The eighth-generation C8 Chevy Corvette was a huge deal, not least of which because of its MSRP.
When it first hit the scene five years ago, the eighth-generation Chevrolet Corvette was a seismic shift from the previous half-century. The car was still an iconic slice of Americana and a bold, brash poke in the eye for its European sports car rivals, but a huge number of fundamental changes set it apart from its forebears. This is the first mid-engined Corvette, and GM’s first mid-engined car period in nearly forty years. It was also the first time in nearly half a century that you couldn’t buy a Corvette with a manual transmission, as GM offered one for most of the car’s production run (with the exception of early 1953-54 C1 models and the 1982 C3). With the powertrain updates came a host of styling and technological changes to suit, and as a result you could not find these cars at the purported $60,000-or-so MSRP. These days, though…the picture is a little different.
Fast forward a few years, and the general trend line on Stingrays is heading toward the $55,000 mark. And that’s for better-equipped 2LT and 3LT models. Consider that the Corvette started at just under $60,000 MSRP when it went on sale and that dealers often tacked on at least $10,000 as a so-called “market adjustment”, and lower-mileage examples are starting to become pretty remarkable deals, for what you get.
With a C8-generation Corvette Stingray, what you get is a mid-engine sports car packing a naturally aspirated 6.2-liter LT2 V8. Standard output is 490 horsepower and 470 lb-ft of torque, unless you get the Z51 Performance Package, which ups the output a bit to 495 hp, in addition to adding in aerodynamic, cooling and tire upgrades.
Granted, there are flashier and more expensive Corvettes enthusiasts are frothing over now — that’s one of the reasons the OG C8 Corvettes are on the downslide a bit. If you were to buy one new, though, the 2025 Chevy Corvette Stingray now starts at $69,995 (or $10,000 more than it did five years ago, if you’re keeping score), while the convertible costs you an extra $7,000. Opt for a well-equipped 3LT trim with GT2 seats, a 14-speaker Bose Performance Series audio system and Chevy’s Performance Data and Video Recorder, and you’re looking at an $81,745 price tag.
Or…you can do what Roman just did, and pick up an early C8 example. In the video below, he picked up a 6,000-mile Corvette Stingray 3LT coupe for just over $71,000. We traded in our 2023 Land Rover Defender as part of the deal, so we ended up paying the $30,000 difference (plus taxes and fees). That’s not dirt-cheap, for sure, but you would still save $10,000 over a brand-new example, for a car that’s fundamentally the same as it was back in 2022. GM has made a few changes over the years, including swapping in a new fuel pump and injectors for the LT2 V8 in 2022. With the increased cost to do so, however, prices went up, and that contributed to the price delta we see between the first model year and today.
We’ll have an even more detailed video on what’s happening on the TFLcar YouTube channel this weekend, but check out what sort of deal you could find on early C8 Corvettes in Roman’s purchase video below:
