A recent article from Joshua Dowling, of Australian publication Caradvice, has claimed GM has halted all future car and truck development, including the Corvette. His headline reads “Right-hand-drive Corvette in doubt for Australia as GM stops development”.
Is this true, or are we looking at clickbait? A misleading headline.
When you read the story in Caradvice, the only reason they give as evidence C8 is not coming to Australia as a RHD, is contained in the following statement –
“Well placed industry sources in Australia believe the chances of Detroit going ahead with a factory-built right-hand-drive Corvette are now ‘slim to none’”.
Dowling doesn’t reveal his “industry sources”, but according to my own sources, this information is wrong. The main reason RHD will be manufactured is because it still makes perfect sense.
Bringing a car to the market includes both Design and Development of the product. In the case of Corvette C8, the RHD version requires very little design and development work over what has already been done for the LHD version.
The styling of the car is done, even the interior where the RHD dashboard is just a mirror image of the LHD. Likewise, development wise, there’s no change to the engine or transmission for RHD, nor is there any change to the suspension tune, or for the steering and the brakes. Same goes for all the electronic systems and components. They’re all the same. The wiring harnesses are all the same, except for different lengths of certain harnesses to allow routing differently for RHD.
So, the bulk of the development work has essentially been completed for the RHD C8. There will be some fine tuning of RHD parts, and some specific RHD durability testing, to make sure nothing was overlooked. But all the major development work is complete.
So there’s only a relatively small amount of work to be done to start building RHD C8s. So why wouldn’t you do it? Australia is not the only country lined-up for RHD. There is a total of 75 RHD countries and the RHD C8s will obviously find their way to many of them.
So when will the RHD be built and when will it arrive in Australia?
As many of you will know, the Bowling Green Assembly Plant is currently shut down due to the Covid-19 pandemic. But we’re told the plant is due to open for business soon, on May 25th. However, the C8’s engine is built at the Tonawanda plant, New York, which is the hardest hit state. The plant reopened on Monday, May 18th, but with face masks, plenty of hand sanitiser, and other very strict safety guidelines. The C8’s 6.2L engine is obviously needed to start assembling the cars.
But it does seem unlikely, even under the best possible scenario, that GM will be able to build all the previously ordered model year 2020 cars before starting the 2021 build. The new model year cars will start in September.
So, I think it’s inevitable, there will be no RHD C8s built for MY 2020. Beyond that, with the backlog of orders for US and Canadian customers, I expect it will be a long time before GM will consider building the RHD cars that would be destined for Australia.
In total, the C8 program will have been delayed by about 6 months. So, the RHD cars we expected to see early next year will be pushed to the second half of next year. You can expect it will be in the second half of 2021 that we start seeing RHD C8s.
The other interesting topic is that of distribution in Australia.
It has been widely reported in the local press that HSV will step in, renamed as GMSV, to handle the sales of Corvette, along with their converted Silverados and maybe more. But this is almost certainly not the case.
GM currently has a limited presence selling cars in Europe, including the UK. To do this, GM handles all the things like vehicle conformity, advertising and marketing, complaints & warranties, spare parts, customer care, owner manuals & technical information, service training and all the other things only an OEM can handle.
Then they franchise selected dealers to sell their cars. The cars sold are basically Corvette, Camaro and Cadillac – what you might call their specialty cars. And this is just what they will do in Australia.
GM Specialty Vehicles (GMSV) will rise out of the ashes of Holden (alias GM Australia) as the importer of the Corvette C8 and a rumoured range of other specialty cars. Don’t forget GM is retaining an Aftersales presence in Australia for the next 10 years, at least, to look after existing Holden vehicles. It makes perfect senseto use this existing facility as a base for GMSV.
GMSV will then franchise selected dealers to sell their cars and these dealerships may or may not be former Holden franchises. The field is open, and I expect GM to call for interested parties to apply for franchises. There are several companies in Australia who specialise in selling exclusive car brands and companies like these may be in line for a GMSV franchise.
But the company we currently know as HSV will be a part of the deal. The Walkinshaw Automotive Group, which owns HSV, is widely recognised as the best conversion facility in the country, performing conversions that result in a product more like a regular production car than a typical one-off workshop type conversion.
I believe GMSV will import the Silverados, plus whatever other vehicles they choose to sell in Australia beyond the C8, then contract Walkinshaw to convert them. And when GM themselves import the LHD vehicles to Australia, the landed cost will be much lower, resulting in a significant price reduction at retail level here. For instance, the Silverado 1500, in the US market, sells for slightly less than the Ram 1500, so you would expect the price of the two vehicles in Australia would be similar. Ram trucks start at around 80,000 dollars in Australia.
The other big change this will make to the market will be that when GM imports its own truck, the Silverado, into Australia, this will exclude any other company or individual importing them and the Silverado will be available exclusively from GMSV franchises. This is exactly the same situation as with the Corvette C8. No one else can import one.
