The Corvette is the king of American sports cars, but that goes without saying. There’s a lot of effort that goes into the production of these beauties, and at the Bowling Green, KY plant, they’ve been giving Corvettes their very best since 1981.
Currently in its seventh generation, the Bowling Green, KY plant employs about 1,000 hard working employees on site. It takes around three weeks for each vehicle to turn into a Corvette. That includes making the body and painting.
Once the vehicle hits assembly, it takes about an hour an a half to be completed. Everyday, 170 Corvettes roll off the Bowling Green assembly line in a 10 hour shift — that’s 17 new Corvettes born an hour!
Annually, about 40,000 Corvettes are assembled here. The C7 Stingray is in such high demand that the plant is working at capacity most of the time. Between the base and Z06, plus the different body styles, and all of the trim levels, this plant has to keep moving to get Corvettes to dealers on time.
The plant offers tours to around 50,000 people each year looking to get close to the production of these amazing vehicles.
In March of 2014, the plant opened a performance build center that handles the LT4 engine production. Most other engines just roll down an assembly line, while these get the personal touch. It’s in this special department where employees actually hand build these monster engines.
Every engine takes three or so hours to complete, and they even host customer build days when people can lend a hand to the engine builders (experienced customers take about 5+ hours). As far as we know, there’s nothing like this offered by any other auto manufacturer, especially for one of their extreme performance engines. They even offer private tours to Corvette buyers, these lucky ones get to see parts of the plant not included on the public tours.
Corvettes are made possible thanks to this plant and its dedicated employees. If you ever want to see where dreams are made, drop in and take a plant tour!
Elizabeth is a hardcore horsepower enthusiast with unmatched intensity for making things faster and louder. She wakes up for power and performance and only sleeps to charge up for the next project that’s heading to the track. From autocross to drag racing, Elizabeth is there with you, so stay tuned for her unique perspective on horsepower news, builds, tech info, and installs — with her, it’ll never be boring!
