General Motors released its sales figures for the first quarter of the year this week and unsurprisingly, they are down on where they were 12 months ago. Of particular interest are sales relating to the Corvette Stingray.

In total, Chevrolet sold 3,820 examples of the Corvette (both C7 and C8) in the first three months of the year. It’s not clear how many C7s are included as it’s still available for sale. Overall, this represents a 3.1 per cent decline on the 3,943 C7 Corvettes that were sold in the first three months of 2019. Unfortunately, GM no longer breaks down monthly sales figures so it’s unclear just how many C8s were sold in January, February, and March respectively.

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Obviously, the growing coronavirus pandemic across North America has been a key contributor in the fall not just of Corvette sales but most other cars on the market. Corvette Blogger estimates that approximately 2,741 C8 Corvette models have been built to date. Production has been halted since March 20 when the factory responsible for building the sports car was temporarily shut.

It will be interesting to see if sales of the C8 Corvette increase as the year progresses. In Q2 2019, a total of 5,788 C7 Corvettes were sold while in Q3 2019 the carmaker shifted 4,766 units. Sales dropped to 3,491 in the final quarter of last year.

In the middle of March, an email sent to GM dealerships revealed that orders for the 2020 Corvette would no longer be accepted and that those wanting to secure a new ‘Vette will have to wait until May 21, 2020 when order books for the 2021 model year open.

All GM brands have felt the pinch

As for General Motors more broadly, it delivered 618,335 vehicles in the first quarter of 2020, a decrease of 7.1 per cent from the first quarter of 2019.

The first quarter was a particularly rough one for Buick with its sales down 34.7 per cent from 51,867 in Q1 2019 to 33,870 in Q1 2020. Cadillac also suffered a significant decline of 15.8 per cent. Chevrolet didn’t fare so badly and experienced a drop of 3.8 per cent. The arrival of the new Chevrolet Blazer which shifted a total of 22,144 units this quarter compared to 3,023 units in Q1 2019 was a key factor in bolstering the car manufacturer’s sales.

Chevrolet models to have been hit with particularly poor sales last quarter include the Camaro with sales falling by 40.5 per cent, sales of the Colorado dropping by 36 per cent, and sales of the Impala falling by 62.6 per cent, shortly after its production run came to a close.

Over at GMC, sales fell by 5.5 per cent from 125,577 units to 118,718.