What About the Mid-Engined Corvette?
They’re closing Conner Avenue. I’m a Viper fan, not a Viper owner, but the news still came like a punch in the stomach, like the realization that your life is nothing but an attempt to balance on a massive Jenga tower and somebody just pulled a load-bearing block out from under you. I though of Margot Timmins singing, “That old brick building / Still stands like a cenotaph / To a vision lost and buried in / A very distant past.”
At least they went out on top. The final Viper ACR was the best, most ruthlessly effective track car ever built by any major corporation anywhere, a sledgehammer with the edges planed and sharpened to microscopic levels of precision. If you had $140,000 in your pocket and you bought any sports car but a Viper last year, you should hold your manhood about as cheap as the fellows who stayed home when Prince Hal went to France before St. Crispin’s Day. Now the car is gone and we shall never know its like again.
The factory was nearly as fascinating as the car.
The factory was nearly as fascinating as the car. It was a small-batch bespoke production facility hiding inside a Big Three automaker. It made the Viper and the Prowler and nothing else. Even the engine was made on-site. Everything that we claim to cherish about “artisanal” production was present and accounted for in the Viper’s birthplace.
You have to fault Chrysler for not making a bigger deal of Conner Avenue in their marketing. I truly believe that they thought the Viper’s performance story spoke for itself–and it did. But some people want to know the story from beginning to end. Like it or not, the fact that the big snake was made in a specialized facility makes it more valuable than if it had come off the line between a Durango and a Grand Cherokee. It’s the same story that sells Shinola products at a tremendous markup. People are willing to pay more for “Made In Detroit” than they are willing to pay for “Made In America” or, sadly, “Made by FCA.”
If you’re lucky enough to currently own a Viper, especially one of the perfect GenV cars, then you should probably hold on it. You won’t have another chance to get one. You will, however, have another chance to buy a high-end, high-performance, bespoke-composition American sports car in the near future. After all, the mid-engined Vette is coming.
To its credit, GM has always understood Bowling Green better than FCA understood Conner Avenue. You can do a factory delivery there, you can shop for T-shirts, you can take a tour of the privately-funded museum next door, and you can even drive around a racetrack there. Don’t think that stuff doesn’t matter. One of the main reasons my wife bought a Corvette was because she wanted to take it to NCM and drive it there. There’s an emotional resonance in all of that and GM truly makes it work the way it should.
Still... The Viper was as good as a performance car can be, and they couldn’t sell a thousand of them a year at a discount price. Can the mid-engined Corvette do any better? Is there really much of a market for upper-middle-class American cars? Neither variant of the ZR1 ever sold in enough volume to justify the investment. Maybe this new super-Corvette will benefit from the obvious visual differentiation it will have from its front-engined cousins. And maybe it won’t, because “Corvette” doesn’t carry the same connotations of unjustifiable expense and not-safe-for-work outrageousness as “Viper” did.
If I had to guess, this is what I would say. I’d say that a certain number of Corvette customers can afford almost anything they want, and they will buy a mid-engined variant for sheer amusement. But that’s the same demographic that only weakly supported the ZR1. In order to make real money and to keep the plant humming, Chevrolet needs to do business with a wider range of enthusiasts. Some of them will be Ford GT intenders who didn’t get the nod, some of them will be Ferrari buyers who are tired of the dealer runaround, some will be the newly wealthy Silicon Valley “tech bros” and Russian-oligarch types. Chevrolet needs to reach out to all of them with specific, targeted marketing plans.
Finally, I think GM should reach out to Viper buyers, the same way Ford made a real effort to secure the business of municipalities who used the Caprice as a cop car until the day all of their Caprices wore out. If you currently own a Viper, you should get something special from GM if you buy a mid-engined Corvette. Not a rebate–these guys aren’t about the money. They’re about the respect. I would say that if you’re a Viper buyer who gets a new super-Corvette, you should be allowed to bring BOTH cars to the NCM racetrack and drive them back-to-back at Chevrolet’s expense. That will be the quickest way to shut up the naysayers.
If it can’t beat the Viper, then there’s no point to the new car.
That assumes, of course, that the new Corvette will have the ability to shade the old Viper. It had better be able to do so. If it can’t, then there’s no point to the new car and no point to the whole exercise. The new Corvette has to deliver, and the marketing has to be spot on, and the more affordable variants of the car, when they arrive, have to provide a supercar experience at a middle-class price point. If not, then Bowling Green won’t be long in following Conner Avenue into obscurity. Which makes me think of Margot Timmons again, singing, “The wheels will stop turning / The whistles will stop blowing / These foolish dreams must stop.“
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