New Chevrolet Camaro Delayed Again; Arrives Spring '09
Remember long ago ( yesterday) when we talked about how the Chevy was doing the Camaro a disservice by cataloging every step of the development process? Well, one day after we see pictures of what looks like a finished car, they've just extended that process. WardsDealer.com reports that the Camaro will be released in the Spring of 2009 as a 2010 model. At that point, gas will probably be seven bucks a gallon. Again, it's not that the development cycle is taking forever; it's that GM is making it seem that way. Especially with the mechanically-related Pontiac G8 going on sale imminently. What's the explanation? "The auto maker ruled out an earlier arrival in calendar 2009, because it would have meant a short model run before changeover to '10 production." Delay sales of a hot car because you're worried about changing the number on the brochures? But don't worry. When gas is $9/gallon (it went up two bucks while you were reading this) in the Spring of 2009, and Dodge has been selling Challengers for a year already, Chevy expects to sell 100k Camaros per annum.
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And this car was a movie star when, like 10 years ago? GM has it's marketing and production so out of sync that you would think the two departments didn't talk to each other .... 100k units per year? Oh, that's funny! Can someone explain to me why it made sense for GM to kill the Camaro as an anachronism unworthy of further investment in 2002 when unleaded fuel sold for about $1.50/gallon; and yet in 2008 it makes sense to retool a factory which hasn't built a rear wheel drive vehicle in decades (Oshawa) for this all-new-to-North-America vehicle which rides on a platform which isn't going to be used for any other North American built vehicles? Wouldn't it have made more sense to bang out Camaros alongside the CTS at GM's only existing RWD North American factory? They are going to sell at best 10s of thousands of these a year and should be leveraging an existing factory/platform. That was, after all, the game plan for the first generation Camaro. Build a sporty coupe on an existing mid-sized car platform and get some incremental volume. Duh, GM has forgotten most of what it once knew.
Speaking of delayed GM products, can we do a count down of the number of days before the Easter Bunny comes, to see if the Volt beats it, as Lutz promised?
They plan to use the structure and capacity made for the Camaro for the next Impala as well. That's why I highly doubt the Impala remain FWD when it's redesigned.