sale numbers, to be exact.
As they routinely do, our friends at Corvette Blogger recently released last month’s Corvette sales figures, which reveal that only 2,483 Corvettes were sold. That’s a 7.1 percent decrease from the month before, and 11.5 percent decrease from June of last year.While the health of Corvette sales overall is still in good condition (after all, a drop of just over 10 percent in one month isn’t quite enough to warrant shutting down Bowling Green), it still is fairly substantial. Since Zora Arkus-Duntov first lit the competitive fire in the Corvette program more than 50 years ago, General Motors has always fought hard to keep the precious Corvette number one.
The C7 is in the middle of it’s life cycle so that might account for some softening of sales.
Perhaps the General will interpret the 11.5 percent drop in sales as the beginning of a trend, and begin making way to usher forth the next generation; then again, perhaps that’s a bit of a stretch. Given the latest news of the coming changes, however – between stirrings at the assembly plant and the recent sightings of a supposed-mid-engine Corvette – it’s hard to be certain about the C7’s fate.Who knows – the C7 could break the roughly-ten-years-per-generation trend and end up more like the C2, lasting only five years with a phase-out date of 2018.
How do you interpret the decline in ‘Vette sales as of late? How would you feel if the C7 was cut out after only five years, and a C8 brought in for 2018? Chime in with you comments and concerns below!