Sales is NOT everything to automakers. PROFIT is. Sales does not always equal profits.
Selling a lot of a low profit or money losing vehicle is not as good as selling a moderate amount of high profit vehicles. This was Lesson #1 for GM coming out of bankruptcy.
And, as I’ve stated many times on this forum and a few times on M6G (probably more times there
) the gap between Gen 4 and Gen 5 had very little to do with sales. Sales was a FACTOR but not a REASON. The primary reason is that the F-Body architecture was incapable of meeting new fuel economy and NHTSA Crash Regulations that were about to become law. Choices for rear wheel drive architectures were very slim. Either the (then) all-new Sigma architecture which at that point was committed to Cadillac only, or the Zeta architecture out of Holden, which, if the car was to be built in Australia, would limit import of the vehicle to either 30k or 60k (I honestly can’t remember which and I’m too lazy to go look it up).
Even if Cadillac could be convinced to walk back from the Cadillac-only mandate for Sigma, between CTS, STS, SRX, and two other vehicles that were in the product plan at the time, but never made production, there was not enough capacity at the Lansing plant where Sigma vehicles were produced. The fact that 6th Gen is built in Lansing on an architecture previously mandated as Cadillac-only is not a coincidence. What it amounts to is a second (and successful) kick at the can.
Before the decision to do 6th Gen off Alpha, the decision was made to do 5th Gen off of Zeta, but instead of being volume constrained due to import restrictions, the decision was made to add a module of Zeta capacity at Oshawa. As 6th Gen timing approached, similar issues arose regarding the Zeta architecture. Add to that the fact that Zeta is a heavy architecture and would make the next gen Camaro non-competitive in its segment, the decision was made to do 6th Gen off of Alpha.