The 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray is a very good car. In fact, it’s a great car. That’s why General Motors already has a long list of orders despite it only just reaching showrooms. In addition, dealers are expected to have few unsold examples up until the second quarter of next year--at the earliest.
That’s because the Corvette Stingray is being built at a rate of only 160 cars per day and General Motors Company [NYSE:GM] has no plans to increase this rate. That’s because increasing production would mean adding a second shift to the car’s production site in Bowling Green, Kentucky, which is costly and unlikely to be needed once the initial buzz wears off.
"You bring out a new Corvette and the demand is sky-high at the beginning, and then it tapers off," Corvette chief engineer Tadge Juechter explained to Automotive News (subscription required). "It's not worth making that investment [of a second shift], even though for a while we make a lot more money getting those cars out there."
Compounding the problem is the fact that GM will be pushing sales of the car outside the U.S., further limiting its availability in local showrooms. Then there’s the arrival of the Corvette Stingray Convertible, whose added complexity may slow the rate of production initially.
At present, GM is planning to build around 30,000 Corvettes (including future variants) per year, which is approximately double the number of the previous-generation model that was sold in 2012.
You can watch the 2014 Corvette Stingray being built in this previous post.
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