The stereotypical Chevrolet Corvette buyer tends to be from an older generation, often retired, and flush with disposable income from a pension or retirement fund.

But with its new, mid-engine 2020 Corvette, Chevrolet hopes to change all that. Steve Majoros, Chevy's Vice President of Marketing, recently told CNBC that the brand has a keen interest in bringing younger generations of buyers - especially those from Generation X and the Millennial Generation - into the Corvette family.

"We have great [repeat customers with] Corvette but we've got to reach out to new types of buyers," Majoros says. "If we did all this work and we don't conquest, we don't get stronger in markets like Miami and Los Angeles; we have to win them."

Early signs indicate that the new Corvette will be a hit; Majoros says there's been "unprecedented" demand for the new sports car, with more than 45,000 reservations as of last October. In response of the anticipated flood of orders, GM has added a second shift at its Bowling Green, Kentucky manufacturing plant.

"It is clearly not our expectation to be a one-hit wonder," Majoros says. "If that were the case, we wouldn't have added a second shift. It is our intention to sell at volume more than we've sold before and sustain that volume."

But lowering the median age of the US Corvette buyer is among GM's chief concerns, and it's easy to see why; CNBC notes that according to Edmunds data, 61 percent of C7 Corvette buyers were 55 or older through 2019.

While it would be easy to assume that GM is targeting Gen Xers and Millennials with the new 2020 Corvette mostly in the hopes of bringing those customers into the Chevrolet brand, so that they'll later buy high-margin trucks and SUVs, this seems to be a play more rather aimed at building a sustainable, reliable pool of Corvette buyers.

GM's new mid-engine 'Vette is going head-to-head against sports cars like the new Toyota Supra, Porsche 911, and even pure-electric cars like Tesla's higher-performing sedan models.