In 2001 1900+GM Dealers didn't sell Camaro's

I was in a conversation with a member of the Camaro team and he told me that there were 1900+ GM dealers who didn't sell a single Camaro. Sadly GM could take no action against the because of franchise laws. I told you my suspicions were right about the Camaro being the last coupe a GM dealer would sell someone. i wonder how many Ford dealers didn't sell Mustangs?

I believe this stat for sure.

It's ridiculous that dealers are not forced to stock an assortment of Camaros / Firebirds.

I remember when Aztek feel flat on it's face out of the gate, that there was an article stating that Pontiac foced a certain allocation of Aztek's on the Pontiac dealers, and actually mandated that they be displayed prominantly in from of the dealership when they could be seen my passing traffic, etc.

I assume this to be true, because all 3 of our local Pontiac dealers had a bunch of Aztek's after reading the artcile... and they all had 3 or more Azteks right out front.

If they can do all that for Aztek, they should have been able to do some of that for F-Body!

If what you say Darth is true, then this whole ending of the F-body production is becoming more and more like the JFK assassination. Seriously, they (GM) wanted this car (F-Body) dead.:dead: Just as they (CIA) wanted this car (Kennedy) assassinated. All the while, Lee Harvey Oswald (Aztek) is promoted to the public.:eek:

Jeff
:D

What is even more insane is the dealers that had no clue what the SS and z28 were. They knew nothing about the Camaro. That could be why dealers didn't sell any or didn't sell that many.

Ok that stat just flat out pi$$es me off!!! No wonder a lot of people in the general public didn't know they were still building F-bodies. This just confirms the fact that sales weren't the reason behind this at all...even GM can figure out that you aren't going to sell many cars if dealerships don't have them!

Interesting and somewhat related...

Back in April when I bought my wife a 2002 Tahoe, the only Camaro my dealer had in stock was a used convertible. I asked him for a 2002 Camaro brochure and they didn't have any.

This dealer is supposed be one of the high volume Corvette sellers in Northern California. (At least that's what they claim.) I guess there's just no love for the ugly step-sister.

It would be interesting to find out how much a dealer makes off of Corvette vs Camaro. I don't have a chart in front of me, but I remember that Corvette was outselling Camaros at least the last few months.

I almost forgot. While they didn't have any 2002 Camaros, they did have a 2002 Monte SS.

Wow, that's hard to believe! How many Chevy dealerships are there? When I worked at a Chevy lot, we had several Camaros in stock. They were slow sellers though. At the end of the model year, we always had several Camaros when all the other models were either sold out or we only had 1 or 2 left. Not many people asked for them really. A few young kids would come in to gawk, but not much else. We once had a nice black Z28 convertable with chrome wheels and nice leather seats. It sat on the showroom for ever! Finally the battery went down, so we were always having to charge it. We finally dealer traded it, probably for a truck or a Cavalier. I'm just ready for the 5th gen!!

Originally posted by DaxsZ28
Wow, that's hard to believe! How many Chevy dealerships are there? When I worked at a Chevy lot, we had several Camaros in stock. They were slow sellers though. At the end of the model year, we always had several Camaros when all the other models were either sold out or we only had 1 or 2 left. Not many people asked for them really. A few young kids would come in to gawk, but not much else. We once had a nice black Z28 convertable with chrome wheels and nice leather seats. It sat on the showroom for ever! Finally the battery went down, so we were always having to charge it. We finally dealer traded it, probably for a truck or a Cavalier. I'm just ready for the 5th gen!!

Perhaps dealers stock only what they know they can easily sell.

All dealers would have been allocated at least one at a time, but then the dealer can transfer it to another dealer in exchange for a quicker selling vehicle. The dealer I work for now sold loads of Firebirds. A Chevy dealer I worked for in a smaller town sold one new Z28 and a handful of V6 cars in the year I was there. If you go through small towns and see the dealers you will understand how this stat is possible. The F- body died because GM would not improve it ( other than rising hp ) or advertise it. If GM does not help generate demand for a product, it is natural that dealers will not move many units. GM wanted out of St. Therese. GM seems to be hellbent on selling ugly FWD cars to boring people. This attitude should change now that Bob Lutz is at the helm. Don't blame the dealers. If you want a Camaro, they are not going to try to convince you that a Monte Carlo is the ticket.

When I was selling at a Pontiac lot, we sold a WS6 almost every week (we were the only dealership around to order primarily M6 cars:metal: ). However, it was near impossible to move a V6 Firebird as many of them didnt have power windows/locks:rolleyes:. So maybe it has to do with ordering/stocking what people want. Actually I'm sure it does. ;)

When I worked there, they had just come up with some kinda new ordering system (can't remember the name of it now) that is supposed to allocate according to what you sold. They kinda 'forced' you to take certain cars. You had the option of going in and changing options, but only certain ones. When the allocated, you got certain models. As I remember, V6 and V8 Camaros actually had different model numbers. We were always allocated more V6's. :( :mad: It's been awhile (April 2000) but that's what I remember.

Originally posted by JohnTransAmJetBlack
When I was selling at a Pontiac lot, we sold a WS6 almost every week (we were the only dealership around to order primarily M6 cars:metal: ). However, it was near impossible to move a V6 Firebird as many of them didnt have power windows/locks:rolleyes:. So maybe it has to do with ordering/stocking what people want. Actually I'm sure it does. ;)

thats cause ws6es look so fawking badass...i do notice that i see more ws6es around houston than i do camaros..the only maros i see are v6s ones and usually lt1s.

According to the exec that told me GM does rate dealer performance on overall sales, however they couldn't go after them because they would sell so many more other cars. I mean put your self in team Camaro's shoes..How do you penalize a dealer for not selling a Camaro..that is already a slow seller..when they sell 400 Tahoes or a crap load of other cars. I doubt there was one Ford dealer who didn't sell a Mustang. Like i said earlier though teh F-body had competion with in GM on dealers lots, the Mustang didn't.

i can beleive that statement. here in phoenix, there are probably 6-7 major chevy dealerships. well u can find everything from a vette to a geo.. but try to find a damn camaro. i remember having to go to 1 chevy dealership *one of the main ones, has a major shop in the back, and is also the warehouse for chevy parts.. this place is frick'en huge* anywho, i had to pick up an airdam for my iroc prob 6 months ago..and i went looking around. there had a good 20 vettes... and 2 camaros. a A4 v-6 and a manual (forget if it s a5 or 6 speed v-6) and so i was :mad: majorly. so i went inside, and talked to a sales guy and told him im interested in buying a z28 or SS. he said "im sorry, but we dont have any in right now, actually, i dont even know where our next shippment is" then he went and called a few otehr of the chevy dealers, and said that they all just had v-6's and the closest dealer that had a SS was a 3 hour drive away!! and if u liked firebirds.. u had it worse... there is only 2 pontiac dealers here.. and i cant even remember seeing a damn firebird...well t/a, or any other model with a v-8 in it. but there was 1 of those yellow collecter editions in the show room.. but it belonged to the owner :rolleyes:

Weird!:dead:

Here in Texas especially Dallas there were a ton of F-Bodies, and at Reliable in Richardson they had like 50 Camaros at one time!:eek:

:bow:

Texas seems to be the F-Body mecca.:metal:

Originally posted by formula79
According to the exec that told me GM does rate dealer performance on overall sales, however they couldn't go after them because they would sell so many more other cars. I mean put your self in team Camaro's shoes..How do you penalize a dealer for not selling a Camaro..that is already a slow seller..when they sell 400 Tahoes or a crap load of other cars. I doubt there was one Ford dealer who didn't sell a Mustang. Like i said earlier though teh F-body had competion with in GM on dealers lots, the Mustang didn't.

I don't think you can penalize a dealer for not selling a particular car. Unless I'm wrong (you guys who worked in dealers correct me if I am), unless a dealer is company owned, which most all of them are not, dealers are free to order & stock whatever sells.

Blaming dealers for not selling more Camaros is like DelMonte blaming the grocery store for not selling more pineapples. My understanding is that the company can ration desirable, highly profitable models based on a dealer's performance in selling other less desireable ones (used mainly to keep small car sales up to help CAFE). But in Camaro's case, GM could have boosted it's sales by rationing, say, Avalanches to dealers who sold a certain number of Camaros.

I think it all boils down to how much corporate support is behind a particular model. Ford has alot fewer dealers than Chevrolet, yet outsold Camaro the final few years by a 3 to 1 margin. GM certainly had the resources to be more competitive.

Originally posted by cobraeater
Texas seems to be the F-Body mecca.:metal:

Michigan, Texas and Florida I believe are the top F-body buying states. A while back I remember Red Planet posted some interesting data that broke down sales by state.

Originally posted by guionM
I don't think you can penalize a dealer for not selling a particular car. Unless I'm wrong (you guys who worked in dealers correct me if I am), unless a dealer is company owned, which most all of them are not, dealers are free to order & stock whatever sells.

Not really. We were allocated only a certain amount of cars of a particular model. I guess if the allocated like 10 of a certain model, you could order less say 5, but you couldn't order more say 15. They would kinda narrow your choices on options also. Especially towards the end of the model year. They would blackout certain options. I once ordered a regular cab, short bed, 2wd Silverado for a guy. We had to order it because we couldn't find one with a 3.73 rearend with locking diff. Well when it came in, it didn't have the locking diff. He was so mad, and there wasn't much I could say. It was on the order, but they didn't put it on because they were out of them. It was marked a sold order also. I mean if it was a stock order, that's one thing, but a sold order. WTF? He took the truck, but slammed us on our CSI, and it wasn't even our fault. Of course, GM didn't care. But I digress:alert:

Originally posted by cobraeater
Weird!

Here in Texas especially Dallas there were a ton of F-Bodies, and at Reliable in Richardson they had like 50 Camaros at one time!

Originally posted by Z28Wilson
Michigan, Texas and Florida I believe are the top F-body buying states. A while back I remember Red Planet posted some interesting data that broke down sales by state.

Yeah I third the Texas statements. Moritz Chevy in Fort Worth probably sold 10 to 15 35th anniversary SS alone. I imagine they got about 30+ Camaros in for this year and damn near sold all of them. Last time I was up there a month ago they had already sold their last Z28. Texas is so cool.

Originally posted by DaxsZ28
Not really. We were allocated only a certain amount of cars of a particular model. I guess if the allocated like 10 of a certain model, you could order less say 5, but you couldn't order more say 15. They would kinda narrow your choices on options also. Especially towards the end of the model year. They would blackout certain options. I once ordered a regular cab, short bed, 2wd Silverado for a guy. We had to order it because we couldn't find one with a 3.73 rearend with locking diff. Well when it came in, it didn't have the locking diff. He was so mad, and there wasn't much I could say. It was on the order, but they didn't put it on because they were out of them. It was marked a sold order also. I mean if it was a stock order, that's one thing, but a sold order. WTF? He took the truck, but slammed us on our CSI, and it wasn't even our fault. Of course, GM didn't care. But I digress:alert:

You mean they didn't even have the decency to let you know? :(

My dad ordered a 1977 Caprice when I was a kid. I remember the dealer calling back some time later to let him know a certain item he wanted (I think it was the axle ratio) was no longer available. I don'y know if it came back as a message from the plant or where, but at least someone let the customer know before it was assembled, let alone delivered.

What's even worse, it seems GM left you out to dry on it.

No they didn't let me know anything. To be honest, I really didn't even notice it. It had been about 6 weeks since we had ordered it, so I couldn't remember the exact specs on the truck. When it came in, it was the first thing the customer noticed. I felt really bad. I really didn't know what to say. He didn't take it at first, but came back later that day and took it. It was a real bad deal.