article: Why the New Camaro Will Fail

[dragon22]

Originally Posted by fbodfather

I am SIMPLY DELIGHTED BEYONE WORDS...............

............that someone dug this thread up!


A word of caution: Let's not all pile on by sending him scathing notes - that does no one any good and makes us all seem like heathens...........

That said: I just sent him a note inviting him to come and meet many of you!



Here's a copy I just sent.............


Dear Mr. Peters -

On June 21 of 2006, you wrote an article entitled "Why The New Camaro Will Fail" --

In light of your thoughts back then, I'd like to cordially invite you to attend one of two events this year . I hope you will see that rather than 'failing' - the Camaro has been a success! It's important to understand WHY it has succeeded - and WHY those who have bought one (we have many who have bought two or three!) -- or desire to buy one -- find the car so captivating.

The first event will be held April 15th and 16th at Firebird International Raceway. The name of the event? The Second Annual Camaro5Fest sponsored by www.camaro5.com. Last year, we had 585 new Camaros show up at the first event in Valdosta, GA. This year? Who knows, but I can assure you that it will surpass 585!

The second event will be held June 10 and 11 -- the "Ontario Nationals" sponsored by the Ontario Camaro Club. The location will be at the GM Assembly Plant in Oshawa, Ontario. (Tours on Friday)

I ask you to consider making a soujorn to one of these trips because I really want you to see the passion and enthusiasm these new Camaros create from their owners. Great design and engineering DOES sell cars - not everyone wants a car that is an "appliance." Moreover, you might find that people from all walks of life are buying new Camaros - and LOVING them. I've been in this business all my life - and I have never seen the level of passion and enthusiasm that these new Camaros create. (..........................did I mention that the Camaro outsold the perennial favorite - the Mustang - easily - and this with only a coupe available - no Convertible!)

So -- I do hope I'll hear from you - and I look forward to spending some time with you should you be able to attend.

Warm regards,

Scott Settlemire

Well done and great style!

[cab2g]

Well he made the prediction in 2006. I do agree that he's a fool for saying a car wouldn't sell because mostly men drive it. Look at most sports cars, mostly men buy them. The Mustang is only different because it's been an affordable option for non-performance-minded individuals. I guarantee if the corvette was $20k, you'd see a ton of young girls driving it. Barbie had/has a pink corvette. Girls grew up loving that car. The Camaro looks manly, but one of the most enthusiastic thumbs up I got was from a girl driving a Saab convertible. Girls do like the Camaro. It's priced right, it will sell to women who want a "fun" 2-door coupe that looks great. If the Camaro only came in a V8, I could see the author's argument about it not being appealing to women because in my experience women in general don't ask me "is that the v8?" The majority of guys I see ask me if it has the V8. Women say "it looks nice" or "I don't even like cars, but I want your car"

The car does look more aggressive than the Mustang. But why would a women who wants a "fun" coupe want a car that doesn't look cool? Aggressive looks cool. My wife constantly says I have the best looking car on the road. If I can get her to say that, then I can tell you that this car appeals to women. She loves the RS headlights. She loves the "hips." She loves the lines.

Women want this car. It's priced the same as the Mustang. Because it's new it may take a little time to catch on, but the non-enthusiasts are starting to buy Camaros because the prices are coming down with incentives and used cars. More and more women will be driving these cars in the near future. Go look at the 2010 V8 to V6 sales comparison and compare it with the 2011 numbers. The 2011s are selling mostly V6's where the 2010's sold mostly V8's. The sales #'s didn't drop but the people who want the car for looks are finally getting the chance to buy these cars!

[TooCool5]

Maybe this guy works for Motor Trend and owns a Mustang.
What a joke. LOL

[Camaro_Corvette]

[cab2g]

Originally Posted by THATS NO M00N

Here's a link to a recent article about the Camaro by the same guy. Sounds like he's fighting hard to try to prove he wasn't wrong.

http://epautos.com/?p=2030

I do want to comment on this.

He says the 1st year's sales were only 78k...

Maybe by December 2009!!!

Chevrolet produced 129,406 2010 Camaros. I guarantee that 99.9% of them have been sold by now.

Today, FWD and AWD performance cars are many – and very popular. They come in more practical sedan/wagon bodystyles (Subaru WRX, Mitsubishi EVO), making them viable as everyday cars – duty a V-8 muscle coupe with an unusable backseat has trouble dealing with

If these cars are more appealing why did the Camaro outsell these cars COMBINED hands down! I only pulled up June because I am too lazy to find the whole year's sales.

June 2010 Camaro Sales: 7540
June 2010 Subaru Impreza (WRX+base) Sales: 4259
June 2010 Mitsubishi Lancer Sales (EVO+base): 2538

Sales of the current Camaro – the reborn model – peaked just after its introduction and have been declining gradually ever since. In August of 2010, sales dropped 27 percent. In September, they were down 21 percent. By October, they dropped by 38 percent.

This should be setting off alarms.

I guess we should be worried about the Mustang and Challenger too!!! Everybody dropped from July-Oct. Hmm winter month lull?

[christianmotox]

This guy obviously just wants to get more traffic on his website, Does not know what the hell he's talking about.

[Mark Myles]

Originally Posted by GTAHVIT

LMFAO! I never seen this one before...lol...nice, and fitting too!

M

[Amenti]

In one of his replies, this guy mentions he has been "covering" the auto-industry for 20 (I think) years. I wonder if, in that 20-odd years, he's managed to come up with one reasonably logical argument.

As far as I can tell, there aren't any well-constructed arguments in his 2006 article or his most recent article predicting Camaro's demise. He also appears to be fairly quick provide conflicting arguments/information when confronted with a counter-argument.

I've been having a little fun picking through his articles a bit. I'm glad it's a slow day at work.

[armysig]

I just ready anotehr article from this site, I think this guy is off his rocker.

He basicly is saying that the Camaro, Challanger, and Mustang are not Muscle cars? EH?

Camaro, Challenger and Mustang: Great Cars – But Not Muscle Cars…

By eric December 27, 2010
The Dodge Challenger, Chevy Camaro and Ford Mustang are great performance cars, but they aren’t muscle cars. That species is extinct – and there’s no bringing them back.
Muscle cars were born at a unique moment in American history when technology had developed to the point that enormously powerful engines were becoming available but the government hadn’t caught up with them yet. When it was possible to build a machine with a six or seven liter engine with no concern whatever for how loud it was, how much pollution it belched or how much gas it drank. Before government regulators made it legally impossible to offer such unchained wildness to the general public. When there were no requirements that new cars be fitted with electronic safety nets ranging from air bags to ABS. When it was still possible for a person just out of their teens (not well into middle age, as now) to buy a V-8 powered tire-fryer, brand-new – right off the showroom floor.
Those days are decades gone and will never return. Accordingly, neither will the muscle car.
Challenger and Mustang and Camaro look the part. They are macho and big-tired and powered by large V-8 engines. But it is not the same.
Their V-8s are as docile as they are powerful. They idle like Camrys and pull plenty of vacuum to run power brakes and other accessories. They all have AC… climate control AC. They are happy with automatic transmissions behind them. They can be driven by… anyone.
If you’re old enough to remember, that was most definitely not the case with something like a ’70 SS 454 Chevelle or RA III GTO. Cars like these were marginally house-trained and could be very scary. They did not do well in traffic; heavy clutches and a tendency to overheat kept you working- and sweating. They were loud, poorly built and evil-handling things. Most rode on 15-inch steel wheels. Some – including a Plymouth GTX 440 Magnum owned by a high school friend of mine – had 14s. Imagine: a 4,000 pound car with a huge V-8, no traction control – with a contact patch about the same size as a current Toyota Corolla.
Muscle cars were dangerous. It was easy to get in over your head. My high school friend ended up being killed in that GTX. It almost got me, too. This car had over-boosted power steering as vague as a politician’s promise – and drum brakes, all around. At 125 mph – which it would do, easily, the front end of the car began to rotate like a C-130 on its take-off roll. But you didn’t have wings and once those skinny 14 inch Hurst mags up front got some air under them, your life was in the hands of the Motor Gods. Almost all the muscle cars of the ’60s and ’70s were ass-light and nose heavy, which resulted in violent, often uncontrollable oversteer when you gave it too much gas, too soon. This was part of the fun, of course. But it’s also part of the reason why muscle cars died off. Once the insurance companies began to tabulate their losses – and predict future ones – they began to jack up the premiums to compensate. Which quickly made muscle cars unaffordable to the 18-25 set that lusted after them the most. Then gas prices went up – and soon, it was all over.

By 1975 – the first year of catalytic converters – there were no muscle cars. A few nameplates – such as Camaro and Trans-Am – persisted. But the Z28 was history and the Trans-Am had been steered; underneath the still-menacing bodywork with its flares and scoops and angry-looking eagle on the hood, the biggest and baddest you could get was a 200 hp 455 and mid 15 second quarters.
A 2011 Camry V-6 is quicker.
So, what we have in cars like the revived Camaro Z28, Mustang GT and Challenger R/T are performance cars, certainly - but not muscle cars.
A muscle car, by definition, is dangerous and wild. It is rude, crude – and obnoxious, too. The closest thing to it that’s remotely new is a Yamaha V-Max with straight pipes. Muscle cars were about sideways skittering burnouts and hard tire chirps on the 1-2 and 2-3 upshifts down the quarter mile, tail out powerslides barely under control and the strutting presence of an obstreperous rooster when rolling slowly through the local drive-thru joint on Saturday nights with your buddies.
Only a handful of real muscle cars even made a pretense of handling or braking ability; only one – the Pontiac Trans-Am – even offered disc brakes all around.
Not a single real muscle car ever came with traction control, stability control – or air bags and ABS. “Safety” and muscle cars go together like mustard and ice cream. Hell, being unsafe was the whole point. It was a way of thumbing your nose at The Man and showing everyone you had a pulse and something between your legs, too.
Modern performance cars like the Challenger R/T, Mustang GT and Camaro have all the safety stuff – like it or not. They also handle and brake as well as they go in a straight line. They don’t make your eyes water if you stand near the tailpipe, actually manage not-bad gas mileage and your grandmother could drive one.
Which nicely proves the point that whatever these things are trying to be, they’ll never be the real deal. It can’t be done. That era – and those cars – are history, like the wild west and carrying kids unbuckled and rolling around like cordwood in the back of an Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser.

A lot of us pine for those days, which explains the attempted resurrection of muscle cars. But like the old Eddie Money song says: “I wanna go back and do it all over but I can’t go back, I know…

[THATS NO M00N]

That's the article I was referring to.

[Devon]

This is the second time I had to whip this out today...

Just goes to show that if you kiss the right asses, it doesn't matter how little you know about something or how wrong you are in general, you can still keep a cushy job.

[cab2g]

Originally Posted by armysig

I just ready anotehr article from this site, I think this guy is off his rocker.

He basicly is saying that the Camaro, Challanger, and Mustang are not Muscle cars? EH?

Camaro, Challenger and Mustang: Great Cars – But Not Muscle Cars…

dude needs to turn off traction control and report back... These cars will get out of control in a heartbeat if you turn off TC. and if he still says they're not muscle cars because they have airbags then he's about the biggest idiot ever. There was a time when cars didn't have seatbelts. If that happened to be in the 1960's and early 70's he'd have argued that a muscle car couldn't have seat belts. Safety features don't make a car not a muscle car. Grant it you can argue that they're pony cars, well the challenger is no pony car, but arguing that these aren't muscle cars because the exhaust is quieter, they have catalytic converters, and they have new safety features is about the worst argument known to mankind. If he's that picky like I said, turn of TC, and cut off the mufflers. my 6.2L V8 is 378 cubic inches and that's in the size range of the muscle cars of years past. It may handle well because of improved safety features, but dang it, this car is full of muscle, totally unnecessary muscle.

I also hate this guy's arguments that only Gen X and baby boomers want the car to relive their childhood or young adulthood. I will admit that I would love to own a 1966-1971 model year muscle car, but I personally have never ridden in one. I was born more than a decade after the historic muscle cars. I didn't buy this car because I wanted to re-live anything. I bought this car to enjoy living today! There are lots of people like me!

[Revo1]

Originally Posted by armysig

I just ready anotehr article from this site, I think this guy is off his rocker.

He basicly is saying that the Camaro, Challanger, and Mustang are not Muscle cars? EH?

Camaro, Challenger and Mustang: Great Cars – But Not Muscle Cars…

"The V8s are as docile as they are powerful"?

Flaunting a narrow-minded perspective and contradicting himself. How is this guy still employed?

[armysig]

My first car was a 1966 GTO, tri power, 4 on the floor, posi. Yes that car had some balls and great styling, and I want another one. BUT, I wouldn't make it my daily driver and it is no where as safe as my Camaro. The Camaro has gobs more power than my GTO ever had.

This is the golden age of Horse power and muscle. The 60's and 70's were the start of it, it's now just coming into it's own. Hell, in 1966 do you ever think that GM, Ford, or MOPAR would have dreamed of putting a car on the road with 550+HP and have a safe vehicle? I say no....Not then...But now it can be done..