Perhaps, you’re finally ready to buy your dream sports car – the Chevrolet C8 Corvette. Even if you’ve got the best monthly payment deal, the most sensible question you want to ask before signing on that dotted line is how much will it actually cost to live with a Chevrolet C8 Corvette. That’s what we call the true cost of ownership (TCO).
To determine a car’s TCO, you calculate the upfront cost (the initial purchase price) plus the cost of operation or maintenance cost. That’s basically how you calculate your return on investment (ROI) or at least get a pretty good idea of what you’re getting yourself into.
Maintenance or operational cost includes insurance premiums (would you dare skip the insurance for your C8 Corvette?), cost of fuel (depending on the type and quality of required fuel), yearly sales taxes, fees, and registry costs, and the cost of and likely frequency of repairs. If all this is beginning to sound like a recipe for a pounding headache, that’s just why you need to ask these questions before splurging on a luxury sports car like the 8th-gen Chevrolet Corvette. We’ve got you covered.
2020 Corvette Costs Nearly $93,000 Over 5 Years
There are reliable online resources and car shopping guides like Edmunds that do all the heavy lifting for you in terms of calculating TCOs. So, it’s either you rely on what you heard at the bar last night or spend precious time firing off emails to multiple businesses and organizations, or even possibly visiting your local dealerships and mechanics in person just to make an accurate assessment of the actual cost of owning a Chevrolet C8 Corvette.
Or you can use Edmunds’ TCO calculator to get the vital information you seek. According to Edmunds, you should expect your brand-new C8 Corvette to set you back around $90,000 in a space of five years, although that calculation ultimately depends on where you live.
For example, the true cost of owning a 2020 Chevrolet Corvette over five years in California is around $90,000 to $94,000, while the same time frame should set you back around $80,000 to $83,000 if you live and drive your C8 Corvette in Texas. The reason is that insurance, taxes, maintenance cost, and even the rate of depreciation varies between locations.
However, this calculation got based on a five-year estimate with 15,000 miles driven per year. Edmunds says it uses proprietary formulas to calculate the five-year costs for the seven cost categories that constitute the TCO (depreciation, insurance, financing, taxes and fees, fuel, maintenance, and repairs), while also taking into account any applicable federal tax credit.
C8 Corvette's Biggest Costs Are Fuel and Depreciation
Based on Edmunds’ TCO data for the C8 Corvette, most of what it costs you to keep your V8-powered 2020 Chevrolet Corvette will go to fueling and depreciation. Is that a good thing? We'd be steering clear of the car if maintenance and repairs take the bigger chunk. Interestingly, you’d spend the least money on repairs over five years, amounting to $3,500 to $4,000. Again, it depends on where you live.
The figure we just mentioned is for California, but there shouldn’t be a significantly wide margin across states and cities. So, what exactly does Edmunds mean by depreciation? They say it means the amount by which the Corvette declines from its purchase price to its estimated resale value.
The purchase price employed is the vehicle's Total Cash Price minus any taxes and fees included in that amount. They estimate the resale value assuming the vehicle will be in "clean" condition, will get driven 15,000 miles per year, and will get sold to a private party.
Before we go any further, let’s remind ourselves that the Chevrolet C8 Corvette debuted in July 2019 ahead of its market release in 2020. So, when we talk about the true cost of owning a Chevrolet C8 Corvette, we’re talking about the Corvette models from 2020 until present.
It’s also worth mentioning that the 2020 Chevrolet Corvette featured the brand’s first-ever mid-mounted engine, which was a significant, table-shaking shift from the Corvette’s traditional front-engine layout.
The convertible version of the C8 made its debut in October, about three months after the coupe’s unveiling in Tustin, California, on July 18, 2019, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission. The race-bred version of the C8 made its debut on a different date of the same month, with production kicking off officially on February 3, 2020.
Corvette Owners Pay The Most During the First Year
You spend less on your C8 Corvette as the years go by. By Edmunds' calculation, you can expect to spend around $26,000 to $27,000 on your 2020 Chevrolet Corvette coupe, out of which $4,000 to $5,000 gets spent on gas, $10,000 to $11,000 gets lost to depreciation, just $200 to $300 goes to repairs, and so on.
In contrast, you spend around $15,000 to keep your C8 Corvette by the fifth year. Now that you have a pretty good idea of what it takes to be a proud owner of a Chevrolet C8 Corvette, you’re finally truly ready to take the plunge.
So, How Much Is A C8 Corvette?
A pre-owned 2020 Corvette Stingray coupe or convertible in excellent condition typically goes for $80,000 up to $89,000. Meanwhile, the starting MSRP for the all-new Corvette Stingray was $59,995, including the destination charge, while the starting price for the convertible was $7,500 higher than the coupe. So, why does it seem older, pre-owned models cost more? That’s apparently because the owners already optioned them out, making them more expensive than the base model.
Why are C8 Corvettes so cheap?
It's true that $60,000 is a lot of money, but considering we're talking about a car with no cheaper equal, the C8 Corvette is cheap. By "equal," we mean that no cheaper car can beat the C8 Corvette’s 2.6 seconds 0–60 mph acceleration. But then again, the Corvette seems "cheap" because imports that should look better, run faster, and still cost half as much as the Corvette actually end up overpriced.
Corvettes have always been relatively cheap when compared with a McLaren, Lamborghini, Ferrari, or a Porsche. At least, Chevrolet is an honest company; why inflate the Corvette’s price when they're not made by hand but rolled out of a robotized assembly line? The cheapest C8 Corvette you can buy new in 2023 is the Stingray 1LT, with a $65,895 starting price. Another thing to remember is that GM expects to make money from the options that raise the price north of $80,000.
Sources: Edmunds, KBB, Chevrolet