I congratulate every Canadian who will get their C8 dream realized this production year but I have a question and an opinion.
Does anyone know the forecasted 2020 production numbers? Obviously GM knows exactly how many C8's they are both able to, and intend on building for the inaugural model year. I do have to give credit to their marketing department for feeding the C8 hype we have been exposed to for nearly three years now and keeping the suspense level high for those wanting to purchase and not being actually sure until they reach the magic 3000 or whatever it is order status. For an arm's length comparison only, in the first year of C7 production, GM produced 37,288 of the 2014 C7 Corvettes. Delivery to dealers began on September 18, 2013 and of these, 1,193 were built for Canadian markets. I may be wrong but I expect GM knows exactly how many and where they intend to ship to Canada, and as in 2014, that number is likely guaranteed to be less than what they ship overseas. JMO but I am curious.
I've actually been trying to work out an estimate for this.
Over historical data, I'm only looking at the C7 as there were very, very few C6's that were shipped to Canada.
For each model year, the production numbers are as follows:
YEAR | QTY PRODUCED | CANADA ALLOCATION | % TO CANADA |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
TOTAL | 188,995 | 10,383 | 5.5% |
AVERAGE | 31,499 | 1,730 | 5.5% |
One thing we know is GM states they want to produce twice as many C8 Corvettes/year as they did with the C7.
I'm looking at this one of two ways:
If they are basing it off the average produced/year, then we may see around 63,000 C8 Corvettes produced total.
If they are basing it off the 2019 year, then we need to do a bit of playing around.
The 2018 MY was incredibly short and was cut in half. This is for two reasons: 1. they shut down the plant for 3 months to rebuild the paint department, 2. They ended it early/started the 2019MY early to release the ZR-1. This reflects the low production numbers of under 10,000 units.
The 2019MY was actually 18 months long, so in reality, they produced 22,900ish in 2019. If they are basing their announcement on this, we may see about 46,000 C8 built for the 2020MY.
Now, in early production of a new model of vehicle, or special editions of a model, Canada often gets the short end of the stick. America > Canada, in GM's point of view. We've seen this in Corvettes, the new Traverse, and on an off with Silverado. It's reflected in the C7 life as the 2014MY was very low allocation to Canada of 3.2%, whereas it increased to 8.7% for 2019, likely due to the hype and anticipation of the C8, sales in the USA dropped; More Corvettes for Canada. Over the entire life of the Corvete, 5.5% of all units produced came to Canada.
What I'm taking from these numbers is that we're going to see 46k to 63k units built for the 2020MY and 3.2% to 5.5% may come to Canada. Therefore,
Canada may see between 1,400 to 3,500 C8 Corvettes in the 2020MY.