Paul & Gary's Vow

Hottest Corvette ever?

With a 0 to 60 mph time of less than 3 seconds, a top speed of 194 mph, a 495-hp V-8 engine mounted behind the driver and a starting price, including shipping, of $59,995, interest in the redesigned version has exploded beyond the car's core group of graying customers.

Chevrolet introduced the car July 18 in Tustin, Calif., at a lavish event in an old blimp hangar. It featured astronauts, video productions, classic Corvettes of all years and plenty of technical displays. Over the next three days, 750,000 people visited the car's page on Chevrolet.com. By the end of July, some 1.3 million people had visited the Corvette's configurator looking at colors, options and features.

CNET reported that visitors logged more than 152,000 hours building 940,000 Corvettes. An episode on the car by "Jay Leno's Garage" racked up more than 4 million YouTube views. Chevrolet followed the introduction by putting the car on a nationwide tour that stopped at Chevy dealerships, including Les Stanford Corvette, in late August. The local response mirrored online interest.

"It was unbelievable. That's all I can say," Stanford said of the crowds that came to his store to see the car. Porters cleared four rows of new cars just so that potential Corvette buyers could park their cars. "We had them lining up Tuesday morning at 7 a.m., waiting until we opened at 9 a.m. I have never seen anything like that that drew this amount of attention. It's just unbelievable," he said.

He estimates around 2,200 people came to his store over two days to look at the new Corvette. But still, he said, all those crowds did not loosen the store's resolve to stick to the sticker price.

A general manager at another Chevrolet dealership, who did not want to be identified, disagrees. He said he stopped selling Corvettes for the sticker price when he observed his customers buying his cars and flipping them for profit. He said one customer made $30,000 off the resale of a ZR1.

"We have tried, on hot models in the past, to do MSRP," the general manager said. "And the guests who buy them flip them for a profit. It makes it very hard to decide who should be first."

That store has 300 customers in line for the 2020 Corvette and intends to charge $10,000 over sticker price on them — a potential windfall of $3 million. And considering the enthusiasm for the redesigned 2020, that could be $3 million in a short period. "The demand is unlike anything I have ever seen in my 19 years in the car business," the general manager said. "It won't last forever."

Winning hearts

Stanford admits that he could charge over sticker to one-time customers he'll never see again, and that would boost the store's bottom line. But the dealership's national reputation is worth more than short term profit, he said. "In the world today, there are too many situations where people feel they are being taken advantage of," Stanford said. "In doing that, dealers are trying to extract as much as they possibly can from that customer, and they ignore the fact that that customer could be their customer for many years if they treat them fairly."

The Stanford store, a few miles from Ford Motor Co.'s headquarters, bills itself as "America's Corvette King," and claims it was third in the nation last year in Corvette sales. Stanford's store has been allocated 608 of the 2020 Corvettes. As of early September, 600 of them had customer deposits. Chevrolet spokesman Kevin Kelly said 2,255 Chevrolet dealers — three-fourths of Chevrolet's U.S. dealer network — have signed up to sell the new car.

GM does not take a position on Corvette pricing.

"It's important to note that MSRP stands for Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price," GM spokeswoman Kelly Wysocki wrote in an e-mail. "GM dealers are independent businesses that privately negotiate the final sales price of vehicles with purchasers. However, we look forward to working with our dealers to provide an excellent buying and ownership experience."

Stanford said he understands why some Chevrolet dealers — particularly small ones who might get only one or two Corvettes — might charge over sticker. They have to earn as much profit as they can on everything they sell, he acknowledged. According to the National Automobile Dealers Association's June Average Dealership Prole, net profit from new-vehicle sales are at a historic low — dealers are losing about $735 per vehicle on average.

But refraining from marking them up is a long-running practice at Les Stanford Corvette Chevrolet. The dealer said he has sold past Corvettes to customers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The store's policy of charging no more than sticker price earns repeat sales from local as well as out-of-state buyers, Stanford said. Many of his customers for the 2020 Corvette are coming from outside his market, and Stanford doesn't view them as one-time buyers. His claims are backed up by reviews posted by the store's customers on The Corvette Forum.

But he is a car dealer, after all, Stanford added. He tries to boost his profit per vehicle by offering customers add-ons such as wheel upgrades, tire and wheel coverage and other protection products. Any or all of those can be declined by the buyer.