Bowling Green Factory Production Is Back To Full Capacity!

With the recent news that 2020 Corvette C8‘s have resumed shipping to dealerships, today news comes from the Corvette C8 Facebook Group that production has ramped up as expected at Bowling Green.

Some users in the group have contacts within Bowling Green, and a report that VIN’s 3596 through 3690 were completed on June 16, 2020, all but confirms that the slow walk ramping up of the factory has been successful.

Doing some quick math, the shift that worked yesterday, assuming a regular 8 hours shift with breaks and lunch, pushed out 11.75 cars per hour, for a total of 94 cars.

In pre-COVID production, Bowling Green was producing anywhere between 150 to 180 cars per day, across two 8 hour shifts. Despite having social distancing restrictions, only one 8 hour shift, full mask and gloves, and continuous hand hygiene during production, 94 cars is nothing to sniff at.

Further support for this comes from Michael Kvicala in an interview in the Detroit Free Press. Michael is a marketing specialist with Tremec, the company that builds the dual clutch transmissions for the C8. His statement was that they were meeting demand from the factory, including upwards of 90 transmissions per day to Bowling Green.

He stated, in a response to rumors that there were 60-90 cars produced per shift:

“We’re hitting our quantities that they were requesting. We work hand-in-hand with those guys and they know everything we’re doing.”

It’s not a confirmation, but also note that it is very far from a denial. Basically, this is nothing but good news!

The only bad news is that the orders far outweigh the production capabilities of the factory. According to that same Detroit Free Press report, GM has 20,181 current orders for the C8, with a (finally official) 3,820 cars confirmed as being manufactured before the shutdown.

This means that current orders are going to transition over to the 2021 model, and even then, new orders for the 2021 model will probably take 6-9 months from date of order to the car being built, let alone delivered.