Corvette Buyers: Build Your Own Engine

Just the Facts:

• Corvette Engine Build Experience lets buyers help assemble their car's engines.
• The engine build offer applies to the 2011 Corvette Z06 or ZR1 and its LS7 and LS9 engines.
• Buyers can also watch their car being built or pick it up at the National Corvette Museum.

DETROIT — The Chevrolet Corvette purchasing experience just got a lot more exciting with the rollout of the Corvette Engine Build Experience. GM is inviting Vette buyers to come on down to Bowling Green, Kentucky, to watch their vehicle go down the assembly line. Even more hands-on is the opportunity to help assemble the engine at the GM Performance Build Center in Wixom, Michigan. The engine build offer applies to the 2011 Corvette Z06 or ZR1 and its LS7 and LS9 engines.

It's one of a menu of new experience choices, at extra cost, being offered to purchasers of a new Corvette.

The option, tagged PBC, has a suggested price of $5,800. For that price, the buyer is assigned a personal concierge who schedules the engine build and coordinates logistics of the trip. Once at Wixom, the buyer gets to personally assemble the engine — "under the supervision of and support from skilled technicians," GM clarifies, noting that hand assembly procedures in place at the Performance Build Center make this possible. A personalized engine nameplate is created that gets added to the car.

Museum Delivery, which tacks $490 on to the cost of a new Corvette, lets buyers choose from a menu of delivery dates, get a private tour of the GM Bowling Green Assembly Plant and the National Corvette Museum and see their new vehicle on display at the museum showroom. A live webcam will capture a demonstration of the buyer's own new Vette and its capabilities, which will be viewable worldwide.

For $400 a Corvette buyer can choose the Corvette Buyers Tour which lets them follow their car from the start of assembly to the moment it rolls off the line. The tour takes the participant to parts of the plant that are not included on the general plant tour, GM says without hinting at what those might be.

A nostalgia-producing choice at $500 is the offer of a photo album that documents their car's build process. The album will contain 20 pages of text and photos about the car's production and a letter of authenticity from the National Corvette Museum. It's available to those who make the trek to the plant or museum for pickup, as well as to anyone who goes the traditional route of heading to the local dealership to pick up a new Corvette.

A free ZR1 driving school is a perk of buying the Corvette ZR1. Each buyer gets a two-day course at the Ron Fellows Performance Driving School in Pahrump, Nevada, about an hour outside Las Vegas, or the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving in Chandler, Arizona. In a closed-course setting, drivers are taught advanced skills to help them "fully enjoy the performance of the ZR1." The driving school costs $2,995 to members of the public.

Inside Line says: GM caters to vanity but also brings Corvette buyers in to some shrines of the cult. — Laura Sky Brown, Correspondent