Bowling Green will continue building 2022 Corvettes through May 6.
The Corvette Action Center published some new information on build dates for next model year’s Corvette, including the hotly anticipated, 670 horsepower Z06. According to what they posted — a dealer memo GM fired off to Chevrolet dealers — there’s going to be a tight turnaround for the Kentucky assembly plant this time between the end of the 2022 model line, and the beginning of production for 2023 Corvette orders.
If the dates hold, here’s how the memo says things will shake out chronologically. After current production on this year’s Stingrays wraps up, Bowling Green will not take the conventional gap. Instead, the factory will start building out 2023 cars just three days later, on May 9, 2022. With the C7 generation, the Corvette Action Center notes GM separated Z06 dealer allocation from your standard Stingrays. In the past, the automaker also tied how many Stingrays a dealer received to how many Z06s it sold in the previous year.
Now, that’s reportedly not the case. GM will not separate Z06 allocation out, and will use the Adjusted Daily Supply model to determine a dealer’s allocation numbers. This may change up the supply for some dealers, as it’s now tied to how quickly the dealer can sell all their Corvettes, rather than just how many of a particular model they sold in a given year.
When will the dealer order guide be available?
According to the cited memo, the 2023 Chevy Corvette dealer order guide should open up on March 21. Dealers will then be able to start placing orders for coupe and convertible models on March 24. If all goes smoothly, the online configurator should launch that day too. A week later, on March 31, those dealers will be able to start working customer orders into their allocation figures, again based on that new ADS model.
At this point, the available information suggests Z06 production will kick off at the exact same time as the Stingray. With the Z06 being the headline addition to the 2023 lineup, we may not see anything beyond minor changes for the standard C8 Corvettes. There’s a lot of discussion around a refresh though, particularly an interior update, which we may see in the 2024 model year. That timeline would make sense, at least, as it’s about four years on from the C8’s initial launch and those updates will pave the way for the next high-strung Corvettes to arrive — possibly including the 1,000 horsepower “Zora”
