DetN Lopez: New Camaro is One Halo of a Car

When Barack Obama made his state of the American auto industry speech, industry watchers lampooned the President for being the “Salesman-in-Chief.” More than a few members of the automotive punditocracy supported the idea, but said BO made a bad job of it. The Autoextremist led the charge, lambasting the Prez for using the word Voldemort—I mean “bankruptcy” in public. The Detroit News auto editor has followed the president’s lead, switching from cheerleader to salesman. And a damn good one too! (By his own admission.) “When you cruise around Macomb County in an ‘Inferno Orange’ Camaro SS. People make U-turns and follow you into parking lots. They ask if they can sit in it and want to know all the trim levels. Chevy was kind enough to drop one off for me over the weekend, and I probably sold more of the muscle car for the General than any Chevy dealer in town.” Hang on; did Chevy drop off a person or a car? [apologies to Jeff Puthuff] So . . . Manny ends his tired-aid by with a small dick joke.

Say what you want about muscle cars or exotic automobiles. Drivers compensating for something … excessive displays of wealth … whatever.

They’re fun to drive and great to see.

And they put head turners into an entirely new and affordable market.

Calling the Camaro an affordable halo car makes Manny an oxymoron. By definition, a halo car is NOT generally affordable. It’s something more like . . . the Chevrolet Corvette. Only Chevy doesn’t need a halo car any more than Ford. Anyway . . .

The whole point of a muscle car is to take a relatively tame and affordable machine, lose the tame, stretch the limits of affordable (not too far) and stuff it so full of steroids it explodes in pavement shredding ‘roid rage.

By all accounts, it’s mission accomplished (for the high end SS). But the Camaro is the wrong car at the wrong time (and, yes, we said that three years ago). GM needs a mainstream success for its mainstream brand: an attractive, comfortable (for all contained), well-built, fuel efficient sedan that’s wider than the Malibu.

In short, once again, the Detroit News mistakes what they like for what their patrons need.