The Internet Helped That Georgia Lottery Winner Find a C8 Corvette at Sticker Price

Atlanta dealership comes to the rescue to deliver a Rapid Blue 2LT Z51.

byKristin V. Shaw|
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The good news: you won a Corvette! The bad news: no Corvettes are available. As we reported yesterday, Dennis Kahler won a brand-new C8 plus $250,000 with a lucky Georgia Lottery Corvette and Cash scratch-off ticket. As a result, he was provided with a $107,000 budget by the Georgia Lottery Commission, and all he had to do was walk into a dealership and hand over the money. Wait. Aren’t new Corvettes practically impossible to get right now, not to mention a very specific 2LT Z51 model in Rapid Blue? The Internet went to work to help Kahler get his prize. 

This fairy tale finally has a happy ending: Jim Ellis Chevrolet in Atlanta showed up to save the day, Fox Wilmington reported, and Kahler’s new Corvette should arrive from Chevrolet’s plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky by March.

Facebook/Dennis Kahler

Chevy’s mid-engine Corvette has been a huge hit, and production has been hampered in the last year because of the pandemic and a few issues that created a tangle. That has not seemed to slow demand, and you can even find a few C8s online with low miles as long as you’re willing to pay upcharges. The C8 convertible is selling like crazy now, so expect to see those on the market for even more than the $7,500 premium for the folding hardtop.

Initially, CorvetteBlogger reported that lottery officials did find Five Star Chevrolet, which was willing to provide the C8 with one condition: a $10,000 mark-up over MSRP for the sports car. Not so fast, Kahler said. He’s a former general sales manager for a car dealership, as it turns out, and he wasn’t having it. Can’t blame him; the remaining money left over from his $80,465 Corvette would be deposited into his bank account along with the $250,000 cash.

Then an employee of Master Chevrolet in Aiken, South Carolina chimed in on the C8 Corvette Owners and Friends Facebook page to say that they were taking orders for 2021 C8s at MSRP, but with a 9 to 12-month wait time. They couldn’t guarantee a delivery date, though, and Kahler wants his ‘Vette now. Don’t we all, sir. Don’t we all.

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