ERay Deposit Series #5: Order Progression

I received this on August 8th, the day my ERay order went into the GM "Order Workbench" system, when I went into MacMulkin Chevrolet to sign all the paperwork (edited to remove personal details):

(For anyone who understands BGA allocations and constraints, you may want to skip the next two paragraphs.)

At this point, maybe it makes sense to explain the term "allocation." I used that term a lot in the 3rd installment of this series, but I didn't want to break the narrative by stopping to define it. Basically, when a Corvette dealership receives an allocation from BGA, that means they've been told there's room in the production schedule for the dealership's Workbench order to be accepted by the factory... otherwise known as going to Status Code 2000. The implication of that, and how it normally works (but not always), is that means they're saying they have all the parts they need to build your car exactly as you've ordered it.

Allocations are a little more complicated than that, though, because sometimes there are "constraints." That means the factory will usually tell the dealer that they can't produce an order that includes specific parts they can't get from their suppliers. Paint colors, wheels, really anything a customer may have chosen, can be on constraint. Sourcing carbon fiber parts has been a big problem lately and has been on constraint quite a lot. In that case, MacMulkin will ask you if you want your car built without the constrained item(s) or if you'd like to take a pass on that allocation and wait until the next allocation cycle, which is usually about one month away, to see if the constraint has been lifted.

MacMulkin updates their database(s) on Mondays, and as of 10/02/2023 this is what my order was showing (click to enlarge):

It was reported online that there were a few ERay orders that had gone to Status Code 3000 several days ago, but it doesn't really matter if the order goes to 3000 last week or this week because ERay Corvettes aren't slated to start down the assembly line until October 23rd, at the earliest. Once they start production, everyone at 3000 will be in the same group at the mercy of the scheduling process at BGA because they'll build the Corvettes in whatever order is best for them. It's even possible that someone in the next allocation cycle could get their ERay delivered to them before someone who's already at 3000 now.

For that reason, I wasn't going to check on my order until next week, but one of the friends I met in the ERay line at MacMulkin texted me, and that got me curious, so I went to the Chevy website and used their chat function. My order went to Status Code 3000 sometime this week (probably on Wednesday, as that's the normal progression), but I won't be able to see that on MacMulkin's website until Monday when it gets updated again, so instead I'll show you what I got from Chevy Chat (click to enlarge):

On 10/02/2023, a price increase of $2000 for ALL 2024 Corvette models was announced, and some options have also gone up, as did the Destination Freight Charge (by $100); however, none of those increases will apply to my order because it has already been accepted by Chevrolet.

The UAW are still on strike, and it's impossible to predict exactly how that could affect ERay production, if it were to. As of today (Friday, October 6th), BGA is still up and running and building Corvettes, just as they have been since the strike began, because they aren't one of the facilities that's been called upon to walk off the job and picket.

I'll continue to post updates below as my ERay build progresses, all the way until it's delivered to me. You've already seen that it's a Convertible, but I'll also be revealing more details of my build specs (people ask me about that), so check back for more info on the ERay Experiences page.

And since it's preferred that I have no complications in the progression of my order, let's hope this page doesn't turn out to be too long.

October 16, 2023 Update:

I don't intend to extensively cover the UAW strike here, but an interesting thing happened recently with some Canadian autoworkers that supply very important parts to the Bowling Green Assembly plant. After talks between GM and Unifor (the Canadian union) failed, they voted to strike starting at midnight on October 9th. The St. Catharines powertrain facility makes the 8-speed Dual Clutch Transmission (DCT) that is used in all three models of the C8 Corvette (including the upcoming ERay).

In these days of Just-In-Time (JIT) manufacturing, if that plant didn't supply GM with those vital components, BGA would grind to a halt in short order. They normally complete assembly of around 180 Corvettes per day, and I can't imagine that they have very many DTCs on hand with which to continue production. However, the next day GM and Unifor came to an agreement, and they were back to work building the awesome C8 Corvette transmissions a little more than 12 hours later! "Yay!" (for now, at least).

I have some news regarding ERay production. GM previously stated that they planned to start assembling ERay Corvettes on October 23rd. Well, it doesn't look like that's the case now. Production at BGA has continued since the UAW strike began, but what we're seeing from people with orders in the system who've been given "Targeted (or Tentative) Production Week" (TPW) dates is that no assembling of ERays has been reported to start before December 4th. I'm still at Status Code 3000, and MacMulkin's website isn't showing a TPW for my order yet, but a TPW this far in advance — especially with an ongoing strike — could certainly change anyway. That date could be pushed back or moved up, so stay tuned!

October 23, 2023 Update:

Well, today's the day! SORP (as GM calls it)... or rather, today WAS supposed to be the "Start Of Regular Production" for the 2024 Corvette ERay, but we've thought for a while that wasn't going to happen.

As of today's update, MacMulkin's order tracking page is still not showing a TPW for my ERay, but I have information from one of my new friends who I waited overnight with to place our deposits and who was also one of us seven in the first cycle that received an ERay allocation on 9/28. He's getting his ERay delivered to the National Corvette Museum (NCM), and he says that the good people at the museum told him that everyone in our position has a "placeholder" TPW of December 4th, so apparently the information I mentioned in my last update applies to all of us. I haven't bothered to verify my order with people at the NCM because there's no good reason right now to bother them, but it's good to know.

Apparently, a couple of employees at the museum are the only people outside of BGA with access to this portion of their scheduling data. I've been told they need that information so they can schedule Museum Delivery for those who order that extra option. The data MacMulkin gets must be slightly different, as it looks to me like it may not include internal production forecast placeholders, but that's ok because those seem like guesses anyway. MacMulkin still provides the best order tracking of any dealership in the entire country!

In recent strike news, on October 20, GM made a "Record Offer to the UAW." I've seen videos of some striking workers who are publically saying they want to go back to work, but the UAW's response to the record offer was there's "more to be won." At least they didn't expand the strike to include any other General Motors facilities, but they did target another company's.

I decided that I had enough for a dedicated post about my build spec choices, and I didn't want to dilute this page with other types of information — as interesting as it may be — so you can find that post here: ERay Order Specs and Why I Chose Them

October 30, 2023 Update:

During the last week, the UAW reached tentative agreements with the other two automakers they were striking against, but an agreement with GM has been elusive, and they've expanded their strike to include a couple more GM facilities, bringing up to 8900 additional auto workers to the picket lines. GM has reportedly agreed to 25% pay increases, but there have been other sticking points in the negotiations.

I doubt the strike will last much longer, though, and if it gets resolved soon, I think it's possible that my TPW could be moved up from the currently scheduled December 4th week of production. That would be welcome because I'm ready to take delivery of my ERay whenever it's ready for delivery — even if it's snowing — because my all-wheel-drive Corvette will have all-season tires. I should be able to safely drive it home and even conduct tests of my new Corvette in the snow. The results of those tests will be presented on this website and on my YouTube channel.

As much as I'd like to get my ERay soon, there's something major going on currently with C8 production that I'd very much like to avoid!

Apparently, dozens of C8 Corvettes that were assembled — and buyers thought were ready to be sent to their place of delivery (their dealership or the National Corvette Museum) — were instead shipped to Michigan because there's a problem with those cars! Many details are not known at this time, but the issue(s) with those Corvettes are currently being evaluated and, hopefully, fixed. With any luck, this will be fully resolved before ERay Corvettes start down the production line.

November 6, 2023 Update:

I've been avoiding writing about this subject because it's so very objectionable, but I can't ignore it any longer. When I first posted this page one month ago, I wrote, "Basically, when a Corvette dealership receives an allocation from BGA, that means they've been told there's room in the production schedule for the dealership's Workbench order to be accepted by the factory... otherwise known as going to Status Code 2000. The implication of that, and how it normally works (but not always), is that means they're saying they have all the parts they need to build your car exactly as you've ordered it." The "but not always" part was and is because there are currently hundreds of Corvettes sitting at BGA waiting for parts that are required for them to be completed and shipped out for delivery.

Very little, if any, information has been communicated to these buyers by GM — or even to the dealerships where the cars were purchased — and some unofficial information indicates there are as many as 1100 mostly-completed Corvettes waiting for parts! Customers who've been directly affected by this have posted online that other Corvettes with exactly the same equipment as their cars have been completed and delivered while their cars seem to have been forgotten in one of the back parking lots somewhere... sitting outside exposed to the elements — for the past two months in some cases! It seems obvious to me that at some point GM decided to accept Corvette orders for which they knew they wouldn't have parts to complete.

I can't even imagine...

Hopefully, I never have to write about this distasteful subject again. If my ERay were to get involved in a situation like this, I guess I'd have to, but let's not even think about that right now.

On a much happier topic, I haven't seen anything that indicates the agreement between GM and the UAW won't be ratified by the membership, so hopefully things will start getting back to "normal" soon.

As of today, my ERay order has not progressed beyond Status 3000 (according to MacMulkin's Order Tracking web page weekly update).

November 13, 2023 Update:

I'm happy to report that it looks like the unfortunate situation I mentioned in my previous update has started to get worked out. In other words, apparently more of the C8 Corvettes that have been sitting for weeks — even months — in a BGA parking lot waiting for parts are getting delivered to customers.

Unfortunately, what's happening in Michigan, which I talked about in my October 30th update, seems to be getting worse! When I wrote that "dozens of C8 Corvettes that were assembled — and buyers thought were ready to be sent to their place of delivery (their dealership or the National Corvette Museum) — were instead shipped to Michigan because there's a problem with those cars!", I was talking about literally 2 dozen or so Corvettes, but new information is coming to light that points to the actual number being MANY dozens... as in possibly up to 100 or more so far because, apparently, more have been sent to MI since I wrote that.

Despite the very persistent efforts of some of the "owners" of these Corvettes that were shipped to Michigan (I say "owners" because some of these C8 Corvettes have been paid for, titled, registered and insured, with the clocks on warranties and subscriptions ticking), GM is being very tight-lipped about what's going on. I'm sure they're working very hard to resolve the issue(s) with these cars, but customers are understandably upset by the situation, and it's concerning that nobody at GM is letting people know why the cars were diverted. That leaves the imagination to run wild, so some of the affected parties are thinking about refusing delivery of the Corvettes they've been dreaming about for months or years.

It's unclear to me at this point if Z06s are affected or if this is strictly a Stingray problem, but I really feel for the Corvette enthusiasts who are in this unenviable position. What are the chances that ERay Corvettes could get wrapped up into this mess? I don't know at this point, but it's a situation I'll be watching closely because my ERay could be heading down the production line three weeks from today!

November 20, 2023 Update:

November 27, 2023; December 4, 2023; January 1, 2024... what do these three dates have in common?

They are all SORP dates, according to "reliable, trusted sources." For the uninitiated, SORP stands for "Start Of Regular Production". In other words, that's the first date customers' ERay Corvettes are to start down the assembly line at BGA. Obviously, it can't actually be all three dates, however. There's only one "first time." But will it be any of those three dates or another day entirely?

The Internet is a great resource, but it's also full of incorrect information — even though I'm sure most people post with nothing but the best intentions. Of course, I'm still hoping my ERay is one of the very first to go down the production line, but it's possible that won't be the case. (I previously posted the reasons for that.) I guess we'll have to wait to see what happens.

A few days ago, the UAW contract with GM was ratified by the workers. The vote count totals were highly variable across the different facilities and seniority of workers, but the final tally was 54.74% "Yes" and 45.26% "No", so it passed. The workers who assemble Corvettes at the BGA plant voted 47.76% "Yes" and 52.24% "No"; therefore, not everyone in the group that's most important to my cause got their way, and I don't know how this works exactly, but I hope they are taken care of. For admittedly selfish reasons, I want them happy!

There were no November allocations on Thursday, the 16th (the "expected" date), for any of the three Corvettes models, so hopefully that means they're concentrating on fixing the Corvettes that were shipped to MI and completing the many Corvettes sitting at BGA waiting for parts so they can be sent out for delivery. (Please refer to my last three updates if you need a refresher on what I'm talking about.)

November 27, 2023 Update:

I hope and believe my ERay will be one of the very first built, and I've taken steps to give myself the best shot at that. If you haven't already, please read ERay Deposit Series #1: Waiting Overnight for details.

But it's certain that other ERay Corvettes will be produced before mine. We know of at least one, for sure. GM builds them in roughly the order of VIN sequence, and VIN 001 was won at a charity action with a final bid of $1.1 million by Chevrolet dealer and NASCAR team owner Rick Hendrick, who wanted to add to his extensive collection of first-off-the-line Corvettes. There's little doubt there will be others before mine, but there's nothing in my order that I think should be a cause for delay.

My order is actually pretty simple. After years of analyzing every detail of these C8 Corvettes, I've distilled my option preferences down to a few key ingredients that will make my ERay look and function just the way I want it to. It'll be very sporty — yet sophisticated — and that's what I'm going for this time. (Maybe you've seen the photo page on this website of my previous Rapid Blue Stingray... a color I chose primarily for its flashiness.)

My ERay order doesn't have a lot of unneeded complexity, but that's not a guarantee that my Corvette will get built early. Any component could run into short supply; however, I think if they were looking for a simple ERay to be one of the first to send down the assembly line, mine would be a great candidate. We know the order Corvettes are built is determined by a very complicated algorithm at GM, so I can't say if I have any chance at all of getting an ERay with a VIN within the first 100, but that would be pretty cool. I'd settle for #007!

I've been doing these Order Progress updates very reliably every Monday, but it occurred to me that if I do it on Tuesdays instead, I'll be able to look back to see if any ERay Corvettes were being assembled at the start of the week. That would give us a more accurate gauge of when the start of production actually happens, and I think that's better than using "guesses," which is what a TPW essentially is since that stands for "Target" or "Tentative" Production Week. I'm more interested in the ACTUAL production week, so please look for these weekly updates on Tuesdays now, instead of Mondays.

AND please don't misinterpret that, GM or MacMulkin. I certainly do appreciate the TPW being provided in the first place, and I also very much appreciate the superlative Order Tracking webpage that you provide at macmulkincorvette.com, as no other dealership provides anything close!

I'll see you all on Tuesday, December 5th, to let you know if any ERay Corvettes were being built the day before (as was previously reported would happen). I'm guessing not yet, but in the meantime, please take a look around the rest of this website, as I have about 40 pages of Corvette content posted so far.

December 5, 2023 Update:

As predicted, it doesn't look like there was any ERay production yesterday (meaning that it hasn't started at all yet). In fact, the earliest semi-reliable TPW I've seen is about 7 weeks from now, in the middle to end of January, but I'm going to say that's a good thing at this point because of everything else going on with C8 Corvette production. Something I posted before was that I'd prefer some ongoing issues get resolved before they start building my ERay (or anybody else's).

You see, we still have the matter of the one hundred or so Corvettes shipped to MI for some previously unknown repair and the one thousand or so at BGA supposedly waiting for parts. I've mentioned this a few times, starting with my October 30 update, and I've mostly written about them as two separate issues, but it's certainly possible that they're closely related. If bad parts arrived from a supplier and some of them were unknowingly installed into new Corvettes on the assembly line — but then subsequently a problem was discovered with some of those cars — that could largely explain what's going on with both groups of cars.

GM could be in the process of evaluating all of these "newly completed" Corvettes at BGA (some of them assembled nearly 3 months ago) to see if they received the bad part(s). If they didn't, they're completed and sent on to the customer, as we've seen. If they discover a major problem because of a bad part, that car is shipped to the specialized facility in Michigan for repair. Yes, it could require such drastic measures because the part I'm talking about is very complicated... the Dual Clutch Transmission (DCT). This has been rumored for weeks, but we now seem to have official confirmation that the transmissions are what's causing at least part of the problems and delivery delays.

The Tremec "TR-9080 DCT" 8-speed dual clutch transmission in the 8th Generation of Corvettes is a really quick-shifting and amazingly-fun transmission when it's working properly, but it's had some issues since its introduction — and even though my 2021 Stingray (and most others that have been produced) was perfect, some have failed shortly after being put into service. We know that Tremec and GM have been working continuously on improvement of the DCT, as we've seen several design changes during the last few years, so hopefully this recent effort is to not only repair a bad batch of parts that unfortunately got past Quality Control, but also to fix the DCT and make it more reliable for our Corvettes once and for all.

The ERay happens to also have a modification of its DCT that the Stingray and Z06 do not. I mentioned that in my article, "One of the Most Complicated Machines" -Tadge, but I only skimmed the surface there because I had so many other things to cover, so I'll see if I can find time to write more in-depth about that. I also have another article planned, and I know it'll be very controversial, so I don't want to say what that's all about just yet!

December 12, 2023 Update:

The big news this week is that supposedly ERay production started yesterday. I said "supposedly" and did not use exclamation points on that sentence for a reason.

It is notable, of course, that one or more ERay Corvettes were on the assembly line yesterday — but probably also a bit misleading. This all started because of a memo that was sent to BGA employees alerting them that there would be filming inside the Kentucky assembly plant to capture the "historic moment in Corvette history" of the first-ever performance hybrid AWD Corvette being built for a customer.

NOTE: Captured Test Fleet (CTF) ERay Corvettes have previously been produced for testing. They were driven by GM employees and provided to car magazines and YouTubers so they could write and film the reviews you've seen.

Certainly, starting production of the best Corvette in history is a BIG deal, but I suspect this week's production is not SORP (Start Of Regular Production). More than likely, they're sending one, or two, or a few down the line — possibly VIN 001 that I mentioned before was won at auction for $1.1 million by Rick Hendrick, and maybe one or more VIP cars.

Last week, on December 7, there was a good number of Stingray and Z06 allocations, but NONE for ERay again this month... continuing what happened (or didn't happen) in November. In September and October, the top three largest Corvette dealerships got about 25 allocations, and that's their combined total so far. I don't have the numbers for all the other dealerships, but I'm guessing there have been about 40 ERay allocations nationwide so far.

Besides my allocation being #3 at the largest Corvette dealership in the world, I'm also in contact with quite a few of the other people who've received ERay allocations, and none of us had been expecting our ERay to be on the production line yesterday — something we should know about from the "Targeted Production Week" on our orders, which is why I suspect this is a very limited, special run, and that SORP will still be in mid to late January at the earliest (what current TPWs reflect).

December 19, 2023 Update:

A lot of people — those who don't read this website (or may not believe it, I suppose) — have been confused about the ERay Corvettes that were assembled last week, but I have to say I called it correctly in my last update. The few ERay Corvettes that were assembled last Monday/Tuesday do NOT constitute the Start of Regular Production, as far as I'm concerned. The big indicator is that no more have been built since then. SORP is when they start making them continuously! After all, the whole reason to pay attention to SORP is to help figure out when we'll get our Corvettes! Putting together a few for VIPs or CTF and then taking a break for what will probably be weeks doesn't help us do that.

Just to let you know, I'm planning to change my update day for this page to Wednesday. Since it takes about three factory shifts at Bowling Green Assembly to put together a C8, and they'll probably start building the first production ERay on a Monday, it won't be completed until sometime on Tuesday afternoon, and I may not get confirmation that happened until Wednesday, so information I get then is more reliable. Today's update is fine even on a Tuesday, though, because it's clear that regular, predictable ERay production has not started yet. I just want to make sure you can trust the reliability of my information, and I won't compromise on that.

The current earliest TPWs I've seen are in January, so I may take a week off from updating this page to allow me time to write a long article for this website and to celebrate the holidays with my family, but I'll see you here again in January (two weeks from tomorrow)! In the meantime, please look around the rest of the site, if you haven't already.

Here are 100+ car museum photos of the history-making Corvettes that have led us to this point... https://www.awdcorvette.com/ncm-corvette-photos All generations — C1 to C7 — are represented, and there's another page with 20 of my best C8 photos, but I also hope you don't forget the various articles.

Enjoy, and have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, everyone!

January 3, 2024 Update:

Today is 1/3/24; stated another way as "one, three, two, four," and that could be used as a metaphor for my year so far... all mixed up. I expect that 2024 will turn out to be epic, but things are bumpy right now. If starting point "one" and ending point "four" are where they're supposed to be, the path in between has taken a bad turn, but thankfully that has nothing to do with my ERay!

It has affected an article I'm writing, though, so I'm going to need more time to get that up for you all. It'll be worth the wait!

There's a very famous motivational saying, "When life gives you ******, make *****ade." I'm doing that, but since this website is about cars, that word for a bright yellow citrus fruit is something that I hope to never type here — especially in relation to my ERay — and I'm not going to type it now! ;-)

People probably had busy holidays and may have lost track of where we are with Corvette production, so let me remind everyone that the Bowling Green Assembly Plant was on vacation from just before Christmas until New Year's Day. They started building Corvettes again yesterday, but no ERays have been built since December 12, when three customer cars were assembled (Rick Hendrick got two of them, according to my source).

I'm expecting my ERay to be assembled this month, and I'm anxious to get started reviewing it for everybody, but I'm trying to take a broader view on all this. TPW and build date are really only most important if a very low VIN is what you're after. As I joked about before, it would be fun to have #007 (James Bond), but what's most important to me is when I actually get the car and that it's reliable.

Given that, I think more about how many will be built in the first week, two weeks, month. Will there be a QC hold? How many ERay and other Corvettes will be ready to ship, such that Jack Cooper (the only trucking company GM uses for Corvettes) can fill a transport truck, so that they'll make the delivery to the dealership? Thankfully, MacMulkin gets lots of cars and very regular deliveries, but some people I know near the front of the line will be picking up their ERays at the National Corvette Museum, or getting Courtesy Deliveries to other dealerships, which will reduce the numbers being trucked to MacMulkin, so how does all of that factor in?

There's a lot to consider, and I'm not assuming that delivery order will be the same as build order. It may very well not be.

That said, ERay production is slated to begin in 5 days!

Posts about the progress of my ERay order are being continued here with "#6: TPW and Assembly"!

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There certainly are a lot of "moving parts" to this particular order process, and it promises to get even more exciting as my delivery date approaches! I'm planning a special post for that, so I expect there'll be a #7 in this series.

I'm looking forward to driving and testing all aspects of my new ERay for you!