C8 Corvette Buyers Trending Younger, According to Salesman

Young folks and existing mid-engine supercar owners are flocking to buy a C8 while older C7 owners shy away.

While Corvette owners here at Corvette Forum represent a pretty diverse group, the car itself carries a bit of a well-known reputation for being an “old man’s” car. Whether that’s entirely accurate or fair is up for debate, and we’ve certainly debated it before. But when the C8 was originally unveiled, it immediately made us wonder if this is the model capable of changing that image forever.

This affordable, mid-engine machine has certainly appealed to a number of young folks so far, a fact well-documented across YouTube. And this video from Cars and Crosbie only helps further this argument. Sure, we are talking about a small sample size, but it’s certainly notable nonetheless. Our host is a Chevrolet salesman in Canada named Morgan Crosbie. And at least north of the border, it looks like the vast majority of C8 buyers aren’t even close to retirement age yet.

“London, Ontario seems to be a good average for what the entire country does,” Crosbie notes. “A lot of Americans are watching this as well, and we’re very similar to you guys in a lot of ways, so don’t think this data isn’t relevant.” The data is, however, quite interesting.

“One thing that really stuck out to me was a specific age group change. I haven’t had a single 70-year-old buyer in my entire client base. I did have five or six people last year alone in that age group.”

That may not seem like too much of a revelation to most, but Crosbie points to other demographic shifts in his to-date C8 sales. “The 30-year-old age group is up 12 people from my previous years of data. So that’s a huge difference. There’s nobody in the upper age group that’s purchasing these.”

So the next obvious question we must ask is, why are older folks avoiding the C8? Well, Crosbie has an answer for that as well. “I’ve already had a lot of people come by and see the new Corvette, and some of the comments I received were that they’re going to wait for the car to be a year old. They want to see some things get ironed out.”

Crosbie also goes on to say that he’s had very few C7 trade-ins for new C8 models so far. In fact, most of his trades have been supercars like a Lamborghini Gallardo and even a Ford GT. So at least for now, it appears that the C8 is appealing to younger folks and those who already own mid-engine exotics. We are only talking about one dealership, of course, but it’s undoubtedly interesting. And we’ll be curious to see how (or if) the demographics of C8 buyers change in the coming years.

Photos: Corvette Forum