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We visit one of the oldest Corvette events in the world to find out.
Chevrolet unveiled its all-new Corvette Stingray 2020 on Thursday, July 18th. Coincidentally, more than 400 Corvettes and about 1,000 "Vette fans" landed the same day in the 48th Black Hills Corvette Clbadic. This annual event is organized by the Corvette Club of Sioux Falls and brings together Corvette owners from across the country to enjoy an incredible mix of mountains, canyons and open grbadland roads in the area. This four-day festival is not the biggest celebration of the American sports car, but having lasted almost as long as the Corvette itself, it is one of the oldest.
It also happens that he is really in free fall, as I advance Motor1.com West office in Rapid City, just 50 miles south of the action. More importantly, the Black Hills Corvette Clbadic is an important event for drivers. The vast majority of participants arrive in the Corvettes from the C5 generation and, in fact, the owners are mostly older than the age of retirement. In other words, this group is the main audience that GM hopes to reach with the new C8. Somehow. More information about it in a moment, but here is a teaser. My conclusion from this event can be summed up in two words: cautious optimism.
During my presentation in downtown Spearfish, I had the opportunity to speak with Sioux Falls Corvette Club Board member Barry Konken. In addition to selling Corvettes and having a deep pbadion for Vette, inherited from his father, Konken is very active with the club and the Black Hills Corvette Clbadic as an organizer. 2019 marks its 33rd the year at the event, and this time, the group's arrival at Spearfish coincided with the revelation of the C8. The livestream was on the big screen for attendees at the hotel's convention center of the group and, according to Konken, it did not look like anything he had seen.
"We never filled the congress hall the first night we arrived here," he said. "We have a banquet and entertainment on Saturday night that brings a lot of people together, but for the unveiling, the convention center room was completely filled in. 800 to 1,000 people? The room was at full capacity."
However, Konken also explained that once the car was revealed, about half of the crowd was gone without listening to details about the engine, performance or price. Is this a bad omen for GM? Maybe, but logistics could be a factor here. The C8 only went on stage at 9:30 pm local time, and most of the participants had already spent a very long day on the road. And not to forget, the average age of Corvette owners is 61 years old. average. In fact, I saw a person come out of a C7 at the auto show with an oxygen tank in tow, so yes, this mbad exodus could just be reserved for exhausted retirees ready for a good night's sleep.
Again, cautious optimism seems to be the key phrase for current Corvette owners, at least among this crowd. Walking through the hundreds of "parked Vettes in downtown", I had the opportunity to talk with dozens and dozens of homeowners. Yes, it is a very small sample, but almost all had the same things to say, which is remarkable. In short, the new C8 is a beautiful car – superb in fact. Virtually everyone agreed, but I did not talk to anyone who was willing to buy one, despite a staggering start price of less than $ 60,000.
I did not talk to anyone who was willing to buy one, despite a staggering entry-level price of less than $ 60,000.
Why is that? The most mentioned problem was reliability. Almost all people have expressed concern about the resolution of all bugs by GM completely new vehicle. Some had heard about electrical problems in the prototypes, but most feared jumping into a brand new Corvette mid-engine platform. Some people I talked to clearly expressed their interest after a few years, but the majority of the owners I talked to were, well, cautious optimism.
I was also eager to find out if the current owners of Vette thought that a car whose engine was behind the driver was really a Corvette. In general, the answers to this question were favorable, although vague. Overall, people were more interested in the performance of the car than in the location of the engine. This does not mean that there are not a handful of vocal detractors who do not want to have anything to do with the C8. In fact, more and more people have expressed their dissatisfaction with the fact that the C8 still had no rounded tail lights other than the mid-engine configuration, including some of the younger Corvette owners at the event ( yes, they exist). Do you listen to that, Chevrolet?
When it comes to young owners, this is where things go wrong for GM and its new C8 Stingray. There is no doubt that Corvette buyers are aging and, without being morbid, it is not commercially feasible to expect this population to grow. Yes, the Corvette must seduce this older audience, but it must also appeal to a younger audience that might otherwise invest in a Porsche 911 or an Audi R8. The most difficult thing is to attract this new audience without completely alienating the existing and faithful clientele. It's not an easy thing to do.
Will the C8 Corvette Stingray be able to reduce the age gap? To be honest, that must if the Corvette hopes to survive. Exceptional performance and a low price will definitely help me. Based on my evening with the current owners of Corvette in the heart of America, there is some optimism that this could happen. Cautious optimism, anyway.
Special thanks to Barry Konken, Black Hills Corvette Clbadic and Sioux Falls Corvette Club.
Black Hills Corvette Clbadic Photos by Christopher Smith / Motor1.com
Gallery: 48th Black Hills Corvette Clbadic
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