96SS232

Just want to throw my two cents in on the interior. I wasnt a big fan of the concepts, although I realize it is just that, a concept. Ive sat in the new mustang, and although it looks good on the outside, the interior is very poor. There is plastic everywhere, giving it a very cheap, crappy feel. One thing I dont want is a repeat of the 4th gen, and a sea of plastic everywhere. Ive owned 4 camaros in my life (79, 84 Z28, 93 Z28, 96 SS). I currently own the SS, a 92 Vette, and a 91 Acura Integra I bought for 200 bucks. Of the three, the Acura has the best interior quality, and makes far less noise even with 170,000 miles on it.

I dont mind paying a little extra in order to get a car that is going to last, and something I can be proud of. I dont want to hear the plastics cracking all the time, and hearing tons of things rattling from everywhere as in the previous versions of camaros, and GM interiors in general. The japs and germans have us nailed when it comes to interior, although GM has made an amazing turn around judging from a lot of the cars i sat in at the auto show.

Please make it a good, high quality interior, i dont mind paying. Make sat. nav an option as well (ala corvette, civic, accord, and almost every other car in the projected price range). Dont get me wrong, Id rather have the power and handling, but the interior quality is Very important to me.

PS dont repeat the steering wheel disasters on the last run of Fbodys. I hope you fired its designer. Think more on the lines of the new Z06 wheel, a good clean simple tri spoke.

Big Als Z

Deffinatly, good points. I think that there is no doubt that GM will do a good job on the interior. The new "Black Tie" corprate radio looks awesome, and I also want that Solstice/Z06 wheel!! Very sporty.
Id also expect luxury items that can be found in other cars such as Sat Nav, Upgrade radio, XM, etc etc, all stuff available in other GM cars.

fredmr39

I would not EXPECT to see sat nav.

Radio upgrade and XM probably...tho I'd prefer Sirius, however I don't listen to the radio anyway - the exhaust sounds better.

I agree with the views you guys hold on the view, and quality however. But I also know that GM needs to keep the costs down to compete. I know there will be compromises - but either way, IMO we are guaranteed a better interior than the competition.

96SS232

Just look at say acura. If they can build an RSX with a very nice, tight interior, and sell it at a profit for 20,000, GM should be able to sell a 30,000 car (or slightly less) and have the same, if not better interior quality. NO CHEAP PLASTIC PLEASE

RoMaD

After going to NAIAS 2006 in Detroit, I have some new opinions of GM cars and their interiors, not all of them good. I was disappointed when I sat in a Cobalt SS. It's interior has that hard plastic we hate so much in good supply. The entire dash pad, the door handles and most of the front of the dash is done in this hard as a rock plastic. It doesn't feel good and it doesn't look good. Also, the buttons and ***** in the car (mostly the HVAC), felt like they belonged on a Fisher-Price toy. They felt cheap and flimsy. I had thought GM was getting away from that.

I had a similar exprience when sitting in both the GMC Canyon and the Chevy Colorado. These were 2006 models and I have to tell you I was not impressed. Again, the interior made liberal use of that hard as rock plastic all over the dash and again (why???) on the door handles. The most glaring things on these though were how they covered the passenger air bag. It looks like a (again) hard plastic flap that doesn't quite fit the area it covers. Where it meets the top of the dash is a noticeable flap that you can see and feel. It does not look good.

Now, I dismissed the trucks as being, well, trucks, until I road home in my brother's 2001 S10. It made my brother's S10 seem like a Cadillac. The dash in his 2001 S10 has the softer feel vinyl/plastic with some give to it. So does the door handles and pretty much every thing else interior-wise.

Moral of the story, I hope GM is looking long and hard at these cars and seeing where they can make improvements. What worries me is that these were 2006 vehicles and by that I mean, it seems GM is saying "hey, this is good enough" for low-20's vehicles. It's a little unsettling. I had thought we were passed this, yet here it is 2006 and the interiors are not better, at least in these lower-end models. And which models sell the most? Yeah, not good.

HAZ-Matt

As one of the consumers that tends not to fondle the dashboard, I tend to view most of the interior plastic comments as a little silly. I find "soft" plastic no more appealing in an interior than "hard" plastic. I'm more concerned with whether it looks alright visually and will be durable.

PacerX

Excellent.

I salute your voice of reason in a sea of interior ignorance.

RussStang

I have to say that I completely agree with you. I rarely find myself putting my hands all over everything in the interior. Pretty much just the steering wheel, door handles, and any buttons for the electronics are what I find myself touching with any degree of regularity.

fredmr39

I was thinking about that - but the plastic pieces I DO touch are: recliner loop, and the seatbelt "thing" so it doesn' slide down to the seat. Both of which, I have broken.

blckbrd84

I agree 100%.
I don't get it either. The older GM interiors seemed to be "softer" and the magazines would complain that the pieces were low quality and "rubbermaid". So they made them higher quality and harder to the touch and now they're too hard/not soft enough . Most of all, the newer Honda Pilot I was in recently that supposedly had a super nice interior had a rock hard dash. The Miata I drove as part of a Mazda event was the same way (and OMG the one I drove felt like the dash was out of an early 80's car in terms of quality even though it looked nice).

Chris

HAZ-Matt

Then that is something they hopefully have addressed

F1GT

I'm praying they don't put that gold bow-tie in the center of the wheel, or outside for that matter. It looks SOOOO cheap. Look at the emblems on the steering wheels of the Pontiacs, Buicks, GMCs,,,hell any other brand from GM that puts emblems there and Chevy's, by far, looks the most CHEAP. I wish they would just make the emblem on the wheel a chrome/nickel outline of the bowtie and be done with it!!

fredmr39

I'm not going to say it's the cheapest, because I can't recall EVERY one - but from all the ones I'm thinking of now, it certainly seems like it is. I don't think that we will be seeing too much of a gold bowtie; Chevy just likes them because they're big, and instantly recognizable as a Chevy product. Hopefully, that's why they were where they were/the color they were/the size they were on the concept. I didn't mind the one on back, but with Z/28 badging or anything back there, it may look outta place.

Pewter Z

Not the bow-tie, how about the Camaro emblem? Better yet, how about having Z/28 or <insert your fav. model here> drawn onto the background of the speedo, or tach? Something on the interior that shows Camaro can have class. I am not counting cheap embossed Camaro letters. Embroidered seats would be nice to!

fredmr39

Is soft plastic easier to care for (clean/protect)? Does it not dry out as quickly as hard plastic? Are soft plastic parts less likely to rattle?