The world of limited allocation sports cars is silly at best. Not unlike the people who spend their time waiting in lines for some shoes, these limited sports cars are often bought by people who don’t even want them just to flip them. The value is in the rarity and resale value than the actual design and performance. To curb this resale market, Chevy started offering Corvette Z06 customers $5,000 in rewards to keep their Corvettes for 12 months. But will it work? 

Why is the Corvette Z06 so hard to get? 

The car market is genuinely screwed up. For over two years now, we have been plagued by shortages, production delays, and factory closures. This confluence of issues has put every major car manufacturer behind on car production. 

While production delays are certainly part of the problem for Corvette customers, the Z06 is the top-dog Corvette, and dealers get fewer of them than anything else. This double bottleneck of cars has lit the resale market on fire. 

GM doesn’t want its most exciting car to get snatched up by flippers and sold to the highest bidder. It turns the semi-affordable American sports car into a super luxury item that few have access to. 

What is GM proposing, exactly? 

As first reported by Corvette Blogger but brought to our attention by The Drive, emails were sent out to all customers on the Corvette Z06 waitlist, informing them of the pro”ram:

“For a limited time, My Chevrolet Rewards members can earn an additional 500,000 points—a $5,000 value—when they retain ownership of their vehicle for 12 months after purchase. Points can be redeemed on GM Financial Payments, Accessories, and”more!”

The Drive points out that it isn’t exactly cash, but it can be used on payments and other cash-like applications. While this program feels pretty generous, I don’t think it will work. People are flipping the Corvette Z06 not because they love selling cars on the internet but because they stand to stack some serious cash. Instead of this $5,000 gift bag, sellers can make tens of thousands flipping a brand new Z06 on Bring-a-Trailer. 

Car flippers are starting to become a problem for real car enthusiasts

Auction sites like Bring-A-Trailer, and others, have provided the perfect inflation driver. What is happening is cars that people used to have to hunt for are being brought into the daylight. This means that anyone with money who likes this stuff but doesn’t have the time or drive to find them themselves can just overpay to have the car they want. It’s the same deal as the stupid Cronut.

The other side of it is that these auctions are public. Everyone can see the outrageous prices these cars are going for. This means that anyone with a car somewhat similar to the one they just watched sell to some wealthy knucklehead now believes the car they have is worth something similar. This raises the price of otherwise affordable cars to unrealistic numbers. 

The Chevy Corvette Z06 situation is a little different because it’s a limited market, kind of like the Porsche 911 GT3. Given the amount of money made by the flippers, Chevy might not get what they want from this program.

Updated Aug 16, 2022