aziroc

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 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

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!



Texas seems to be the F-Body mecca.

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.

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.

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.

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

stars1010

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.

guionM

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.

DaxsZ28

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.