What is going on with Corvette?

General Motors’ Corvette faces challenges, including an aging target demographic.
While Corvette sales remain strong, the brand must adapt to changing technology while keeping its fan base.
Despite these challenges, Corvette enthusiasts and industry experts remain optimistic about the brand’s future, citing its strong performance and dedicated leadership.

As General Motors prepares to launch the fastest, most expensive Corvette ever, the vehicle that J.D. Power considers the only real American sports car must adroitly handle some fresh curves in the road ahead.

“The Corvette is an American icon, an automotive icon, that holds a special place among enthusiasts and the industry itself. It’s so important to General Motors, even without profit,” said Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting at Auto Forecast Solutions. “But it’s coming up on a number of issues that are clouding its future.”

Among them:

Turnover — one retirement that was long expected and two cuts out of the blue — has created a need for new leadership.

Driving itself is changing: Customers contending with major leaps in electrification technology may feel nostalgic for the human side of driving.

Yet the largest hurdle for Corvette couldn’t be clearer: the aging of its target demographic.

Registration data from S&P Global Mobility notes that the over-55 crowd composes the bulk of Corvette ownership, at 59%. Drivers younger than 34, for example, made up 4.6% of Corvette owners last year — the smallest proportion in that age range based on data going back to 2020.

Losses at the top

Tadge Juechter, the Corvette executive chief engineer, retired last summer, after nearly 50 years at the company.

The company also lost two high-profile managers in the past month, after letting go of Corvette product marketing manager Harlan Charles and exterior design manager Kirk Bennion. Both men had decades with the company and were involved in several key launches. Bennion has worked on Corvette exteriors since 1984, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The fruits of their labor heading into production now are expected to yield great results for the auto brand. The Detroit Free Press confirmed an Automotive News report that the Bowling Green Assembly plant — home of Corvette production including the upcoming fastest, most expensive one ever, the ZR1 — is closed this week and will also be idle the weeks of March 17, March 24 and May 19.

The retooling work is likely routine enhancements needed to make high-performance vehicles at this range, experts say. The ZR1 is the first Corvette with what GM calls a “turbocharged” V-8 engine, capable of reaching 233 mph during testing in Germany with the standard configuration.

The Corvette’s target market

That’s a lot of speed, much more than many of its customers can handle.

A Corvette “is not an old person’s car,” Fiorani said. “They’re not comfortable for somebody who might have arthritis or back pains.”

Corvette enthusiasts such as Detroit resident Mahlon Cooks, who retired from a Wayne County job after 30 years, may not be in the market much longer.

Cooks’ most recent purchase, an eighth-generation Corvette, may be his last, he told the Free Press.

“Heck, I’m 70 years old,” he said. “The car is about 4 inches off the ground.”

Another issue affecting older buyers can be the changes to the features most drivers come to expect from a Corvette.

While automakers aim to improve vehicles through each product cycle, sometimes the technology requires a bit of time to get used to. That’s even more important when the vehicle touts such an enormous price tag — the ZR1 starts at $174,995 for the 1LZ coupe and $184,995 for the 1LZ hardtop convertible.

Are cars losing their romance?

Matt Anderson, transportation curator at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, said there might be a reason people don’t write many songs about cars anymore.

“Young people just aren’t interested in them anymore in the way they were maybe 30 years ago. That’s a concern. Part of that, too, is the cars have become point-and-shoot — you don’t engage with the car in any meaningful way anymore,” he said. “The car does all the hard work for you.”

Some of the roar came out of the Corvette with the hybridization of the E-Ray, and starting with the C7, Corvettes come standard with automatic transmissions, a change that requires some getting used to from the vehicle’s rabid fan base.

Still, a slow shift toward younger buyers — or at least, fewer older ones — is noted in the data. In 2019, the average age of a Corvette buyer was even higher than currently, with 62% older than 55, Cox Automotive noted.

Transitions to the mid-engine car created styling and performance benefits that naturally expanded the company’s customer set, Trevor Thompkins, senior manager for Chevrolet Communications, told the Free Press. In the luxury sports segment, Corvettes are the highest seller among customers younger than 35.

The dual-clutch automatic transmission is standard on the C8, Thompkins added, meaning drivers can engage with the vehicle’s gears more directly without losing momentum, and can choose to operate in manual mode.

Corvette typically sells about 30,000 vehicles per year, with notable declines during the Great Recession, according to Automotive News’ Data Center. They dipped meaningfully below that line in 2018, to 18,791 vehicles, as Chevrolet wrapped up the seventh generation Corvette production. The next year was impacted by the 40-day strike against GM that delayed the launch of the 2020 Corvette Stingray, the first mid-engine model. In 2021, the brand rebounded to 33,041 and remains close to that figure.

When people like Cooks started buying Corvettes, “It was a fun car with no practical purpose whatsoever,” Anderson said. “Even into the ’60s, even ’70s, they didn’t want the air conditioning or the radio because it wasn’t important to the car’s performance.”

Many enthusiasts enjoy the little things, he said, like being able to work on the vehicles themselves or handle how they drive.

“It’s a tough balance for the automakers to strike,” Anderson said. “There’s no question automatic transmissions they’re using are better than any human ever could be, but they’re a lot less fun than doing it yourself.”

An enthusiast since age 18

Cooks, who has purchased as many as 20 Corvettes in his lifetime, bought his first in 1973, a maroon third-generation1969 Corvette. He was 18 years old.

“It was a different time. A beautiful high-performance car, it was probably $2,700,” he said. “It was wonderful. I worked every day so I had no problem owning it.”

Today, he has four: a 1977 C3, a 1999 C5, a 2014 C7 and a 2023 C8.

In all his years of driving them, the jump from the C7 to the C8 has been most pronounced due to the mid-engine innovation, the most radical engineering change since the first Corvette debuted in 1953. The change had been teased for years and finally unveiled in 2020 when the team pushed back the power from under the hood and tucked it between the passenger compartment and the rear wheels. Moving the engine back increased stability and balance, allowing the vehicle to safely handle faster and faster speeds.

The neutral balance of the C8 is incredibly smooth — dangerously so, Cooks said.

“I’m having trouble feeling what it’s doing. With my other Corvettes, you could read it some,” Cooks said. “… You could be going 125 mph and it doesn’t do anything. It takes you into a curve no problem at all, but when you’re coming out of it, you’ve got to drive the car.”

No surprise, Cooks prefers a stick shift. But he said he is getting used to the automatic.

“I keep joking with my wife, we’ve got to end up buying an electric car eventually, but I’ve already owned a lot of old cars,” he said. “I can’t imagine owning anything other than a combustion engine.”

According to experts like Anderson, it’s a question of when, rather than if, an all-electric Corvette rolls off an assembly line. Estimates from Automotive News’ Future Product Pipeline posit that change could come as early as 2028.

Top Corvette fan: ‘Not one bit concerned’

Any concerns over the Corvette’s future are not shared by the largest Corvette collector in the world, famed NASCAR team owner Rick Hendrick.

Hendrick, who owns Hendrick Automotive Group in Charlotte, North Carolina, is an avid Corvette collector with 150 unique and rare Corvettes. His collection is housed at his 58,000-square-foot garage called the Heritage Center, located about 900 miles from Michigan in Concord, North Carolina.

Hendrick, who just paid the record price of $3.7 million to own the first retail ZR1 once it rolls off the line this spring, has been a Chevy dealer for more than 50 years and said he can’t recall a time when he has seen this much interest from customers in a Corvette as they are in the ZR1.

“I’ve had hundreds of people try to get in line for a car. I’m not taking orders because it’ll be so slow at getting them out,” Hendrick said, noting the engines are hand-built, and it has several modifications that make production complex.

“I’ve spoken to the board before and been in those meetings, I am not one bit concerned about the future of the Corvette,” Hendrick said.

Tyson Jominy, vice president of data and analytics at J.D. Power, told the Free Press that an aging buyer population is hardly unusual for the exotics, and Corvette’s recent product updates actually orient the brand for a smoother road amid ever-evolving consumer preferences, production costs and regulatory environment.

“Certainly, the electrification of the industry stands to get in the way of the reason most of these sports cars exist, the visceral side of driving,” Jominy said. “If it’s just about speed, electric vehicles are going to beat the internal combustion engine in almost every situation. But Corvette is taking a unique approach with the E-Ray; they’re electrifying but leaving the best parts there.”

The V8 engine, the exhaust sound — Corvette is slow-walking its customer base to the future, Jominy said, bringing along those nostalgic features most likely to tug at the eardrums of devoted customers.

“It shows they’re not going to sit still. No one needs a $100,000 sports car. It’s emotional, and probably from a promise you made to yourself when you’re younger in life,” Jominy said. “All respect to the king here. It’s probably the one best positioned to adapt to the times.”

Made by ‘car guys’

After bringing back the famed Stingray name, Corvette’s current lineup of the E-Ray, Z06 and the ZR1 combine high performance design with affordable pricing options that belie the vehicle’s outstanding reputation among buyers and critics.

“It is the most popular exotic car on the planet,” Fiorani said. “When you compare it to the likes of a Ferrari or Lamborghini, they’ll sell as many Corvettes in the U.S. as Ferrari will sell in a year.”

Last year, around 4,000 Ferraris were sold in the Americas, which includes the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America, compared with 33,330 Corvettes in the U.S. alone.

Hendrick said he has great faith in the brand’s future because Ken Morris, GM’s senior vice president of product programs, product safety and motorsports; and Mark Reuss, GM’s president, are hands-on when it comes to product development.

“They won’t let a Corvette out of there unless it sounds right. You’ve got all these engineers, but (Reuss) is the one who is going to sign off,” Hendrick said. “These two guys are tremendously involved in the sign-off to ensure that it handles, it performs and it’s bulletproof.”

Hendrick said he recalls a time when GM’s upper echelon did not want to keep the Corvette around. But that is not the case now.

“Mark and Ken are so involved in that car. Mark is a perfectionist, he and Ken both, and they have a love affair with that car,” Hendrick said. “They are gearheads and they are car guys and they know what feels good, what sounds good and what runs good.”

So do customers. Hendrick said people will pay over $100,000 for a Corvette because the car “annihilates the exotic” sports car, which often costs twice as much.

Room to hit the road

Despite its extravagance, the Corvette has more storage than the average exotic car, making it almost practical, Jominy said.

Emery Burk, a retired Wayne State University police officer, takes lengthy road trips with Cooks and several fellow Corvette owners multiple times a year. He has had two so far — the C7 and a C8 — and said that as soon as someone who wants to get a Corvette can afford it, they do.

“People are impressed, especially when I pull up to the light and there’s a young dude next to me. They look at me, rev their engines,” he said. “But I say, ‘Hey, it’s an old dude car, I’m not racing today.’ ”

He pined for almost 20 years before purchasing his first Corvette at the urging of his wife, who saw the picture he kept pinned to the refrigerator — blue with a white top — while their four children grew up.

When they left the nest, he finally pulled the trigger.

“With four kids, I didn’t want to be eating bologna and bread,” he said. “But once I retired, I got one. It’s in a garage, but even if the weather is fairly decent in the wintertime, I drive the car. I’ve waited too long.”

Asked what he expects a new Corvette to be, he paused a moment before answering.

“Well, gosh, I’m getting old, so I don’t know if faster is the right thing to say. You can only drive them so fast, plus you got the police out there who might decide to stop you,” Burk said. “But at least you know the speed is under the hood, even if you don’t use it.”

Jackie Charniga covers General Motors for the Free Press. Reach her at jcharniga@freepress.com.

This story was updated to add a video.