How a stop sale over fire risk on the C8 Corvette Z06 and ZR1 has created a used car value storm for current owners & and an opportunity for would be future owners this fall.

For those of you who don’t know me, the largest part of my 25-year automotive finance career has been spent following used car values and participating in residual setting exercises for some meaningful financial institutions in the United States. I also have a profound love of cars, particularly for American muscle cars like the Corvette and have owned over 16 of them myself.

For some quick background, the latest generation of Corvette, the C8 as it is called, took the car to a totally new level of performance and value for the money. Arriving just in time for the COVID pandemic, it was originally promised as starting as a $60kish mid-engine performance car. Supply shortages and production delays and unprecedented demand have led it to be a lot more expensive than many originally thought and/or maybe even more than GM planned based on strong demand up until recently. In 2023, Chevrolet added the Z06 model to the C8 lineup and things went up a few notches with its new 5.5L flat plane crank V8 producing 670 horsepower that sounds like a Ferrari and performs just as well (some may argue even better). By the time the Z06 and more recently, the ZR1 came about, these were mid $150k to over $200k cars in many configurations. That has left a lot of would be owners of these performance variants on the sidelines waiting for these cars to drop to around the $100k sweet spot on the used market.

Well, that time is now upon us thanks in large part to a chain of three events that are continuing to happen as we speak. Let’s take a look at how this evolved:

1.) The stop sale on Z06 and ZR1 models happened at a really bad time in August 2025. Right at the turn of the model years between 2025 and 2026 models. Chevrolet dealers couldn’t sell any inventory they had in stock, incoming, or even had in their used car inventory until GM came up with a fix for potential fires that were happening during refueling due an engineering oversight. The sale of new Z06’s (and ZR1’s to a lesser degree) came to a grinding halt. All inventory was pulled off websites and new supply vanished.

2.) While the stop sale progressed into late October, as it usually does in the fall, demand from would be buyers of Corvettes and other sports cars in a large part of the country that suffers from winter weather slows down. This year was no different. Interest tends to dry up until spring and dealers like to have these types of cars all sold before the first snow flake flies. That didn’t happen this year. Around early November, GM had a rather simple fix for the Z06 and ZR1 models, which allowed the stop sale to end. Immediately, an estimated one thousand Z06’s that had been sitting for months all came for sale again. Right at a time when their buyer base was going into hibernation and focusing on the holidays.

3.) The Corvette C8 is now in its sixth model year and for the base the model, supply and demand shifted about 2 model years ago. The base models suddenly went from being MSRP or higher new cars to being heavily discounted. For the Z06, that was just starting to happen this summer before the stop sale hit. Then their sale was paused, inventory piled up, and a lot of buyers left the market by the time it was remedied, leaving larger supplies than normal of available inventory to be sold at a non-opportune fall time.

So here we are in late November 2025 with a lot of new 2025 and arriving 2026 models sitting for sale on dealership lots. Not a day goes by that I don’t see the heated posts in several of the Corvette Facebook groups about how the bottom has fallen out of the C8 Z06 market with some of the sizable discounts off MSRP that some dealers are offering to move left over 2025 models and why used models are worth thousands less. These cars are expensive and weigh heavily on a dealer’s floor plan, so they want to move them and they are competing with a lot of their competitors for a limited supply of buyers this time of year and with such hefty supply. It is definitely a buyer’s market. If you have ever wanted a new Z06 or even a base C8, it is a great time to buy one. Maybe the best ever during the C8 era given the recent events I have mentioned and this over supply opportunity may not repeat itself.

Current owners of C8 Z06 models in particular are worried. A lot of these owners paid MSRP or even more and now if they want to sell their used Z06, they have to price them below average discounts of $15k-$20k off MSRP on new models (remember, higher MSRP’s will almost always retain less of their MSRP than lower trims of the same model). And just like a stock that is in a downfall, sometimes this makes people nervous and they rush to sell them. If you watch used cars values like I do, you will see the drop in the wholesale prices and what large buy from consumer companies are now paying for these cars for the aforementioned reasons.

The good news here is that I think that this, too, will pass. If you have a used Z06 or even a base C8 Corvette, if you can wait until spring to sell, you absolutely should. Watching sports car values for over 25 years, just as the first American Robins start to reappear around my neck of the woods here in Cincinnati, you normally see a large jump in Corvette, convertible, and other summer season car values as people in at least half the country wake up from winter and have that insatiable itch to get out and enjoy the driving season and nice weather. In the meantime, those 1000 hot deals on Z06’s are likely to have dwindled down a great deal in supply and from what I would expect from Chevrolet dealers, they are not likely to be ordering a lot of units for stock between now and the spring since they have plenty to sell already. I wouldn’t even be surprised if GM idles the Corvette plant for a bit this winter to allow things to settle (or perhaps they should if not).

Sure, there will be customers custom ordering Corvettes this winter and demand doesn't fall off as much in parts of the country that don’t shut down like other parts over the winter, but those new orders will not be sold at a loss like these leftover 2025’s and new car discounts will stabilize. Dealers won't continue to order cars they are losing money on and supply will level out as excess inventory fades. With that, used car values will stabilize also and should rise from their current drastic lows with less new car supply and rising demand. That isn’t to say that we are going back to pre-2024 and even 2025 values on used C8’s and Z06’s. Those days have passed. However, the value proposition of the C8 Corvettes and particularly the Z06’s most impacted by this recent price drop, are still outstanding. This is still hands down the best value on the sports car market today and something most of us could only dream to have been attainable to the masses growing up. And as crazy as it sounds, yes, there are even more people who will join the party at $90-$100k than when they were $135k-$150k+ new.

At the end of the day, of course, this is just one car guy’s perspective and shouldn’t be taken as financial advice, but it comes with some real-world experience both as a student of the used car market for a long time, but also as a Corvette lover and owner. The automotive business and hobby are highly volatile, so as we learned with COVID, anything is possible, but if I was a betting man, I'd bet that current owners may be able to breathe a sigh of relief come spring and new owners will be enjoying their newly purchased C8 Corvettes at perhaps the best discounts yet. That is if if they capitalize on purchasing this off season.

Happy motoring and happy holidays! - Jason Herman