The eighth-generation Chevy Corvette introduces a wealth of firsts for the nameplate, including the first-ever production mid-mounted powertrain layout. What’s more, the new C8 is the first Corvette built in a right-hand drive configuration direct from the factory, giving overseas buyers in select export markets a shot at owning American’s sports car. Now, we’re watching as the new right-hand drive 2022 Corvette Stingray rolls through the production line with the following brief video.
Clocking in at less than 2 minutes in length, this video comes to us from GM Specialty Vehicles, General Motors’ new brand in Australia and New Zealand following the retirement of the Holden brand. Chevy Corvette fans in these two Oceania countries can purchase the new 2022 Corvette Stingray in right-hand drive from GMSV, but production continues to take place at GM Bowling Green Assembly plant in Kentucky, the same plant that has served as the exclusive production facility for the Chevy Corvette nameplate since 1981.
In order to accommodate the new right-hand drive configuration, workers must adapt to a modified build process, with technicians on one side of the assembly line taking over responsibilities typically handled by their counterpart on the other side of the assembly line.
The video details some of the new challenges presented by building the 2022 Corvette Stingray in right-hand drive, as well as plenty of footage of the new mid-engine sports car in various stages of construction.
Australia and New Zealand aren’t the only right-hand drive markets set to receive the new 2022 Corvette Stingray – buyers in the U.K. and Japan also have a shot at C8 ownership, although supplies for export markets are very limited.
Nevertheless, those export market customers who do manage to snag one of the new 2022 Corvette Stingrays will get to enjoy the same naturally aspirated 6.2L V8 LT2 engine as the customers in the U.S., rated at 495 horsepower and 470 pound-feet of torque when equipped with the factory performance exhaust system. Output hits the rear wheels through an eight-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission.
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Comments
Expensive D chariot gets factory RHD but none of the more profitable T1 trucks, CUVS nor Alpha or GEM cars get RHD. 2 Billion people live in RHD markets, it’s money left on the table…
2 billion people mostly in the third world where most weekly incomes wouldn’t even buy the windshield in one of these. Aside from that, there is next to zero market for full size U.S. market vehicles in Japan, Thailand or in the U.K. Australia, NZ and perhaps South Africa is not even enough to make a viable business case for RHD. Australia is making do with the wads of Thai built underpowered, lethargic third world diesel powered pick ups that are already manufactured in RHD.
Very cool to watch and interesting to think about all the details that have to be figured out to make this happen.
Good day,
Please manufacture the Chevy pick up truck also in right hand drive ,this would see sales go up by fifty percent for your export market .
Ian Currie
Jamaica west indies
WOW, GM does what practically every other single car maker in the world had done for 100 years….BRAVO, lets get Mary on the cover of another magazine…..
Pleased to see Chevrolet finally returning to building passenger cars in RHD form once again. Export RHD Chevrolets existed and were assembled in many countries and sold in even more countries across the world from the 1920s until at least 1970.
General Motor’s former Holden division down under assembled RHD Chevrolets from 1949 until 1970 and in more recent years manufactured LHD Chevrolet Caprices, LHD CKD Buick packs, LHD Pontiac GTOs, LHD Chevrolets SS on the same assembly line that its domestic RHD Holdens rolled off.
Accordingly, the Aussie’s could certainly show the Bowling Green assembly plant workers a thing or two when building LHD & RHD vehicles on the same assembly line. In Australia these LHD and RHD vehicles involved at least three different body styles. By comparison the Bowling Green assembly of just a few RHD Chevrolet Corvettes is a simple walk in the park.
Nevertheless, let’s hope Chevrolets humble Corvette model is the first of many RHD Chevrolets to come.
General Motors Ramos Arizpe built all new Holden Equinox with RHD until Holden was shut down; additionally other countries received their RHD Chevrolet Equinox like Botswana, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya until operations ceased, but other (very few) like the Caribean Islands continue to get the RHD Equinox.
Somo GM Brazil plants that supply the African Continent and other Asian countries with RHD continue to make RHD vehicles.
All in all, the last piece of data indicates that 76 out of the 163 countries in the world still use RHD.
So as Guestt says, lot of money left on the table. See Toyota and Huyndai / Kia for example.
South Africa never received the RHD Chevy Equinox as GM withdrew from that country by December 2017, and GM, apart from having zero presence in all RHD countries now (except Japan where some LHD product is sold), they only have one ex joint venture plant which they no longer have an interest in, in Egypt which assembles from CKD a few vehicles from GM China and GM Korea. They have no other assembly plants on the African continent. GM still manufactures vehicle/ CKD kits in India for export, but does not sell vehicles there as they failed to capture sales in viable numbers and they withdrew.