Rumors have swirled for years about Corvette becoming a brand separate from Chevrolet and could expand beyond the flagship sports car. As recently as 2022, we reported that such a brand could include an electric sedan and crossover in addition to an electric successor to the C8. However, according to GM’s top brass, it sounds like any vehicle bearing this iconic name will be part of the Chevrolet brand for the foreseeable future.
In a recent video on the ‘Jay Leno’s Garage’ YouTube channel, GM President Mark Reuss confirmed that there is no intention to spin off Corvette into its own brand. “We’d never take [Corvette] out of Chevrolet because the core of Chevrolet is offering people more than they thought for the money and doing it with fantastic design and performance,” Reuss told Leno while admiring a C8 ZR1. “That’s what Corvette is.”
Indeed, the Chevy sports car has represented one of the best values in premium sports cars for over 70 years. The current C8 generation continues that legacy, with pricing well below its rivals delivering similar performance from luxury brands like Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, and Lexus. Of note, the rivals to America’s sports car have been dropping like flies with the Chevy holding a dominant market share in premium sports cars. The Jaguar F-Type, Audi R8, and Nissan GT-R have all been discontinued within the last year.
Reuss’ comments echo what recently retired Corvette chief engineer Tadge Juechter said in an interview last month. “I mean, Corvette’s at the heart of Chevrolet,” Juechter told CNBC. “It’s a pure business play. If you’ve got this brand equity, you can just keep it at home or you can choose to try to monetize it and put it outside.” He added that GM typically hasn’t done the latter and instead “[embraces] our important franchises, and [Corvette] is a really important franchise.”
The Vette will remain in the Chevy portfolio, but a 2019 analysis by Morgan Stanley said a standalone brand could eventually have a cash value of as much as $7 to $12 billion. The same analysis estimated that the Corvette brand under the Chevy umbrella at the time had a value of about $2 billion.
Would you rather see the Corvette name spun off into its own brand of performance luxury vehicles, or should it remain under the Chevy banner? Let us know in the comments.
Comments
The Camaro name should never as well. Such a shame
The marketing folks allegedly suggesting these ideas are clueless. There is very little if ANY crossover between someone shopping for a sports or muscle car vs shopping for a basic vehicle to get from point A to B. No old lady is going to buy a Mustang Mach E or Corvette/Camaro CUV instead of a Honda CR-V to replace the one she has because of the Mustang or Corvette/Camaro nameplate. In fact, the Mustang or Corvette/Camaro nameplate probably throws her off completely on what the vehicle is.
Also, if you are into sports or muscle cars, seeing the nameplate on a CUV or other daily driver is just going to push you away, from both the daily driver type vehicle AND the enthusiast car that now has watered down nameplate.
I have young single friends that drive flashy colored Mach Es. I’m pretty sure Mustang plate works better for them than if this was a plain old Ford brand (which at least for me has no appeal).
They’re probably still single because of the car.
Phew! Now let’s see how long this decision lasts,..
HAHA Marty !!
Yeah, whenever some GM exec says “We Will Never….” etcetera, I’m reminded of GM also saying “We will NEVER make an electric Silverado”, and then a week later Ford introduces the electric Ford F150 Lightning, and GM – being Monkey See – Monkey Do as far as FORD is concerned, INSTANTLY does an about face.
Bill Howland
You are absolutely right. You can be assured that the person making such a statement as “We Will Never” is seriously considering to do just that. It likely is a fishing experiment looking for push back from the public so as to judge the market when they do make the separation of Corvette from Chevrolet.
Hi O…mer…….
That kind of thing used to bug me when I was a kid, but then I quickly discovered all of us have to read between the lines of what they are really saying..
A humorous thing is happening with ONE of the electric Utility companies in my area; they are all SMILES and say ‘We are here to HELP !!!”, etcetera but with their VOLUNTARY introduction of Smart Meters for everyone (MANDATORY for the customers of course since it is Company Policy, but no government mandate here that they do it since the company at my house doesn’t have them yet) has caused at least some people to say:
” If they were REALLY concerned about Senior Citizens or others on a fixed income, they wouldn’t charge an EXTRA $14/ month” to “OP OUT”, meaning that is the fee everyone pays for not going with the Smart Meter Program, which in the filing with our Public Service Commission states that this program:
“Will *NOT* improve Customer Service, nor lower Customer Bills”.
In fact, EVERYONE’s monthly bill will increase since they have been allowed to fully adjust their rates for the cost of the entire program, including the meters themselves and all the support infrastructure to get the reading back to their billing center – in other words, everyone has to pay for another fiefdom.
The company serving my home has “DUMB digital metering” – the meters are ONE WAY only, spitting out the RADIO reading and meter serial number once every 3 seconds. So of the 14,400 times per month that the meter spits this out, 14,399 are wasted and 1 is taken by the guy driving down every other street as fast as he can picking up all the meters… Any missed due to being in the extreme rear of the house, and in the basement, etc, are estimated readings, and they interchange odd and even streets to pick up the stragglers they missed the month due to the car being too distant before – but the PLUS to the customers is that the only “INFRASTRUCTURE EXPENSE” is maintenance on the compact car, plus the fact that they only need 5% of the meter readers they used to and its a more enjoyable job since they just drive a car.
If it’s true that it has a value of 7-12 billion, then the smart business move on it’s face would be to remove it from Chevrolet. If the 7-12 billion doesn’t significantly change shareholder value for gm then it should stay.
The bigger question is, if it’s worth 7-12 billion removed, what does that do to value of Chevrolet? Does it go down and if so by how much? Morgan Stanley didn’t mention a gain by one could also mean a loss for the other or mention what that loss would mean.
Good point.
Fortunately, Corporate Sharks (think: the Dolphin ‘Flipper’) like Willard “Mitt” Romney’s Bain Capital, which makes its money slicing and dicing up companies for sale of the individual parts and putting everyone out of a job, hasn’t discovered this yet. This is no doubt an unfortunate side effect of all the good this company does (!!!).
What a guy he is, in his younger years he was basically a ‘Drug Facilitator’….I can’t say here exactly what I mean but you know….. He of course, may have actually helped some people (!!!)
Of course, I am not actually making an accusation here since I’m just a dumb guy giving my opinion, and not many read this anyway.
Corvette should definitely stay under the BOWTIE Chevrolet brand.
Look this is a deal where the car has build an Iconic Brand equity that reflects on Chevy in more ways than can be counted. Lets face it remove the Corvette and the Chevy line is very forgettable.
May spouting the value of the Corvette brand do not consider the real value to the entire Chevy line the Corvette has played.
The Corvette is an Icon and has 70 years of equity build on a Sports car not a truck or SUV.
Porsche had to add an SUV line to gain volume as the 911 has nor major volume. Chevy already enjoys volume.
The Corvette is much like the Goodyear blimp. The media coverage, TV shows, Movies, Magazine and web coverage all promote Corvette but also Chevy. The cost of the media coverage would cost much more than Chevy could pay.
To save the C5 Jim Perkins and crew collected Magazines and all sorts of promotion of the car and Chevy. They showed all the cars that went to the Corvette museum for the anniversary. Thousands of corvettes caravanned and the videos and TV media documented it.
The Corvette needs Chevys volume for protection and Chevy loves having the Halo effect of the media and added association of the car. Also the added show room traffic sells cars.
There is just no reason to slap Corvette on anything but a 2 seat sports car. Old’s slapped Cutlass on everything for a couple years and how did that work out.
Look if you want to do anything let the Corvette team take a truck or Tahoe and lower it with bigger brakes and a Z06 Engine and call it a Chevy Tahoe Z08 Tuned by Team Corvette.
Porsche is not calling their SUV model a 911 are they?
Note in the years Corvette numbers were low they were saved by Chevy. If they were not a Chevy no one would have saved them. This is why so many sports car models last 8 years or less.
The name Corvette needs to be protected.
I am heartened to hear this, and hope it sticks. gm is not exactly known for protecting important GM heritage (their lowercase, not mine).
Not surprising the banker’s think it would be a good idea to spin it out. They’d pick up a billion to spin it out, and then they’d suggest gm buy it back and collect another billion. It is what wall street does. There is no money for them in the status quo.
I think the alternative scenario is not to spin off a separate company, just a separate brand in the GM portfolio under which they could launch other vehicles. Kinda like what Ford did with Mach-E.
That isn’t much of a spinoff though. Corvette is already sort of a sub-brand of chevy. Very few corvette owners (me included) say I own a chevy. You say I own a corvette. But I think most who own vette’s know the engine, tranny, and lots of other parts come from the generic parts bin. It is a plus and a minus. My C7 engine is common as dirt and therefore in another 10 years there will still be widely available parts. Will we be able to say the same about the new C8 Z06 engine? Coming from the generic parts bin has its plusses. I was getting some service done and chatting with my SA. He was lamenting that an STS-V may have to be junked because they could not find a radiator for it. They even tried modifying an STS radiator to no avail. This was about a 12 year old car. When I spoke to the SA, he was scouring junk yards for an old one. If that came up empty, he was out of options.
Glad to hear current management say that it belongs at Chevrolet.
Having said that, I know there have been periodic discussions over the decades about whether the Corvette should stay at Chevrolet given their “value” positioning. Different senior management teams have had different opinions on the subject over the years.
I recall one instance in the late 90’s when “brand management” was all the rage at GM. There were serious, senior level discussions about moving it to Pontiac. The Pontiac gang was of course saying it should be in their domain as they were positioned as the “sporty” division…blah, blah, blah. At one meeting I remember them saying they envisioned themselves as the “American BMW”. That brought out the laughter.
Anyway, Chevrolet was and still is the big dog at GM and they carried A LOT more weight in the corporation than Pontiac and thus the Corvette remains a Chevy.
Mark says this but the minute Mark is retires things will can change!
Well, I personally think that’s a good news / bad news scenario. The good news has already been covered above. The bad news is the dealership experience when getting a C8 serviced (at least in Northern Florida). While I believe the service should be top notch no matter what you pay for a vehicle, the Chevrolet service experience cannot compare to that of even GM’s Cadillac brand. And when you pay $90k for a vehicle you kinda expect the dealer to be fully knowledgeable of it’s workings and have adequate staff to execute repairs (rather than dropping the car off and waiting a week for the Corvette “specialist” to be available. Spinning it off to it’s own brand would presumably fix that.
One would have to assume “Corvette Specialists” are going to magically appear. I hate to break it to you, young people no longer aspire to be automotive technicians or any other kind of repair technician. Keeping any kind of technician is major problem for anyone in any service business. The USA desperately needs a strong vocational training program and a workforce with a strong work ethic. I’m in the business and the best technicians are retiring or moving to hourly paying professions. Flat rate technicians with $100,000 plus invested in tools are a dying breed. I have a family member retiring out soon. It would cost. $70,000 to replace his tool boxes and $150,000 minimum to replace his tools in today’s dollars. He’s been at the top of his game for the last 20 plus years and has done extremely well. However, he didn’t make it in a dealership. He made it as an independent. Dealerships send him the problems, they can’t figure out. That’s what happens with the very best. They go into business for themselves. 90% of the technicians today can’t do diagnostic work, they can only swap out parts. Computers can do some diagnostic work but they are far from the gold standard.
Oh, so true. Been there done that many years ago. We need mechanics to repair vehicles again. Technicians look at a computer 🖥 and just replace the part it says is bad. Mechanics diagnose the problem and fix it. Engineers are designing cars that are so complex it’s nearly impossible to fix. Even
back in the 60’s and 70’s some problems were difficult to solve. Oh the stories I could tell, but that’s for another time.
I’d like to see them bring back Oldsmobile and drop Buick. But built Oldsmobile only in North America.
Sounds like “Bring-a-Trailer” is where you’re dreams will come true….
And how soon we all forget. Not too many years ago, they took a Corvette convertible, substituted a Northstar V-8 and slapped on some Cadillac badges.
Oh how true it is. I was all in for the Cadillac with it being a Corvette underneath until I discovered that it had a Cadillac engine, that ended my interest and desire to have one.
I have had several Cadillacs, from a 1981 through to 1998 and all having serious engine failures starting with the
4-6-8 then the new Northstar and later with head gasket failures of the later engines. It has however cured me of any desire to own a Cadillac unless it has a Chevrolet engine. Long live the 6 liter series of Chevrolet engines.
Yeah, well, believe it or not, there are worse engines…. Like the 3 cylinder 1,000 cc pieces of junk for the FORD FIESTA, ESCORT, etc.
They work great (they must have since all the BIG EXPERTS gave the thing over 160 awards a few years ago), until the IN OIL TIMING BELT (that just L-O-V-E oil, haha) delaminates at 45,000 miles. If you catch it before hand, its a $3,000 changeout, but people usually don’t catch it in time, and that is why FORD is replacing some of the engines – good for another 45,000 miles no doubt.
Makes me wonder about those 3 cylinder 1,200 and 1,300 cc very similar Korean engines used in several Chevys and Buicks currently. Initial oil change at 7,500 miles makes me wonder how long the Turbo charger is going to last, spinning at 30,000 rpm or whatever ridiculous speed those things work at.
Since the powertrain warranty on GMs is 60,000 miles, the belt and turbo must last at least that long. The owner’s manual says to change the belt once every 150,000 miles. Sure… Haha,.
Hi O…mer !
I currently drive 3 GM full electrics, so you might say I’m biased, but this is an unfortunate advantage that the Electric cars aren’t supposed to have…. The powertrains are much more reliable than some of the junk the BIG 3 foist on the unsuspecting public (maybe I should include Daimler Sprinter Vans which basically explode at 80,000 miles).
I wonder if there are at least a few ELECTRIC sales from people who have seen this difference and don’t want to be caught with Ram’s lack of oil when idling problem, Chevy V-8 lifter trouble, or Ford’s delaminating Timing Belt trouble.
Of course, later on, even if you are lucky with the engine, there’s that fantastic automatic transmission behind it that keeps the transmission shops in business. Or even better, a CVT !!!
GM/chevy tried to brand the corvette on its own , and wasnt very well recieved , and a spin off now is pointless !!! since pontiac , saturn , oldmobile , saab , holden are all gone !!
Leave it alone! Corvette should always be a Chevy!