The sleek sports car will be the New Orleans native's 11th Corvette and will replace the one he lost to floodwater after Hurricane Katrina.
Taglialavore bought his first one more than 40 years ago.
''It's just something that gets in your blood: the speed and power, the handling,'' said Taglialavore, 64, who picked up the car in May at the National Corvette Museum, across the street from the plant where the car was assembled in this western Kentucky city 60 miles north of Nashville, Tenn.
The only factory in the world that builds the iconic sports car, General Motors' Bowling Green plant rolled out its first Corvette in Kentucky 25 years ago, on June 1, 1981.
Industry analysts say the plant remains a bright spot for General Motors Corp. at a time when sagging sales have led the automaker to eliminate 30,000 U.S. hourly jobs by 2008 as part of a massive restructuring plan.
About 35,000 Corvettes are assembled at the plant each year - a small fraction of the 9 million vehicles GM is expected to produce worldwide this year.
The Corvette - which sells for around $50,000 - is not intended to make piles of money, but instead to create a brand identity and to lure customers into Chevrolet dealerships to buy other vehicles, said David Healy, an analyst with New York-based Burnham Securities Inc.
''It's microscopic, but it does the job as a marketing tool for Chevy,'' Healy said. ''Indirectly it makes money because it gives cachet to Chevy, which otherwise might suffer from lack of charisma."
GM has sold more than 1.4 million Corvettes since the first one was built June 30, 1953, in Flint, Mich. About 300 of the cars were assembled there before production was moved to St. Louis the next year.
After the passage of more strict environmental regulations in the 1970s affecting the car's production in St. Louis, GM transferred its Corvette facilities to a building that had been a Chrysler air-conditioning-unit factory in Bowling Green.
Bob Heidbrink, a retired engineer who worked for GM for more than 40 years, including 15 at the Bowling Green plant, said GM was building 10 Corvettes an hour in St. Louis and increased that to 15 after the move to Bowling Green.
By the mid-1980s, however, there were too many Corvettes flooding the market, though the model later experienced a jump in popularity in the 1990s when the fifth-generation model debuted, Heidbrink said.
Plant workers are putting in a lot of overtime because of the Corvette's new popularity, said the plant's union president Eldon Renaud, adding that many GM workers at other locations try to get transferred to the plant - which employs about 1,200 workers.
''They [workers] know it's not going anywhere,'' Renaud said, adding that there are no layoffs planned at the plant.
For an extra cost of about $500, new Corvette owners can pick up their ''baby'' at the National Corvette Museum's designated ''nursery'' and get a personal guided tour of the assembly plant and hands-on training about the new car's controls.
By the numbers
About General Motors Corp.'s Bowling Green, Ky., plant, which rolled out its first Corvette on June 1, 1981:
l About 35,000 Corvettes each year are assembled at the plant. Since 2003, the facility has also produced the Cadillac XLR luxury sports car - assembling close to 4,000 a year.
l Close to 1,200 workers are employed at the plant, where production each day ranges from 150 to 170 Corvettes and approximately 16 Cadillac XLRs, which share a frame and fiberglass body panels.
l Each Corvette spends about 36 hours, from start to finish, winding around seven miles of conveyor systems in the plant.
l The 2006 model C6 Corvette coupe base price is $44,600 and for the convertible, $52,335. The high-performance Z06 starts at $65,800.
l The base price for the XLR is $77,295 and the XLR-V is $100,000.
l The Corvette is not mass produced. Each order is either for a dealer showroom or a customer order placed through a dealership.
Source: Bowling Green Assembly Plant:
www.bowlinggreenassemblyplant.com
