There is a little bit of a chicken and egg issue with weight that can get a bit confusing. Weight has a way of getting out of control pretty easily in cars.
"grossly flawed" as guionM put it is pretty strong wording.

Dropping X lbs off of a car will improve handling, braking, acceleration and fuel economy. This works in theory and in practice. So the thinking is fundamentally sound. In practice it is a bit more difficult than just dropping weight however. Especially with a car like the Camaro that has to appeal to a broad audience.

IRS adds weight and increases handling performance. Bigger brakes and tires also add weight and increase performance. There is merit to the argument that with a lighter weight car you wouldn't need such big brakes and tires to achieve the same performance. The need for heavy duty suspension components is a result of the weight of the vehicle and at the same time increases the weight of the vehicle. Suspension and braking components therefore wouldn't be a very good place to start any weight reduction plans as you will reduce performance at a greater rate than you will reduce weight. The IRS is arguably an exception to this.

Accesories are relativly trivial as they can for the most part be easily removed by the hard core people and some accesories can just be skipped on the option list. This is not really a good place to start looking for weight reduction on a new car as skorpion317 said.

As guionM pointed out the upper limit of horsepower that a chassis will see has an affect on the weight of the chassis and drivetrain compontents. Horsepower does not have a direct effect on suspension and braking components however. These are affected by the increased weight that goes along with those "extra ponies" and more often than not a desire to increase the braking and handling performance along with the increased horsepower. A supercharger is an easy power -weight connection that could be ditched if one was willing to sacrifice power (we will have this option in the 5th gen by sticking with the SS). Maintaining horsepower without the blower would cost more. Designing the chassis for 400hp versus 500hp wouldn't save as much as some people think.

Using Aluminum, titanium and carbon fiber also means increasing cost obviously and besides creating an aluminum frame you can spend your money and start swapping out body panels, racing seats suspension components on the 5th gen to save weight. As quionM said there is no point at which aluminum or titanium benefit from economies of scale really.

The real culprit on weight is the safety and NVH requirements. Fortunatly or unfortunatly these are also things that GM will not budge on. Five star crash ratings, airbags all over, traction control, stability control and ABS all add pounds on to the vehicle that cannot easily be removed.

In my opinion the only things we could actually negotiate on the 6th gen to reduce weight are : reduce maximum power (which wouldn't affect weight that much and therefore would be driven more by fuel economy than weight), reduce the physical dimensions of the car, or be willing to pay the price of advanced materials and technologies to save weight.

I have a feeling the 6th gen will be lighter and more expensive. Power will be determined by fuel prices. I would not expect for it to go down much if at all.

 

I don't know if anything needs to be given up. I think if it had its own platform like the F-body was specifically set up for Camaro there could be a way to lose some weight and still have everything the 5th Gen will have. Yet in order to get the Camaro back it needed to be shared on the Zeta line because as has been mentioned $250 million is very cheap for a different car line today. So it was a compromise that we got the Camaro back in that it's now more shared than it ever was before and thus the weight bears its sedan Zeta underpinnings.
So nothing needs to be lost but a new platform, Camaro specific, needs to be gained.

 

Are you willing to pay extra for a specific platform? What you describe sounds a lot like a Corvette, except with two extra seats.

 

I'd give up a V8 as long as the top Camaro would still outperform the top Mustang.

 

Well no what I describe is the F-body, different than the Y-body. The question posed in the thread was what to give up in order to get a lighter 6th Gen Camaro and I think the answer is Zeta.
I understand that w/o Zeta we don't get a 5th Gen and so this all becomes mute. But the weight problem seems to be the heavy sedan architecture of Zeta and the adaptations to make it handle 500+ hp and suspension upgrades. If there was a reinvention of a Camaro only platform like the F-body was I think there could be some weight savings. (I didn't forget Firebird too) There is a difference when the engineering and design teams sit down and create a specific vehicle platform as opposed to modifying one even as good at Zeta is.

I know cars are heavier in 2010 than they were in 2002 as we all want our cake with 5 star crash ratings and more airbags then passengers but I think some of the weight gains that seem probable on this car is due to Zeta. Because Zeta is heavier to start with it needs heavier parts to handle the power for the more spirited driving a Camaro tends to partake in. So its a vicious circle.

So would I pay for a specific platform? Sure. Because if it's done now like it was before it shouldn't be any more than what a comparable 4th or now 5th Gen will cost.

 

Well yes, that's exactly what I meant.


There's a problem with this. The old F-body was a money loser. GM determined that the only way to make the business case work for Camaro was to share a platform.

So if you get a specific platform, you will have to pay more money.

 

The irony is, that this comes pretty darned close to the Camaro being on it's own specific platform and on it's (so far) very own assembly line.

 

I'm sure they saved some $$ by starting with AU Zeta. I suspect that if GM had known how things would turn out (lone Oshawa Zeta and $4.50/gal gasoline), that there would not be a Gen V Camaro (hindsight is great, isn't it). I'd say that GM would not happily repeat this situation for a Gen VI.

 

I'm sure that the beancounters were salivating when they crunched the numbers on the 400,000 or so annual Zetas planned. And the corporate politicians felt that their personal fiefdoms were protected.

I'd bet that the numbers don't look as good to the beancounters now. And the politician's fiefdoms are about to be uprooted.

My sense is that this car, on this architecture, is afew years too late to the party. And I think GM now knows it.

 

Good post. Questions: What if Alpha isn't designed to handle V8s?

GM isn't going to spend the money to create and certify small V8s for passenger cars anymore. The LS4 in the W-cars are it. V6s are lighter and produce the same power and get far better fuel economy. Therefore, the only V8s we'll see from GM in the future will be variatons of the Corvette's V8 engine.

Direct injection is probably a given in future engines, including V8s. It would also save quite a bit of weight. But we'd still have a 4000 pound CTSv (up 200 pounds from the last "V") and a roughly 3800 pound Z28 (also up 200 pounds over the last) to deal with that nearly 500 horsepower.



Pretty good post.

Despite my pretty strong wording, you also see the issue very clearly. It is a chicken and egg situation. More horsepower means more weight to handle that horsepower in drivetrain and chassis. More weight means proportunately more horsepower is lost simply moving the additional weight. Again, until you get to a point (like Ford has just about done with their top Mustang) where almost all of the horsepower gain is eaten up by the extra weight. If the SS Camaro puts out 430 horsepower and the Z28 does just over 500, the increased weight isn't going to make the Z28 dramatically quicker than the SS, again like the Cobra vs GT500 Mustangs.

The old "Fox" 5.0 Mustang LX coupe typically weighed in under 3200 pounds. The engine produced about 210 real horsepower (the advertised 225 was optimistic, that's why Ford revised it to 205 in '92). The Camaro's L98 350 was bigger, had more torque, and put out 250 horsepower. Yet the Fox Mustang simply ran away from them.

Then again... that light weight of the Fox Mustangs came at the expense of lightweight but tiny flimsy brakes, a small fuel tank, and a chassis that was so flimsy that not only did it require chassis braces if you significantly upped horsepower, it tended to fold in half midway above the doors in any semi-serious head-on collisions.

The 5.0 Fox Mustang, although a featherweight and an absolute blast to drive, actually could have stood to use quite a bit of strategically placed weight in the chassis and braking system.

Like there is a limit to how much horsepower and weight is in a regular production car, as the Fox Mustang shows, there is a also limit to how light a car should be as well.

 

Camaro simply isn't going to get it's own chassis. It never has, and it never will.

Any car that needs to make money at a base price as low as $20,000 and with annual sales of anywhere between only 50,000 to 100,000 vehicles in a wildly fluxuating & fickled sports coupe market is never going to recoupe the investment unless it's based on an existing platform. As such, compromises are going to be made.

Even the 3rd gen chassis used the Chevrolet Monza floorpan (which was basically an upgraded Chevrolet Vega) and suspension as a starting point. Ford did the same thing using the DEW chassis as a jump off point for the current Mustang. GM basically made the Monza bigger, Ford made the DEW less expensive.

The idea behind a car like this is to base it on a low cost chassis. GM looked at putting a 5th gen Camaro on a Corvette chassis, but then dropped the idea because of cost. The volume that these cars will sell at and the price they need to sell at doesn't make a Corvette derived chassis, let alone a specifically engineered chassis feasible.

There are only 2 RWD chassis available. Sigma wasn't practical for a 5th gen. The Zeta is. If the 5th gen was made off of Sigma, it would weigh at least as much (the stillborn Sigma Camaro would have been based on the wide STS Zeta, not the narrow CTS version) and had all the CTS's shortcomings (High beltline? Severe axlehop anyone?).

Alpha is still likely at least 5 years away from spreading outside of Cadillac and Holden, let alone being created in coupe form. When it does come, I wouldn't expect 400 horspower and 400 lbs/ft of torque V8 engines to be part of the equasion. And unless Corvette goes with smaller, lower output V8s, I wouldn't hold my breath for a smaller V8 to show up in any Alphas.

 

One could always ask the question if a Corvette can sell 35K to 44K units at roughly $50,000 and make a business case for its own platform. Then could not a Camaro built to sell 70-90K units at an average price of $25k not also make a business case for its own platform?

Granted the Corvette will be in the lineup as long as there is a GM to build it. And yes the Camaro certainly gains attractiveness if it can share a platform since unlike Ford and the Mustang; Chevy already has its halo car and doesn't need to justify a RWD coupe just to have one. Chevy has shown that it can live w/o the Camaro.

My feeling is that by the time the 6th Gen Camaro debuts it will need to get the weight down as CAFE will be in effect. Ford and Nissan will have dropped weight on their Mustang and 370Z and GM will need to follow suit. We can debate how this can't happen but somehow it must. If GM wants to put in a 4cyl to broaden the appeal of the Camaro it would be nice if the car wasn't bogged down with excess heft. There is no reason why the Camaro can't be a CAFE helper rather than a hindrance for GM.

 

Things i'd be willing to sacrifice...
* exterior dimension. Remember a larger exterior doesn't always = a larger interior. Ex: Miata is actual shorter in overall length, height, width, wheelbase and about every exterior dimension than the solstice/sky twins, yet it offers better interior room overall and a larger trunk too.
* Use weight saving materials and strategies where possible and cost-effective. A 20,000 dollar miata uses an aluminum hood/trunk/front-controlarms/brake-calipers/etc... You don't have to make the car all aluminum, but a little here and there wouldn't hurt. I read that Mazda also used what they call the "gram strategy" in which they broke everything down to its weight in grams and the engineers looked at how much unneeded grams they can shave off without compromising function/form. A little here and little there adds up in the end. Here's a good read on their "gram strategy".
http://www.birmingham101.com/101motors_mazda_mx5.htm
* I'd forego the extra weight of a Supercharger and the accompanying hardware on the z28. GM doesn't need a S/c to make 500 horses. The lightweight Ls7 already proves that.
* 500 horses isn't really necessary and provisions to support upwards of 550horses/tq aren't needed imo. Give me a 390-410hp SS and a lighter 450hp more track-oriented z28 with upgraded suspension/brakes. hp isn't everything. I'd be willing to bet that a lighter track-oriented 450hp z28 would be funner to drive (and probably cheaper too) than a much heavier 550hp z28 with heavier duty parts.
* I could do without all the fluff. They not only add weight, but they make the car more expensive. Leave out the gimmicks too. Make the fluffy stuff optional.

So i'd like to see a bit more attention to detail and smarter cost-effective strategies in weight reduction in the 6th gen.

 

If there is to be a 6th gen, GM knows what it needs to do.

It WILL be smaller and lighter than the 5th gen.
It will be CAFE positive.
It will be an attractive package even with smaller, more fuel efficient engines.
It will be based on an architecture with a future.
And I'm betting it will be a blast to drive.

 

I'll personally shoot you square in the a*s*s* with a BB gun if anyone EVER entertains putting a 10-bolt axle in another V8 Camaro.