Why Corvette C7 NEVER will be a GLOBAL CAR-Ignorance and Stupidity of General Motors and Tadge Juechter

+Tadge Juechter , the douchebag in charge of Corvette program (very unfortunate) has been spending quite a bit of time advertising new Corvette as a GLOBAL CAR, including justification why truly idiotic design points like front bumper fangs had to make already horrible new design even worse.

The truth?  Either Tadge Juechter and +General Motors  marketing team are so stupid or they all are fully delusional.

What is needed for a car designed and manufactured in U.S.A. to be treated seriously and actually bought on continents such as Asia and Europe?

1.  LOW WEIGHT-many many countries, especially in Europe charge more tax, registration and insurance based on weight of a vehicle.  The lighter the car is, the less these fees are.  Now, Corvette just GAINED weight and quite a bit of it.  So much for this selling point, appealing to GLOBAL BUYERS.

2.  ENGINE DISPLACEMENT- plain and simple, the smaller the displacement of engine is, the less it costs to register and insure.  This is already a well known fact.  This is also the reason why the new Ford Mustang will be offered with 2.3 liter turbo charged 4 cylinder engine (with very impressive 310 hp straight from the factory).  The Corvette C7 reality?  The new engine is based on one that can be found on GM pick up trucks (albeit with a smaller displacement).  Simply put, the ancient OHV architecture can be made light but it requires considerably larger displacement than its DOHC counterparts-THIS IS A FACT.  Furthermore, OHV is considerably less efficient when forced induction is applied to it-THIS IS ANOTHER FACT.   Large displacement is another reason why any notion of Corvette being a global car.

3.  Lack of right hand drive version.  This was already mentioned previously.  Apparently Juechter either forgot that RHD is very much alive in Asia, Australia and Great Britain? 

Here is an example to prove the points made above:

In Portugal (this is very typical of other European countries), when buying a brand new car, there is  the car tax (ISV) + road tax (IUC) + registration tax + added value tax over each one of those taxes. Then there is an ANNUAL road tax an that is calculated based on the displacement of the engine, fuel type and vehicle type (car, bike, truck, ...).  For comparison:

As a few examples, here are the prices of a few big displacement cars:
  

Car	Final Price	Car tax	Road tax*
Corvette ZR1	202.500,00 €	47.205,02 €	733,19 €
Lamborghini Aventador	402.385,69 €	58.165,57 €	733,19 €
BMW M5	137.994,09 €	24.773,15 €	594,46 €

Pretty ironic that the government taxes and fees on a  Lamborghini costing TWICE as much as C6ZR1 are almost identical to those on Corvette.  

Thus, as long as Corvette does not move into 21st Century, any claim regarding it being a GLOBAL CAR is either a DELUSION or BULLSHIT.  Apparently Tadge Juechter did not get the memo that taxation, insurance and emissions laws in the rest of the world made OHC engine architecture the only way for sports cars to survive?  Go back to school Tadge, seeing someone like you spreading misinformation and ignorance is very embarrassing.  Oh and no, the fangs or AFM do not make Corvette a GLOBAL car, they just make the new car visually revolting and heavier.