The Corvette Assembly Plant Celebrates 45 Years of Building Corvettes with an Open House

When Chevrolet moved Corvette production to Bowling Green, Kentucky, in 1981, no one could have known just how important the move would become to both the Corvette and its new hometown.

Forty-five years later, Bowling Green remains the exclusive home of Corvette production, turning out everything from the Stingray to the 1,250-horsepower 2027 ZR1X.

The Bowling Green Assembly Plant temporarily stopped production Saturday for a different reason — to open its doors to the public and celebrate its 45th anniversary.

Early in the video, we see a visitor checking out the Corvette CX concept car – an all-electric, 2,000-horsepower hypercar concept that serves as a vision for a model that might be one day be built at the Bowling Green facility.

In the meantime, visitors were given an up-close look at how current Corvettes are designed, engineered and assembled, along with an opportunity to meet some of the people who build them.

Mary Cole, a plant planner, said including the Bowling Green community in the anniversary celebration was important.

“This was super important to involve the community in,” Cole said. “We have the National Corvette Museum and the Bowling Green Fire Department come out to just celebrate that we’ve been in this community for 45 years.”

Assembly worker Stella Laster said visitors were able to get a firsthand look at the process of transforming thousands of individual parts into a finished Corvette.

“They can see the actual how everything moves and how it’s being built from station to station,” Laster said. “So you kind of walk the line and just see how the line, like how the car becomes a car.”

A lot has changed since the first Bowling Green-built C3 Corvette rolled off the assembly line in 1981.

Six generations of Corvettes have now been produced there, and the car has become so closely associated with its Kentucky home that Bowling Green has earned the nickname “Vette City.”

Current plant director Ray Theriault said that relationship is recognized far beyond Kentucky.

“I can tell you I meet people all over the world in this job and once they hear Bowling Green, they think Corvette,” Theriault said. “Once they hear Corvette, they say, hey, that’s where Bowling Green, Kentucky is. And I say it certainly is. I can tell you that our workforce is very much centered within Bowling Green.”

The cars coming off the assembly line today bear little resemblance mechanically to those built when the plant opened 45 years ago.

The Bowling Green facility currently produces six Corvette variants, capped by the new ZR1X. The 2027 model produces 1,250 horsepower from the factory — complete with a factory warranty.

Even the Stingray, the entry point into the Corvette lineup, is capable of approaching the 200-mph mark.

Theriault said the level of innovation taking place inside the plant is unmatched in the country.

It has been quite a journey from 1981 to 2026 — from the final years of the C3 to today’s mid-engine C8 and the new ZR1X.

And after 45 years and five generations of production, one thing hasn’t changed: If you want to see where America’s sports car is born, Bowling Green, Kentucky, is still the place to go.

Congratulations to the plant, and thank you to all the workers who have made the Corvette the ultimate dream car for so many of us.

Click here to watch the video from WBKO showing the Open House at the Bowling Green Assembly Plant.

Source:
WBKO

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