GM will temporarily stop production of the 2021 Corvette next week, according to reports, apparently because of a parts shortage — but it’s not related to the microchip drought that has plagued automakers for weeks.
Automotive News extracted the following statement from a GM spokesman:
Due to a temporary parts supply issue, we can confirm that Bowling Green Assembly will not run production the week of March 1,” GM spokesman Dan Flores said in an email. “Our supply chain, manufacturing and engineering teams are working closely with our supply base to mitigate any further impact on production, and we expect the plant to resume normal operations on Monday, March 8.
The C8 Corvette has had various production hiccups, some related to the 2019 strike, some others related to supply chain issues and some related to the pandemic. The fact of the matter is that Chevy can’t make the C8 Corvettes fast enough.
GM sold 21,626 Corvettes last year, or 20 percent more Corvettes than it sold in 2019, when they were still hawking the C7; by almost any measure the C8 Corvette has been a raging success, which will make the new shutdown all the more painful. That said, this year will probably be when we’ll know how well the C8 will do in the long-term, as the initial enthusiasm for the midengine ‘Vette begins to die down and more casual buyers come into the frame.
Anecdotally, a Boomer I was talking to the other day explained how much he absolutely despised the midengine Corvette because of its mid-engineness. That caught me by surprise, since I’ve thought of the C8 as an instant classic almost from the moment Chevy unveiled it, and there is probably no other car on the planet that Boomers revere more, historically speaking.
So that’s another thing Boomers and Millennials can fight about: Is the C8 Corvette good? Is it bad? Need to find a Gen Xer and a Zoomer to settle this.