Sales of sports cars have been steadily declining for about three decades, but there has been one exception to that trend. The Chevrolet Corvette has recently stormed back to near-record popularity.
Like the company that makes it, General Motors, the Corvette must now slalom around a trickier obstacle: transitioning to an electrified lineup, even as most sports-car buyers insist they have no interest in switching from gas pumps to plugs.
G.M. sold 53,785 of the eighth-generation Corvettes, or C8s, worldwide last year, just 22 shy of its top sales year in 1979. Americans bought about 34,000 of those, including Stingray coupes that start from $66,000, nearly twice as many Corvettes as they bought in 2019.
The car’s revival has been driven by a change that may not seem a big deal to the average commuter. After seven decades as a classic front-engine two-seater, Chevrolet moved its V-8 behind the passengers, a midengine design typically associated with supercars from Ferrari or Lamborghini. Engineers at G.M. chose the $250,000 Ferrari 458 Italia as a target in performance and technology.
Alexander Edwards, president of Strategic Vision, a marketing research company, said the Corvette’s more exotic recent design, relatively affordable prices and unapologetic attitude had driven its success.
“They delivered an authentic sports car, and that authenticity is such an important part of the purchase decision,” Mr. Edwards said.
The Corvette’s recent sales gains have bucked a broad trend of American drivers moving away from cars, especially sports cars and coupes, and toward sport-utility vehicles. Two-door cars like the Audi TT and the Mercedes SLK have disappeared. Toyota’s reborn Supra sold fewer than 2,700 cars last year, less than one-tenth of Corvette’s sales. Sales of what the industry calls “enthusiast cars” have fallen by half since 2020, to 223,000 last year, according to Motor Intelligence.
Even relatively affordable sports cars have struggled. The Ford Mustang, which racked up sales of 120,000 in 2015, managed fewer than 59,000 last year. G.M. has retired the Chevrolet Camaro and Stellantis has done away with the Dodge Challenger. Daniel Pund, editor in chief of Road and Track magazine, said many consumers drawn to fast, fashionable cars had shifted to luxury sport-utility vehicles or electric vehicles. Some potential buyers “are scared to drive a small, low car when everything else is a tall S.U.V.,” Mr. Pund said.
Corvette appears to have avoided that fate in large part because of its decision to move the engine.
Tadge Juechter, who is retiring as the fifth Corvette chief engineer since the car’s 1953 unveiling, said the median age of its buyer had been rising by roughly one year each year, topping out around 64. He knew that was unsustainable.
“It was a comfortable car for our traditional customers, but you’re not going to sell a significant number to 100-year-olds,” Mr. Juechter said.
A midengine Corvette, which some G.M. engineers and executives had considered since the 1960s, was meant to shake things up, including a design that could support future hybrid and electric versions. But some people at G.M. got cold feet. Mr. Juechter recalled “a strong push” to offer both the existing C7 and redesigned Corvette C8s in showrooms to keep its Bowling Green, Ky., factory humming and avoid alienating loyalists.
Executives eventually realized that when G.M. offered the C8, “we won’t sell any of those old ones,” Mr. Juechter said. “The midengine car was highly controversial, but in hindsight it looks brilliant,” he added.
Brad Franz, Chevrolet’s director of car and crossover marketing, said the C8 continued to attract boomers, while pulling a demographic coup: Its median buyer age has fallen to 55 from 64 over the last six years.
Mr. Pund recently met fanatical ’Vette owners during a driving tour from Bowling Green, where a Corvette museum sits near the factory, to North Carolina. He said G.M. had underestimated its customers’ willingness to evolve with the car.
“Those owners don’t think of the C8 as something radical,” Mr. Pund said. “They just think of it as a new Corvette.”
G.M. hopes to build on that momentum with an expanded lineup that now includes the 2024 Corvette E-Ray, the first hybrid version of the model and one of the first among mass-produced sports cars; Porsche will follow by year’s end with a hybrid version of its 911 model.
Mr. Franz said G.M.’s early sales data suggested that the hybrid Corvette was attracting more college-educated, higher-income buyers.
I recently test drove the E-Ray in the Berkshires. Moving the engine — a 495-horsepower V-8 — behind the seats improves acceleration and handling, by keeping more weight in the car’s center. It also clears room below the hood for an electric motor that sends 160 horsepower to front wheels, for a total 655 horsepower and an unfair fight against strictly gasoline-powered cars.
The result is the fastest-accelerating Corvette yet with a zero to 60 miles-per-hour time of 2.5 seconds. Its electric helping hand allows the E-Ray to run its engine in four-cylinder mode more often, bringing highway fuel efficiency to a federally rated 24 miles per gallon, versus 25 for a standard Stingray with 160 fewer horsepower.
A tiny hybrid battery slots into the center tunnel between the driver and passenger. And while the E-Ray requires no plug, the car’s battery never runs dry because the car can fully recharge it in two to three miles of normal driving simply by recapturing braking energy.
Mr. Edwards said luring buyers to electrified Corvettes, or any two-seater, is not about a green pitch. “You talk about added performance, innovation or value,” he said. “You don’t call it an environmentally friendly sports car.”
A fully electric Corvette might be next. G.M.’s president, Mark Reuss, said on LinkedIn in 2022 that the company would offer an electric Corvette “in the future,” but the company has declined to provide any details.
Sports cars appear to be the final frontier for electrification. Most car enthusiasts became wedded to the signature sounds and driving character of favorite brands or models of internal-combustion engine cars from an early age, Mr. Juechter said. Many are deeply skeptical that electric versions can reproduce or replace them, despite any advantage in straight-line acceleration. A key objection is batteries that add too much weight, dulling the handling of what are supposed to be featherweight and agile cars. Finding enough space in these compact cars for batteries large enough to deliver satisfactory range is another challenge.
No automaker is mass-producing an electric two-seat sports car for the United States or Europe, although Porsche intends to replace its slow-selling gasoline-powered Boxster and Cayman models with electric versions next year. Ferrari says it will come out with its first electric car in 2026.
A survey of American car owners by Strategic Vision this year found that 56 percent were “absolutely not interested” in an electric vehicle, up from 51 percent in 2023. That rises to 60 percent for Corvette owners. Mr. Edwards said Chevrolet appears wise to keep offering gas, hybrid and, eventually, electric Corvettes.
“If you say pure E.V., a lot of Corvette people are going to walk away,” he said. G.M. will “have an easier road if they have a balanced portfolio.”
Mr. Edwards added that while G.M.’s electric cars were often impressive, the company had often fumbled their introductions. And G.M. hasn’t done enough to persuade many of its customers to consider the new technology.
“They need to create that bridge from where they are, to where customers are going to be,” he said. “Historically, G.M. has not done a good job of understanding how to talk to future and current customers without ticking everyone off.”
G.M. executives said the E-Ray was expressly designed to be the most customer-friendly Corvette. Electricity is the secret sauce that allows all-wheel-drive, track-level performance and efficiency.
“Long before we announced the E-Ray, we had customers hollering at us, ‘You’d better not make an electric Corvette!’” Mr. Juechter said. “But the E-Ray is a perfect mechanism to not be afraid of electricity, to show it can do great stuff for you.”
Mr. Juechter said the Corvette, with its cultural familiarity and all-American image, could be an ambassador for electrification. That may be especially helpful in the Midwest and South, where the Corvette has a devoted following and electric vehicles are not as popular as they are on the coasts.
“The E-Ray is a great look at what the Corvette could become,” he said.