Class-Action Over Cracking Corvette Wheels Finally Has a Resolution—With a Big Asterisk

It’s easy to imagine the frustration of C7 Corvette Z06 and Grand Sport owners when they spend good money on their dream sports car, only for a wheel to bend or crack at the first sight of a pothole. Especially when it happens two, four, or even seven times. It’s even easier to imagine the frustration of those owners when they look to GM for answers and get nothing but shoulder shrugs. Now, after several years of lawsuits and customer complaints of unexpectedly broken or bent wheels, GM is finally willing to reimburse owners for damaged wheels caused by poor manufacturing. But, of course, there’s a catch.

According to CarComplaints, GM recently announced the Corvette Wheels Limited Special Reimbursement Program, which applies to current and former owners or lessees of 2015-2019 Z06 and 2017-2019 Grand Sport models. The program will reimburse customers for 100% of their out-of-pocket costs to replace or repair a bent or cracked wheel during its original warranty and extended four-year/48,000-mile warranty, even if it wasn’t repaired or replaced by a GM dealer. Here’s the catch, though: The customer has to prove that the wheel damage wasn’t their fault.

“You will not, however, be eligible to receive anything under the Program where there are service records, receipts, or invoices provided by GM, a GM-authorized dealer, or any other vehicle repair or servicing entity that explicitly state that a wheel repair or replacement was performed for reasons such as damage caused by impact damage or road hazard damage such as cracks, punctures, cuts, snags, and breaks resulting from pothole impact, curb impact, or from other objects, or words to the same effect.”

I get that it isn’t fair to replace a wheel under warranty if the customer curbed it at 40 mph … but an OEM wheel should be able to handle a pothole impact or two. Unfortunately, if the dealer technician adds a note to the repair that a pothole caused the wheel damage, the customer is out of luck.

A customer can also get reimbursed by providing a sworn statement, under penalty of perjury, “attesting that the vehicle received a wheel repair or replacement for a bent or cracked wheel and that, to the best understanding, knowledge, and belief of the owner or lessee, the wheel repair or replacement was performed for reasons other than damage caused by impact damage or road hazard damage.”

So in other words: If you can get a receipt for replacement Z06 or Grand Sport Corvette wheels you bought, due to the originals cracking, during your warranty period, and you can swear that the crack was not caused by a road hazard … you can get reimbursed. Unless there’s a line in the work order that says “pothole damage,” “road-hazard damage” or something similar. Which a service writer may well have typed even if you never said or knew how a wheel got split.

GM’s hesitancy to believe customers is frustrating when you consider how many reports of bent or cracked wheels on Z06 and Grand Sport there have been. During Car and Driver’s long-term test of a 2017 Corvette Grand Sport, which spanned 40,000 miles, they experienced an absurd number of damaged wheels.  “In all, we spent $4098 on wheel repair and replacement—seven repairs and three replacements, for an average failure rate of once every 4,000 miles,” said C&D during its long-term review.

If any customers want to take their shot at getting their wheel repair or replacement costs reimbursed, they have to contact Analytics Consulting, not a GM dealer, and can call 833-941-5297. The Drive asked GM for a comment and will update this story when we get more information.

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