- georgia man dennis kahler won a 2021 chevrolet corvette and $250,000 in a georgia lottery in december but has struggled to get his hands on the corvette, the blog corvette forum reported this week.
- kahler wants a 2lt rapid blue z51 vette, but the lottery administrators can't find a dealer with a spare corvette to sell.
- kahler may have to wait until the third quarter of this year for delivery of his prize.
if dennis kahler was crazy enough to think he would actually win a free car when he bought a scratch-off ticket for georgia's corvette and cash event, he probably still didn't imagine that his luck would be tarnished by vehicle supply problems, organizing failures on the part of the lottery, and the eventual involvement of a team of lawyers. but sadly, he would have been wrong.
kahler won the grand prize in the corvette lottery sometime in december. the win entitled him to $250,000 in prize money and a 2021 chevrolet corvette worth up to $107,000. kahler says his spec of choice is the 2lt z51 in rapid blue, and that he thinks his dream car will cost $80,465, meaning he'll get an extra $26,535 in cash when the deal finally goes through. the base price of such a corvette is $73,290, so kahler may also be hoping to add features such as competition seats, carbon-fiber trim, or (let's hope not) color-match seatbelts to his c8.
but georgia lottery officials, who apparently did not have a prize vehicle waiting in the wings for a winner, are struggling to get their hands on an appropriate car. the launch of the new corvette has been plagued by problems. first, the start of manufacturing on the mid-engine vette was delayed by a 40-day united auto workers strike; then the coronavirus pandemic temporarily shuttered gm plants. in october, the bowling green, kentucky, plant that builds corvettes was shut down for a week because of unspecified coronavirus-related supply chain issues.
that all adds up to a lot of demand for not that many cars. so far, the only vehicle the georgia lottery has been able to secure for kahler came from a dealer who wanted $10,000 above msrp, but kahler balked at any solution that would chip away at his winnings.
now it seems that he may have to wait until at least the third quarter of this year before an unaccounted-for corvette rolls of the line. kahler says lawyers are now involved in his quest to extract a corvette from georgia lottery. if you ask us, it's bad form to look a gift horse in the mouth and especially bad to have your lawyer do it for you. but then again, our corvettes always show up on time.