How Is The 2020 Corvette Stingray So Cheap? Economies Of Scale

Chevrolet shocked the world last week when it announced that the 2020 Corvette Stingray will start at under $60,000. Just how is that possible?

While speaking with Motor Authority at the new car’s reveal, GM president Mark Reuss and Corvette Chief Engineer and Vehicle Line Manager Tadge Juechter pinpointed two key areas that have allowed General Motors to develop an affordable mid-engined supercar.

For starters, the Corvette is underpinned by GM’s new Global B electrical platform. This architecture will be used by a plethora of GM vehicles moving forward and is extremely flexible, supporting active safety systems and infotainment systems while also having the potential to underpin all-electric cars.

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“Tadge touched on some of these strategies that you’ll see introduced across our lineup. Global B is one of them. Global B, don’t underestimate what that’s going to do capability-wise for all our cars and we’re doing it in volume, so that’s how you do it,” Reuss said. “A lot of what you see here leads to a portfolio of things that happens, just like there’s a portfolio of Corvettes today. We’ll have a portfolio like that for Corvette as we expand.”

In addition, the size of General Motors means it can leverage its economy of scale in a way that smaller car manufacturers cannot.

“How’d you get today’s car [C7] to $55,000? It’s aluminum, it’s composite, it’s got carbon fiber in it. It’s what we do. We engineer performance value and we leverage General Motors’ economy of scale wherever we can to try to give you all the content but not pay for a bunch of extras,” Tadge Juechter said. “So, we have an advantage for being part of a very big company.”

While Chevrolet says the new Corvette Stingray will start at $60,000, it hasn’t released a specific starting price. However, some pundits think it will be $59,995.