General Motors released the quarterly sales numbers for all their marques, along with the first-half delivery numbers for the US market. Said release confirms the best first-half sales for the Chevrolet Corvette since H1 2015, with GM referring to 17,914 and 18,307 deliveries.
Another good indicator would be H1 2024 compared to H1 2023 sales, with Corvette moving 5.2% more units than in the first six months of the previous year. If the Bowling Green assembly plant keeps producing Corvette vehicles at this rate, 2024 could be a better year than 2022 for the C8-generation Corvette.
Back then, dealers nationwide moved 34,510 units, followed by 34,353 vehicles last year. The C8 has no direct competitor. Even so, picture this: GM sold more Corvettes in the first quarter than Porsche did 911 and 718 sports cars. Unfortunately, Porsche Cars North America has yet to publish the sales report for Q2 2024.
Zuffenhausen's favorite son moved 1,930 units of the Neunelfer and 797 units of the mid-engine model, which is going the way of the dodo in favor of an electric sports car. By comparison, the Q1 2024 volume for the C8 is 8,576 sales.
Because Stingray features a free-breathing V8, it would be interesting to compare the Corvette's half-year volume with that of the Mustang. According to Ford, the pony car moved 27,444 units in the first six months. But alas, we don't know if most of them were specified with the 5.0-liter Coyote V8 or the standard turbo four.
Photo: Chevrolet
Similar to the Neunelfer and 718, the S650-generation Mustang can be had with a manual transmission. Corvette ditched manuals with the changeover from C7 to C8, partly due to the switch from a front-midship layout to rear midship. The C8 was developed around a quick-shifting transaxle from Tremec, which features different regular production codes for the Stingray, E-Ray, Z06, and forthcoming ZR1.
GM recently trademarked Zora in Mexico, with Zora being a reference to the GM engineer who convinced the bigwigs in Detroit to fit a small block in the engine bay of the C1. The one and only Zora Arkus-Duntov advocated for a mid-engine Corvette in the later years of his tenure at General Motors (think first half of the 1970s), but he never got to see the C8 come to fruition.
Zora is expected to be used by the ZR1's electrified cousin, but it's not clear if the Zora will borrow the front electric drive unit from the E-Ray or feature a multi-motor solution à la Ferrari SF90. In any case, you can look forward to approximately 1,000 ponies compared to the ZR1's circa 800.
The S650-generation Mustang is potentially going hybrid in 2025, whereas the 992-series Neunelfer has gone hybrid for model year 2025. Along with a new 3.6-liter boxer with an electric turbocharger instead of two conventional snails, the Porsche T-Hybrid system was introduced by the 911 Carrera GTS and 911 Carrera 4 GTS.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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