Steven Ewing/Roadshow
The assembly lines inside the Chevrolet Corvette’s Bowling Green, Kentucky based production center fell quiet once again this week. Chevy on Friday confirmed a report the C8 Corvette’s production line is again idle, due to coronavirus-related impacts.
Corvette Blogger first reported on the production stoppage on Thursday and a Chevy spokesperson confirmed the temporary shutdown with Roadshow today. “Due to a temporary parts supply issue, we can confirm that Bowling Green Assembly will not run production the week of October 12,” the spokesperson said. They added the division expects to resume production 10 days from now on Oct. 19. It’s not clear what parts are missing to build the Corvette, but nevertheless, Chevy had to press pause for now.
The 2020 Corvette has had a really, really rough first year of production. Last year, the United Auto Workers union was unable to secure a new labor contract with General Motors, which led the union to strike. In turn, GM pushed the start of Corvette production back; the first mid-engine Corvettes were supposed to land at dealers late last year. Instead, the guys and gals didn’t start building the car until February of this year. And then, the coronavirus took hold. GM joined Ford and Fiat Chrysler along with almost every other major auto manufacturer in the US to shut down all manufacturing operations to slow the virus’ spread. Before lockdown measures swept across the US, the Corvette Assembly Plant boss Kai Spande said the workforce only managed to build 2,700 cars.
it was a slow go when operations finally did restart, and some previous options disappeared from orders due to supplier issues. Chevy did commit to building the 2020 model year car through the end of this year, which should pump up seriously low production figures, but the C8 Corvette’s first model year will likely come in very short of future ones.
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