Chevrolet Corvette

[BSchneiderFan]

Now, as with so many of my posts, this is based on something I half-remember reading somewhere, but I seem to recall in the early days of the C5-R programme it was stated that Chevy was running a works programme with the C5-R simply to showcase the car to potential customers. If I'm not completely mistaken about this, why did it take so long to see customer cars being sold, and why have so few been sold compared to, say, the Viper, the 50th version of which was recently featured in the thread about Alain Prost? How many C5-Rs were built, anyway?

[jhansen]

I don't know if GM ever wanted to actively market and sell customer cars, but I do have a question in response. How affordable is this car? I'd imagine that it would be quite expensive, which is a major problem with these top flight GT1 cars.

[Fogelhund]

The C5-R was for sale at all times. There were several orders that fell through for various reasons, and one GT class car built by P&M.

Around 12 were built, there is an article somewhere on them, but I can't seem to find it. The cost to buy one now is around $300,000 or so. Certainly less then a new DP.

[CorvetteC6R]

To showcase the production car..to Europe..that and well now the knowledge of racing development for applications on the road car..

[jhansen]

Is that all Fogelhund? That is pretty reasonable. Don't the 575's go for much more than that. And I wonder what a 550 lease costs for one year.

[Dani Filth]

if it was only 300.000 for sure somebody would have bought some .
and probably would have been competitive against the 550..

[Silk Cut Jaguar]

I think this point was raised on an old ALMS thread a while back, but somebody reasoned the C5 was never widely picked up due to the customer having to run against the factory outfit on the same track.

[paul-collins]

Originally Posted by Dani Filth

if it was only 300.000 for sure somebody would have bought some .
and probably would have been competitive against the 550..

That's an estimate based on a direct quote from Tyler Tadevic (team principal of Pacific Coast Motorsports). I believe in fact it's closer to 250 he paid.

Mind you, that's for the C5-R this year. In previous years it might've been a bit higher.

My belief is that for Chevrolet the effort is a halo effort. Corvette has always been their engineering exercise, and for a long time was done very separately from the rest of their lineup. Sorta like how Ford says their new GT is "the pace car for the entire company" the Corvette paces Chevrolet's image - but for real, where the GT is simply for track days or show rooms.

[jhansen]

Well Pacific Coast turned in a very solid time yesterday with their privateer C5R. And why have not more European teams wanted to pick up one of these cars? You get a very quick race car and you would not have to go heads up with the factory team. This would be a great car for the LMES season.

Now if only somebody like Prodrive would make a racecar out of the new Ford GT.

[cybersdorf]

Originally Posted by jhansen

Well Pacific Coast turned in a very solid time yesterday with their privateer C5R. And why have not more European teams wanted to pick up one of these cars?

They have wanted, but GM would not deliver.

You get a very quick race car and you would not have to go heads up with the factory team. This would be a great car for the LMES season.

there will br two of them.

Now if only somebody like Prodrive would make a racecar out of the new Ford GT.

Nah, too many recalls.