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Report: 2019 Chevrolet Corvette To Start Production In January 2018

Not operational since July, the Bowling Green plant that makes the C7 Corvette is gearing up to restart production next month. According to the Bowling Green Daily News, the factory reopens on November 6, with 2019 model year production kicking off on January 29, possibly including the C7 ZR1.
2019 Chevrolet Corvette (C8 mid-engine Corvette) 29 photos
Photo: TX2K / Facebook
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If the report turns out to be right on, then there’s no denying the ZR1 will make its world debut at the 2018 Detroit Auto Show in January. For the 2019 Corvette, workers will employ an all-new assembly line that relies heavily on automated guided carriers.

The total cost of expanding and retooling? That’d be $900 million, thank you! Though it’s a hefty sum of greenback, it must be noted that Bowling Green features a new paint shop “designed specifically to optimize the performance of carbon fiber and other materials that are used in the Corvette body panels."

What’s more, the build process is different. Here’s just one of the many examples, coming courtesy of communications representative Lauren Langille: the 2019 Chevrolet Corvette’s body panels “will be installed near the end of the build process in one location, as opposed to several locations throughout the process.” All in all, the production process is more efficient from start to end.

Having said these, the C7 ZR1 will certainly be worth the wait, at least until General Motors decides to focus on the C8. A question that’s been left unanswered is, will the C8 be available exclusively as a mid-engine supercar or will a front-engine variant also make the cut sometime in the future, probably for model year 2020?

Regardless of what the future holds for the halo vehicle in the General Motors lineup, the Corvette looks ready to duke it out with the big boys in the industry. As a brief reminder, pre-production prototypes of the C8 have been spied benchmarking against the Porsche 911 Turbo S (991.2).
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Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect the 2019 Chevrolet Corvette starts production in January 2018, not the mid-engine C8 Corvette.

About the author: Mircea Panait
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After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well.
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