[1]Buying the car of your dreams should be a special occasion, and for many people, the Chevy Corvette is the car of their dreams. That is why GM offered a $5,800 build-your-own-engine experience as an option for C6 Corvette buyers, which opened the doors of the Performance Build Center [2] in Wixom, Michigan and gave you the opportunity to assemble the engine of the car of your dreams. It’s a rare privilege.
[3]The build-your-engine program will move to the Corvette factory in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
But Automotive News [4] reports that the engine-building program is shutting down temporarily, while the Performance Build Center shuts down permanently. The engine program will be moved to where it should have been in the first place; the Corvette’s hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Some 40,000 high-performance engines were hand-built in a nondescript industrial building in Wixom over the years, with 30 employees hand-picked for the prestigious positions. Engines like the Corvette ZR1’s supercharged LS9 and the Cadillac XLR-V’s supercharged Northstar were built here, but those cars (and jobs) are no more. The employees will be offered positions at other GM plants, and the program will move to a special section of the Bowling Green plant, which is busy churning out the first 2014 Corvettes.
While GM didn’t release the numbers of how many people have opted for the engine-building program, they did say that the flow was “steady” and the program is expected to be just as popular going forward. As an added bonus, you may even have a chance to see your hand-built engine dropped into your car, right on the assembly line. That’s a pretty cool perk if you ask us.