[Zodiac]

Originally Posted by ron scubadiver

You are intentionally misinterpreting me, so let me make it crystal clear:

Leaving the track ready features off the Camaro SS would devalue the Camaro SS. We are talking about the Camaro SS here, so SS line means Camaro SS. Got that?


On another thought, offering leather on the 1SS would make a lot of folks happy.

Somebody is a bit overly sensitive. Welcome to the internet.

Duh you can't offer leather on a 1SS, that would devalue the 2SS.

[Marty McFlew]

Price? Whats wrong with the price??....I'm totally happy with the price of my SS. ....but I got mine about $7k less out the door

[ron scubadiver]

Originally Posted by Zodiac

Somebody is a bit overly sensitive. Welcome to the internet.

Duh you can't offer leather on a 1SS, that would devalue the 2SS.

That somebody must be you.

[samurai]

With the mustang facelift pricing increasing so much I can easily see that they would sell a good amount of V8 models that are positioned under the 1SS.

[RagingHawk]

Originally Posted by KMPrenger

While I see a benefit from offering a more stripped base SS model, I agree with you. The 1SS config is near perfect for me. But if I could have ordered premium audio I would have. That annoys me. You can on the 1LT, but not the 1SS....what gives? (at least on the 5th gen it was that way)

Same here, I wish the Bose was an option, don't want to go through hassle of installing aftermarket speakers. The upgraded audio was an option in the 5th gen. The 6 speaker system is pretty weak honestly. I don't think it changed much for 6th gen. Although not a priority for me right now, saving up for the car is. I can do with the standard audio.

They should keep the 1SS as it is and a 1LS-like trim for the V8 like others have suggested here.

[RagingHawk]

Originally Posted by samurai

With the mustang facelift pricing increasing so much I can easily see that they would sell a good amount of V8 models that are positioned under the 1SS.

It seems like a lot of those on the fence are now going with the Camaro or will do so in the near future due to the new Mustang pricing that requires you to get multiple packages for MRC or LCD screen among other things.

[IMadeYouReadThis]

Originally Posted by ron scubadiver

IMO, offering a car without the track ready features (summer tires, LSD, Brembo brakes) would devalue the SS line.

You're wrong it doesn't need to have all of those preppy little toys to be fast if you look at the 4th gen the fastest Camaros are the Z28 strippers not the ss

[IMadeYouReadThis]

Originally Posted by DougCBJ

glad i bought the 2016 v6.........

Yeah I hear you man it's a bit of a kick in the nuts but the V6 is quite fast for what it is and it is cheaper and if they drop in the 5-3 I can't see the 5-3 being any quicker unless if you mod the hell out of it

[triggerjerk]

How about lowering the cost on/bundling magride and npp?
This is legacy tech that really makes the driving experience.
Offer them at a reduced rate/make them standard on the 1SS.
Take that Mustang GT.

Oh yeah, make blind spot monitors standard (again bake it into the price if you have to) to keep visibility nazis happy.

[FastCarFanBoy]

Why would GM care that the Camaro is behind the Mustang in sales, when it's ahead in retail sales which are the important sales?

[Bobkd]

Originally Posted by IMadeYouReadThis

Yeah I hear you man it's a bit of a kick in the nuts but the V6 is quite fast for what it is and it is cheaper and if they drop in the 5-3 I can't see the 5-3 being any quicker unless if you mod the hell out of it

The 5.3 in truck form has over 100 lb/ft of torque more than the 3.6. It would destroy it.

[IOMike]

The 5.3 in a car, with a few tweaks like the 6.2 intake manifold, tb and exhaust would easily be 375-380hp.

Combine that with the v6 suspension setup (like how the v6 1le has the SS suspension) and 19" wheels.

[Number 3]

Originally Posted by FastCarFanBoy

Why would GM care that the Camaro is behind the Mustang in sales, when it's ahead in retail sales which are the important sales?

Because business.

Volume drives many things.

For example, if you need to buy door handles for your car, the price of the door handle is volume dependent. If you go to your supply base and ask how much per part for 100,000 door handles? How much for 150,000 door handles? Those are not the same answer. So the cost of the parts it takes to build a Camaro is based on volume.

Next, volume covers your fixed costs. So for example if it costs you $500,000,000 million to engineer, design, develop, validate and tool up to build your Camaro, how much is that per car for 50,000 Camaros? How much is that for 75,000 Camaros? Finance people will have to weigh in on the number of years expected to make that pay off.

Now on top of that, assume the the company asks the Camaro to cover it's fair share of the other company costs, e.g. cost of employee healthcare, cost of pensions, cost of the proving grounds, tech center and the cost of the many employees that are there in R&D, HR and hundreds of other functions that can't be billed to the Camaro development or any other specific program. Those costs are huge. So again the bigger number you can divide that across the better. And each program is assigned it's "fair share" in it's plan.

Now when you are in production for your Camaro, you need to keep your assets running around the clock. That means a modern automobile assembly plant wants to run about 20 hours per day with 4 hours for maintanance. If it sits idle due to volume, you are wasting your asset or assembly plant. If you have to run your line rate slower than optimal, you are wasting your assets. If you can run it every possible hour at the negotiated line rate, then your heat, light and taxes on the plant are spread across more units, meaning either lower cost to the consumer or more profit to the company or a combination of both. And arguably the same great car for a lower price to the customer should result in even more sales.

Don't get me wrong, GM has set up Bowling Green KY for low volume, but that product also due to it's material choices is designed to be a much lower investment product for many parts of the car. It's a plant designed and built for lower volumes.

LGR was not designed for Corvette low volumes.

The Camaro advantage right now is that it shares capacity with other Alpha products. Unfortunately none of the 3 cars there are meeting expected sales volumes. Well Camaro might be, but it's pretty obvious ATS was not intended to be a 25,000 unit car and the CTS sure wasn't planned around 15,000. If the ATS and CTS were hitting targets then it is very likely the Camaro would have been built elsewhere.

Back in the day, GM didn't have many plants with multi model/multi architecture assembly lines. That may be part of the reason why the Gen4 couldn't keep St. Catherines open because 40,000 units couldn't keep the plant open.

Now assume you have 2 shifts running 6 1/2 hours production in 2 8 hour shifts (lunch and 2 breaks). My hourly cost for the factory technicians is based on hours of their labor. If I run my line rate for 70,000 Camaros vs. 50,000 Camaros and my hourly cost to run the plant is the same, my production costs for each Camaro goes down if I can build more.

And volume matters most when you plan for all of the above. If you plan for 50,000 Camaros in your business case and sell 50,000 Camaros, then AWESOME. If you sell 60,000 even more AWESOME.

But if you planned for 75,000 Camaros and sell only 50,000 Camaros your business case implodes.

And keep in mind, GM's business case accounts for retail sales by simply planning for an expected ATP. So YES, selling more retail cars at higher ATPs than planned for helps the business case. But what we have not a single clue on is that even with the higher retail sales, GM may have planned for even more. We simply don't know. And model mix is another HUGE factor. So say for example, GM planned on a 25/25/50 mix of 4 cylinder/6 cylinder/8 cylinder cars and they sell 20/20/60. That also drives the overall ATP higher.

Volume is pretty much everything in the overall business case for any product................and sometimes one of the hardest things to predict.

[doc7000]

The 5.3L engine in itself is no cheaper to build then the 6.2L engine (both are all aluminum with VVT, direct injection, and AFM). However with the lower horsepower/torque numbers you might be able to get away with using the drivetrain parts from the V-6 Camaro. In other words it may just be a V-6 Camaro however with with the 5.3L engine. They could charge an additional lets say $2,000 over the V-6 Camaro for it, the cheapest V-6 Camaro is I believe $28,000 so you could pull it off for $30,000 under cutting the Challenger R/T by some $3,000 while potentially matching the 375BHP rating of the 5.7L Hemi engine. If they could do this at around 3,500 pounds then it might be worth doing.