October Surprise! Are Corvette ZR1 Cancellation Rumors True?

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Is the Sun Setting on the Corvette ZR1?

A proverbial bombshell was dropped last night when Patrick Gramm of DigitalCorvettes.com posted news about GM halting Corvette ZR1 production. Patrick was told by a source that ZR1 production was to be halted and the model may have been cancelled despite no known issues that would warrant a production stop.

The story was given credence with Corvette Conti’s post about Corvette ZR1 orders with production dates suddenly disappearing from the system. Corvette orders are assigned a Target Production Week (TPW) and when those TPWs start disappearing, people get nervous.

We confirmed the order process with Kerbeck Corvette’s Sales Manager Dave Salvatore who told us that not seeing a TPW is completely normal, especially on early production cars. Dave says they did the same thing to the Corvette Z06s when they came out. “They do this so as not to get people mad or nervous if there’s a delay during the early production.”

Fact is, production has been halted on the Corvette ZR1 as well as the other three models this week as GM idled the Bowling Green Assembly plant to allow for a bit of constriction in supply. Salvatore says that he is hearing that once the plant’s operations resumes next week, Corvette ZR1 production will be doubled to make up for the loss numbers during the shutdown.

Finally, Autoblog weighed in, pulled out the rolodex and called GM’s Terry Rhadigan, Global Communications Director for Chevrolet, who responded with a terse statement designed to put this rumor to bed: “Not True”.

Going back to the Digital Corvettes post, there are several members with “sources” within the Corvette program that have provided reliable information over the last few years when it comes to Corvettes in general and the ZR1 specifically. They are saying that this rumor is not true and not what they are hearing. One of the members said the following:

The huge amounts of money that were spent on the ZR1 were for R&D. In other words, most of the money was spent before the car even went into production. That money is spent and gone…it’s never coming back. Killing the ZR1 at this point won’t get that money back and wouldn’t really save that much money in the grand scheme of things. There might even be penalties to pay to suppliers for cancelling the parts contracts. Even if you do cancel the contracts, how much are you really saving by not paying for the parts for a 2000-3000 unit/year vehicle program? Again, not that much in the grand scheme. It makes more sense to keep building this super-limited run vehicle and get all the money out of it you can. They will sell every one they build.

We count Patrick of DC as one of our online friends and his information is usually reliable. But I feel for the guy who may have led him astray on this if that’s the case. Patrick followed up with a comment in the thread that mentioned “balls” and “chopping block” so we’ll see where this story goes.


Sources:
DigitalCorvettes.com
Corvette Conti’s
Kerbeck Corvette
Autoblog

Related:
GM: Corvette Production Being Cut to Reduce Supply

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3 COMMENTS

  1. Of all the people to believe, these 2 guys had a vested interest in putting out this false claim
    Patrick of that forum used it to get customers to visit his forum and Conti is a total moron who for many reasons would want to do something that effects pricing to his favor of the ZR1.

    GM should legally go after both of them since they use GM’s logo’s trademarks, etc to profit from
    With all the problems GM has only 2 real American car makers left putting out this type of trash that was splattered all over the cyberspace to cause panic, canceled orders, etc should require both having their nuts chopped off and usign the RUMOR word was a weak way for them to publish pure trash without GM Corp every making such statements.

  2. 99Vette:

    Thanks for visiting the site and for expressing your thoughts. I appreciate anyone who takes the time to tell us what they think about one of our posts or what’s happening in the marketplace.

    I am not of the opinion that this was rumor was started for the purposes of driving traffic to Digital Corvettes or for causing ZR1 prices to spike so a dealer can make money. I respect both Patrick and Rick there is no way I believe this was malicious.

    I do think that part of Conti’s post yesterday was taken out of context by others. He heard something was happening from a source he respected, he had additional evidence to back it up and ran with it.

    Unfortunately, GM is very tight with information pertaining to delays of the Corvette ZR1 as well as some of the quality control issues we’ve heard about, and so they also play a part in this debacle.

    There is still more to this story though and it will take some time to sort it all out.

    Again, I appreciate your comments and thank you for visiting CorvetteBlogger.com

  3. When Patrick posts this
    :ZR1 production completely halted – possibly forever.

    Major changes coming for Corvette production. Waiting on official word from GM.

    This is real."

    Real means real and not some ill thought of rumor, this is on purpose that has caused havoc all over cyberspace
    This can cause people to cancel their order, can effect the already the "Corvette tax" far above sticker and can cause those who bought the ZR1 to sell them off thinking the car model is dead and no parts or service for it

    If I was a Corvette seller and had 2007-2009 Z06s and could not sell them because people wanted a ZR1 and you put out public content saying GM canceled the car, guess what you now can sell off those Z06s sitting around.

    This is not the 1st time these 2 guys claimed inside GM source that turned out to be bogus

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