Manoli Katakis 
If you’re one of the extremely lucky few that took delivery of a 2020 Corvette Stingray, you may want to wrap that thing up and put it in a time capsule to flip several years into the future. Because, according to the plant manager Kai Spande of the General Motors Bowling Green Assembly plant, where the C8 Corvette is built, less than 2,700 of them made it off the line before the Detroit-based automaker brought all of its American vehicle production to an abrupt, yet necessary, halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2020 Corvette Stingray already saw a significant production delay as a result of the UAW Strike that took place for over 40 days in the fall of 2019. Moreover, GM has confirmed that the 2020 model year mid-engine Corvette would only be produced for seven months, before production was halted because of the novel coronavirus. As a result, production of the 2020 C8 Corvette Convertible may have to get punted to the 2021 model year.
According to an interview Spande did with Rick Conti, he didn’t know for sure when production could begin again for the C8 Corvette. Moreover, he wasn’t certain if the C8 Corvette Convertible that was revealed last fall will be able to roll off the assembly line before the official changeover for the 2021 Corvette Stingray. The only comment was that it’s “too early to say.” Additionally, Spande hopes to refresh his plant workforce so that they can build the best mid-engine Corvettes possible.
But let’s be honest, all signs point to the 2020 Corvette Stingray Convertible being canceled, shifting to the official start to the 2021 Corvette Stingray instead. Ultimately, customers could be better for it, as the 2021 model year will introduce a few new features that just weren’t ready in time for launch. These include magnetic ride control as a standalone option, wireless Apple CarPlay, new stripe patterns, and new paint colors.
The highly contagious COVID-19 coronavirus has so far infected nearly 530,000 Americans at the time of this writing, and killing over 20,460 people. Due to this severity, General Motors, Ford Motor Company and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles have collectively taken exceptional measures to not only halt their manufacturing of vehicles, but to also manufacture everything from level 1 face masks, to producing ventilators on an unprecedented scale, and everything in between such as face shields and respirators.
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