Corvette Production Numbers by Year, 1953 to Today

The Overview

Chevrolet has built about 1.96 million Corvettes in seventy-three model years, and the count for each year is the most-asked question in the hobby, because it is the number that sets the price of everything else: a 1955 is worth what it is because 700 were built, a 1963 Z06 because 199 were, a 2025 ZR1 because 180 were. This page is the index to those numbers. Each generation’s table lists every model year with its official production total and a link to that year’s page, where the total is broken down by body style, engine, transmission, color and option, with the VIN range that confirms it.

The numbers are GM’s model-year production figures, the ones the National Corvette Museum and the NCRS use, and they count cars built in a model year rather than cars sold in a calendar year; GM’s monthly sales releases, which the top-level reports below track, run on the calendar and never quite match. A few years need a note: the 1973 VIN sequence skips 4,000 numbers that were never built, the 1984 figure includes pre-production cars GM counted as saleable, the 1989 ZR-1s were built but never sold, and the 2026 count is an unofficial VIN tally until the museum publishes its sheet.

The pattern across the years is the Corvette’s history in one line. Production climbed from 300 to 10,000 a year through the C1, held near 22,000 through the Sting Ray, doubled through the C3 to the 53,807 record of 1979, fell with the recessions of 1991, 2009 and the strike-and-pandemic year of 2020, and came within 22 cars of the record in 2023. The five highest and the rarest years have their own reports below; the generation hubs carry a year-by-year table with prices and engines alongside the counts.

How to Read Corvette Production Numbers

A Corvette production number looks simple and rarely is. The total for a year is firm; what sits under it, the split by body style, engine and option, comes from GM’s option-installation reports and the VIN sequence, and the two sources do not always agree. Knowing where a number comes from tells you how far to trust it.

Model year, not calendar year

Every figure on this site is a model-year count: the cars built as 1963s, which ran from the first 1963 off the St. Louis line in the late summer of 1962 to the last in the summer of 1963. GM’s sales releases, by contrast, count cars delivered in a calendar month or quarter, which is why a year like 2020, built from February to December around a pandemic shutdown, shows one number for production and a different one for sales. The monthly and quarterly report linked below is the calendar-year view; the year pages are the model-year view.

Where the totals come from

The totals are GM’s own model-year production reports, as the National Corvette Museum and the NCRS record them, and they match the VIN sequence for almost every year: the 1963 VINs run from 100001 to 121513, and 21,513 is the production figure. The exceptions are known and the year pages explain them. The 1973 sequence runs to 34464 but only 30,464 cars were built, because 4,000 numbers were skipped; the 1978 Pace Car and the 1996 Grand Sport carried their own VIN series; the 84 1989 ZR-1s were built and then held back, so they appear in production and not in sales; and the 2020 total includes saleable pre-production cars.

Body styles, engines and options

Within a year the split by body style, coupe against convertible, hardtop or Z06, is firm, because the VIN carries the body code. The split by engine and option comes from GM’s installation-rate reports, which record how many cars took RPO L88 or Z06 or the fuel-injected 283, and those are the numbers that make a car rare: 20 L88s in 1967, 199 Z06s in 1963, 1,163 Pace Car replicas in 1998, 180 ZR1s in 2025. Each year page carries that table with the option prices beside the counts, and the generation hubs carry the engine tables; the rarest combinations are the ones to verify with the tank sticker, build sheet or window sticker before paying for them.

The years to know

Four years explain the whole curve. 1955, with 700 cars, is the year the Corvette nearly died before the V-8 and Duntov saved it. 1979, with 53,807, is the record, set by a C3 in its twelfth year because the Pace Car of 1978 had made the car fashionable. 2018, with 9,686, is the lowest since 1959, because Bowling Green closed for three months to rebuild its paint shop. And 2023, with 53,785, missed the record by 22 cars with the Z06 arriving and the 70th Anniversary on the order form. The five highest years have their own report, as do the sales milestones of each generation.

MORE: THE FIVE HIGHEST YEARS / SALES VOLUME BY YEAR / SALES BY MONTH & QUARTER