Chevrolet on Monday night will air its first TV ad for the Corvette in five years. More on the new spot later. Meanwhile, the General Motors division is also expanding a slate of owner-experience
programs. Chevrolet, for years has offered people who buy a Corvette a kind of an automotive obstetrical experience: they can travel to Bowling Green, Kentucky, where the vehicle is made, and take
delivery of their baby right off the assembly line. Now the automaker is adding a new angle. Rather than just taking delivery of their vehicle, the division is letting people actually help build the
famed small block Chevy engine that goes under the hood. The Corvette Engine Build Experience lets people who order a 2011 Corvette Z06 or ZR1 go to GM's Wixom, Mich. engine plant and help assemble
the motor. The experience, which costs $5,800 (no, the buyer doesn't get a discount for helping to build the engine). General Motors says that once consumers choose that option a "concierge" contacts
them, and helps arrange the trip, expenses for which are the customers reponsiblity, though GM handles local travel, and the roster of activities the buyer gets to do at the Performance Build Center.
GM says that once the customer builds the engine, with help from plant techies, they affix a personalized nameplate. The engine is crated and shipped down to Bowling Green for installation. The
reason that such a program is even possible at Chevrolet, most of whose engines are – like other parts of the vehicles – built on assembly lines, is that the Corvette engines for
factory-tuned Z versions are hand built at the Build Center. The Center works more like a Maserati plant than a Chevrolet factory, with everything hand built, and nary a robot in sight. Even though
the buyer helps build the Engine Build Experience motors, the engines are still covered by Chevy's transferable 5-year, 100,000 mile powertrain warranty, per GM. GM also offers buyers complementary
attendance at the Corvette ZR1 Driving School at either Bob Bondurant's Corvette Driving School in Arizona, or Ron Fellows' Corvette Performance Driving School near Las Vegas. People who take the
$490 dealer option to take delivery of their car at Bowling Green, also get a private tour (with a guest) of the Corvette assembly plant, and the National Corvette Museum. The owner then takes
delivery of their new Corvette from the museum showroom, where their own car is on display. The delivery process includes a personalized demonstration of their Corvette's features, which, per GM, is
broadcast around the world via live webcam 24 hours a day. The Corvette Buyers Tour is $400 and is coordinated through the National Corvette Museum. Buyers of new Corvettes can also get –
for $500 – a photo album that shows their car being built. GM says the leather-bound album includes more than 20 pages of text and photos devoted to capturing the customer's Corvette build
process, as well as a letter of authenticity from the National Corvette Museum.