This article is part of the GM Authority Mailbag series, where the GM Authority Crew features and replies to your questions, comments, and observations.
The following comes to us from Tony:
I just wanted you to know that GM is targeting younger buyers with the all new 2014 Corvette, and that they got me.
It depends what you call young… I’m 45 years old and was in the market for a sports car this summer. The two cars that I have owned before and wanted to look at the new body styles and improvements were the Porsche 991 and the Mercedes SL550. In fact, I took a trip from Indiana to Florida to test drive both cars and was on the two yard line on one of them.
Then I started reading about the all new Corvette and couldn’t believe the new technology that has been put into that car and how the interior has been improved. So without driving one, I went down to the local dealership and ordered one. The dealer is getting three Corvettes — two coupes and one convertible — so I’m on the hook for the convertible, since the other two were spoken for.
I think it’s important for someone at GM to know that I was a Porsche or Mercedes buyer who was converted. I looking so forward to this super car.
Tony — congratulations on a choice well-made! It’s music to our ears that, despite some negative feedback by a vocal minority, The General got the seventh-generation Corvette oh-so-right. We’re sure that, upon reading your letter, the fine folks at GM and the Corvette team will celebrate with a round of spirited driving bouts at the Milford Proving Grounds before embarking on development of the C8 (if they haven’t already).
Have fun in your 2014 Stingray Convertible — we’re sure you’ll enjoy it thoroughly!
Comments
I would also like to agree with Tony. Not only is the new Corvette have a whole grab bag of new goodies it looks amazing and is priced just right!
I am also a younger buyer, I am 26 years old and pre-ordered mine back around the 1st of February. Just last weekend I was told that they were taking the final orders and the build process would begin soon. I ordered a red convertible with all the goodies and it came out to just over 73k.
I have yet to see one in person, but since the first announcement I don’t think a day has gone by that I haven’t checked every source possible. Online, magazines, and pretty much anything else I can find. So far I have yet to hear a bad thing about it. My only complaint is that I don’t have it in my garage right now……. Chevrolet please hurry up!!
I believe that they’re are really doing something right with this new Corvette and are going to see some great success
Similar situation. I am 46 and decided to go with Corvette not Porsche. Moreover, it will be my first American car. So far I had only European or Japanese. My friends are assuring me I will not regret. Of course now the expectation is set fairly high especially on quality. I already preordered and I hope GM delivers. On a lighter note, if it does not live to my expectations, I will just give it to my wife to drive and I will get something else.
I am 37 and I have never been huge vette fan. I currently own a Panamera 4S and my previous car was a Lamborghini Gallardo. Even though the Panamera is very sporty for a 4 door car, I wanted to get another 2 door sports car along with the Panamera. Since the first time I saw pics of the new vette it had mein awe. I am still crossing my fingers that he interior is as good as thy say it is, because I would never want a previous version vette because of the cheap plastic interior. I should have mine here within a month. Here’s hoping that it’s everything they have hyped it up to be.
I have always found it funny that people buy a sports car and they complain about what or how the interior is put together!
I just replaced broken panels in the interior of a C5 with low miles.
When you have to replace a shift boot, Header panel, sun visors and ash tray doors on a low mile car that has not even been in the rain it is telling how cheap it is. Even the steering wheel has a uneven finish to the leather now.
This was not even a cheap car back in the 90’s but it should have had better build quality inside.
GM in the performance cars always invested in the chassis and the drive line and always ran out of money on the inside. This is not my opinion but was stated by the past F body manager himself. This should not longer be an issue with the new money at GM.
Just because it is a sports car should mean you should have to put up with an interior that falls apart.
It was a crime to put in the ZR1 a HHR SS steering wheel when it cost $125,000. Anyone who did not see this as a major flaw needs to re access their values in quality. To settle for less is what GM and no owner should repeat the same mistake.
It appears that GM has captured the segment of buyers they had hoped if these 4 are a representation of what is going on.
If GM can take buyers from the Boxster, Cayman and some 911 it has done its job. While all good cars they can have buyers taken away as not all are die hard owners the younger you get.
I never understood the 911 love till I spent a lot of time and miles in one. I get it and loved the handling but I never fell in love with the car. I think these are the people GM can win away with the engine, interior and other items added to the new car. I have not driven the new C7 yet but I suspect it is like the 911 where it makes fast feel slow and it makes going fast easy and not a lot of work.
I am 31 and I Love the sound,the Front but I think the tail lights suck.I think it should Be A Corvette not an “Across the board” feeling of Looking like other Chevys. If anything the other Chevys Should look like it.
I am young buyer as well at 74. 🙂 I owned a 2006 Corvette, a 2009 Porsche 911 Turbo, a 2009 Mercedes Benz SL 550 and then a 2012 Porsche Panamera which I have traded and ordered a C7. The 2006 was a superb car and fuel mileage incredible at highway speeds. I am sure the new one with V4 shut down is going to be the same. I am excited about the new car and it will be my 3rd Corvette. The first one was a 1968 Stingray with 350hp 4 spd. The interior crap put out by so many writers is totally over done. You should seen some of the things in the 911 and SL550 that they have complained about being in Corvettes. You can spend twice as much for something and not come close to equal to value of the Corvette. I have been there done that as you can see.
I’m 46 and I also just ordered my Stingray (my 1st Corvette) I was looking at Audi’s when I found out about the Stingray and it was a deal maker! Now if we only knew when it was coming!
I have seen the car in person at Bloomington Gold. Seeing in person did not change my opinion. The tail lights suck and the bumper is horrid! I’m not one that is just against change, as I liked the fixed headlights when they were introduced on the c6. But, the C7 looks like the back end was designed by a 6th grade art class. I own a c3 and a c6 and after seeing the c7, have no intention of buying the next generation until they work over the back end of the car.
Maybe it was the same design team that created the reincarnated GTO a few years ago. No one liked it, yet we got the same type of media hype as we are getting with the C7. I believe we all know what ultimately happened to the reincarnated GTO. I have heard the GM reps talk at various seminars about wanting to draw in younger buyers. How young? Not many 16 year olds that are going to have the money to keep the Corvette alive with sales numbers. WAKE UP GM!! I had hoped if they were going for a radical change that the car would have looked like the version from the Transformers movie. That was a well designed car.
And thinking like above is what would kill this car.
First off the you need to consider the whole story on the GTO to start with.
To start Bob Lutz comes to GM with a Performance division with no performance and no money. What is a Vice President to do. He got a little funding together and had them change a Holden over to a GTO.
How little money did they have Well Fred Simmons of Pontiac motorsports said that Pontiac has so little money they has to put the hood scoops and split exhaust off for a year. Also per Scott Settlemire former head of the F body program this whole thing has to be done with pocket change at GM since they had so little money to do it. This was not a budgeted project and add to that GM was going bankrupt. To be honest they made silk out of a pigs ear.
Did GM want more hell yes. Did Lutz want more yes and it was in the works when GM just flat ran out of money. The car was in clay and would have come in and around the time of the Camaro return. This was why there was not TA.
As for the Vette like it or not the car has to change. What was working is not working anymore. Sales have dropped to 11K-12K last year and only rose this year as they built out for shut down for the Stingray.
I just saw were the base car just out ran the Viper TA in anything that required turning and stopping. 60-0 in 99 Feet.
Like the rear or not it has function unlike most other production Corvettes. Peter Brock the original sketcher of the first Stingray says he loves the new car and work they did to make it real. No more fake scoops and odd appendage.
We are in that spot where 50% hate it and 50% love it and the hate will drop to 10% soon enough.
The bottom line is if they just keep rehashing the same theme over and over the car will die. I have seen the Stingray show car and it is just what you said a Transformer. Nice looking but not a realistic car and at a price no one would pay.
I find it odd that the ones who claim to be the ones who love the car the most are the ones who are willing to keep it the same and do more damage to the point it would kill the car.
Once the Z06 rolls out and the numbers come around even more will be converted. GM has given the car market a gift here with a car that will so thing a $55K car should not do. Stop complain and enjoy it.
For those who don’t like it the used almost as good cars are getting cheaper all the time.
I’m not sure what people are complaining about when it comes to the corvette!
People are complaining about the styling, not about the performance. Some people think the exterior is too busy and looks “cartoonish”. I don’t love the styling but I think it’s alright. One thing I dislike is the horizontal chrome strip in the front grill. It’s the only piece of chrome on the car and looks out of place. That’s certainly not a deal-breaker for me though. I don’t particularly like the exhaust note either. It sounds too raw and rough for me. Not refined enough. That can probably be fixed with an aftermarket system however. Overall I think the C7 is a great car. It’s the only serious sports car I would buy, other than a Porsche 911.
Scott – regarding your comments that the Stingray concept that was in the Transformers is just a show car and “that look” would be “a price no one would pay”. We are talking body panels. If you remember, the Camaro concept car was in an earlier Transformer movie as well. The real version had only minor cosmetic changes. The mirrors on the doors were changed.
Bottom line is the performance numbers look great, the interior looks great and the front and sides are well done. But, that backend design just doesn’t flow with the other body lines of the car. Also splitting the lower half of the bumper with glossy black is too much and should have a smaller area blacked out, similar to the C6 only blacked out along the bottom. Google Supervettes sv8.r they make body kits. Take a look at that company’s rendering of the back bumper area which flows with the body lines.
The Stingray in the movie was a full blown show car and while it looked good it was never built to be a production car.
On the other hand the Camaro was built to be more of a production car and less a show car.
The Funny part is the Camaro in the original movie was guess what a GTO. Since there were no Camaro’s they re bodied two GTOs with fiberglass bodies and used them in the movie. We had the surviving one at work a couple years ago. Under it the car was a hacked up mess just made for the movie.
I got to see the Stingray close up and in person too. I loved the car but many things would have had to change.
Note two while the present car is all new it is still based on the same architecture as the last couple gens. Most of the hard point are much like what they have been using. The show car was not based on these same hard points.
Now that is not to say the show car could point the way to the future at some point less the split window.
I fully expect sales will double on this car unless the economy fails again. The goal was to sell about 25K units this coming year.
There are some things I am not a fan of on this car but I understand why they were done and expect it will be a better car in the long run. People got over the loss of the trunk in 63 and they got over the loss of the BBC in 74 and they will get over what ever nit pick they have on this one.
But the car as it was with the slow evolution was slowly dying. Tadge knew they needed to shake things a little and they did. and it should help.
We will see the same with he Mustang. too.
I don’t understand why some people totally right off a car like the corvette cuz there is one part or area of the car that they don’t like!
Can’t they look at the hole car instead of just a piece here and a piece there?
They should. Unfortunately, for some non-design people who have a hair-trigger sensitivity to industrial design exercises, they look for just 1 tiny little thing to upset them and then declare the car/product to be failure.
I mean I hate the horizontal chrome piece in the grill of the C7, and I have yet to reconcile with its headlights, but I haven’t called the car a failure on just those matters. There is still much more going on with the C7 that I agree with than what I disagree with.
I’ve said this before, but the Corvette was never a car of “old men”; At least not compared to Porsche, Mercedes or any other sports car maker. Sports cars have always been lusted after by the young, but purchased by the “mature-old”. The Vette crowd just maintained a higher profile by virtue of their passion for the car and higher sales numbers of the Vette in the past.
I see old farts in Lambos and Astan Martins with staggered 22s and so on all the time in Tampa, Miami and other places. Just because a few “me too” youngish celebrities have the odd foreign sports car or two does not mean that ALL youth lust and dream of owning something from Europe exclusively.
Just from my personal experience with my circle of gear heads/street racers, and mod feign friends, between the C5 and C6 I know no one older than 34 who owns a Vette. And I know 6 Vette owners. Now of course I know that isn’t representative of the overall demographic, but to say the Vette doesn’t appeal to the young is erroneous. I would have bought a used C5 Z06, 8 years ago, if not for my son being so attached to my 05 GTO. My wife and I both are adjusting the budget to purchase Z51 C7 or maybe scoop up a nice C6 GS or Z06 if a good deal presents itself. Also: we are only 35!
Scott, I think the 25k number is for 2015 and beyond, as I believe I recall reading the production run for 2014 is only going to be 12k units, which I believe will make them hard to get later in the year and hold their value real well.
Might be I just saw what Tadge said his goal was and I assumed it was this year.
But they do have a full year of production for this year so I would expect they could do a little better than the 12K.
Demand is already high and will be for a while. With the timed release of the Z06 and ZR1 along with the special editions they should keep interest up.
I do expect that this model will be much shorter term than the last few C series. There are a lot of changes that need to come and GM knows they do not want to let this one rot on the line like they have with other models in the past. Now that they have money they will want to keep the momentum up. If they are to really Challenge Porsche I do not see this car going as is for more than 5-6 years. That could change with the economy but as of now I would not be surprised if we do not get a new Vette or even a second level or edition Vette that has been spoken of.
If people think the changes to the C7 were a lot they have not seen anything yet based on some of the things hinted at.
So if a new car comes in at 6 years will there be a mid cycle at 3 year’s?
I’ve owned a 72 Stingray for 20 years. Never interested in Corvettes from 73-2013, and was ready to buy an Audi S5. But saw the C7 in pre-release and totally changed my direction. Put a deposit down on a Z51 in January and have the fever. Reviews have exceeded expectations.
All the corvette buyers will be sorry at the 10k mile range when your crappy GM build will start rattling and you start getting back pain from the crappy ride quality. I am quitting Vettes and ponying up the extra $30k for an SL550.