GM to Dealers: Fight Ferrari (and Porsche, Audi, & Macca)

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We all know GM takes the C8 Corvette Z06 very seriously; putting that particular engine amidships surely took an act of divinity and Alfred P. Sloan himself. But a recent inside look at dealer training materials provided to sales hacks shows just how seriously they’re taking the thing – pitting it against a $300,000 Ferrari.

We’ll gloss over the notion that the same people taking this dealer training are also very likely responsible for learning the finer points of squeezing a sub-prime customer into a $20,000 Trailblazer. So, too, will we task the B&B with eviscerating the script which suggests a $300k Ferrari F8 Tributo suffers from any sort of turbo lag. The answer is ‘B’, by the way.

The McLaren 720S also starts around $300,000 which is a sum roughly triple the ’23 Z06. It’s flung across the Earth at tremendous speed by a twin-turbocharged 4.0L V8 that producing 710 horsepower and 568 pound-feet of torque which is only a 30hp walk from the Z06 and its 5.5L naturally aspirated octopot. Sales mooks needed to answer ā€˜Cā€™ here to earn a cookie.

Which brings us to the R8 and 911 GT3 (answers ‘A’ and ‘C’, if you’re wondering). The former is priced in the $150k – $200k range depending on options and roof choice, while the Parsh roughly splits that difference. These are still a world away from the Z06 in terms of MSRP but are at least in with a shout unlike the Fezza and McLaren.

It cannot be argued the new C8 Z06 provides world crushing performance for a fraction of the cost attached to the European heavyweights but we idly wonder about this sales training which treats the 5.5L flat-plane crank supercar in a similar way as a run-of-the-mill volume crossover. There is ample room to pass judgement on these sales tools and their suitability in dealing with real-world Z06 customers – but we’ll let you tear them apart in the comments.



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