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Originally Posted by ChevyRules
Profits is what matters to automakers. If you can make $5 billion selling 60,000 a year instead of $3 billion at 100,000 a year, you would be very happy with that. Apple is a prime example of this. Samsung consistently handily outsells Apple in smartphones, but Apple owns everyone on the money they make with the iPhone. In fact they own 79% of the profits in the smartphone market with only 15% marketshare. Only GM of course knows the profit margins and how much money they are making off the Camaro, but volume isn't everything. GM's bankruptcy is to show what happens when volume is put above all else.
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GM's bankruptcy is also the result of the myopic concentration on trucks and truck based SUV's without any long term planning of allocating resources for other platforms in other segments. That's why we got a 5th gen Camaro based off a fullsized Holden platform.
The high profit margins on those truck based SUV's made them easy money no doubt, but when the market suddenly changed they had nothing really competitive to offer.
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The F-Body was cancelled because it could not meet crash test regs that were going into effect in 2003 and it was not worth the investment to redesign the platform or move the twins to a different platform such as Sigma. From what I gather, Sigma was never really an option for Camaro.
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That's just it though. It wasn't worth the investment because they were literally money hungry on the high profit margins from those trucks and SUV's. They were not willing to invest a chunk of that money to revise the F-body after the '02MY.
I don't buy the crash test regs argument because Ford was able to meet them with the Fox body based SN-95 Mustang in '03. The crash test regulations was just an excuse to let the platform die because sales were down in the last few years. Instead of modifying or developing a new platform, the money was used for more models and variants based off the highly profitable truck based platforms (Hummer, SSR etc.).
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Automakers won't continue to make what doesn't generate a profit.
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True, but if sales get low enough they will just cancel it and invest in something more lucrative like CUV's.