bulldoguav

Put away your hatred fro the man, people. He is a complete genius, and I'll let you in on a few not-so-secrets.

The new GTO. Let's face it people, all out performance on a production car isn't the way to go. The car is imported on a very stylish Monaro platform, and it has RWD V8 power, something GM now lacks in besides the Vette, which is only a two seater. Lutz brings over pretty much a fully put together car, save for new fed bumpers, and the traditional Pontiac grille. (Holden is already equipped to do LHD, so that isn't an issue). The simple importing of a car with a trademark GM name creates instant buzz, and people already on the waiting list. This creates momentum for the US-built 2006 model, with even more HP on demand (much better to build up, than go down). They take the best of the 04-05 models and make it better, and GTO is back and is a good seller.

The 50th Vette is sort of a snoozer, but HP is still the same, and that creates another high $$ model for 2004, and then the C6 after that. Vette sales still strong if not stronger.

Complete revamp of Pontiac image and advertising, with vehicles designed to capture younger buyers (read:Vibe), and older, more performance oriented (but family men) in the GXP lineup.

New Saturn models, sales increases to a very highly held division (in the public eye).

H2 sales are unspeakable, and such a simple concept.

Truck sales are still strong, not messing with the bread-and-butter.

Introduction of futuristic-looking concepts, to gauge consumer's response. SSR model a low volume niche vehicle to fill a gap between sport truck and convertable cruiser.

Follow-thru on the demise of the F-body. YES, you read me right. This was a good thing.

Think about it like this: how much attention was paid to Michael Jordan when everyone pretty much knew he was retiring in 1998? Nearly every venue he went to sold out. The Ga Dome here in Atlanta saw over 60K people watch him play here for the last time in a Bulls uniform. When he retired, Jordan jerseys were selling out.

Two years later, you hear the murmurs..."Jordan might come back..." How many consecutive nights of Jordan highlights did we see on Sportscenter before he even made the announcement? How many tickets did he sell for THE WIZARDS?!?! The Wizards! The crappiest team on the east coast. MSG was sold out the night he made his debut. People standing outside, just trying to be there. ..."Jordan's back...OMG did you see what he did!?!?!?!" Buzz everywhere. Did more for his career than playing straight through those two years.

Now equate that to the Camaro/Firebird situation. The best way to redesign the F-bod completely (first redesign since 1982), was to retool everything. GM has a problem doing that, because sales are down, and they are in a not-so-great agreement with the CAW and the St. Therese assembly plant. Sales aren't what they want them to be, obviously they need to shift direction slightly. Hard to create buzz for when you have the same model for 20 years.

So what is the best thing for GM to do? They need to restructure or cancel their deal with the CAW and St. Therese. They need a whole new platform and new design. They need more sales and more profitability. How can you do all these things the best way?

Kill the car.

Yeah, you might have some people jump ship to the Mustang, especially with that new Cobra coming and a redesign in 2005. But, there is simply no way to create buzz about the vehicle while Ford is doing this, and GM is trying to redesign a car that won't hit the showrooms until almost the exact same time as the Stang. Don't want to release the year before, because the Stang will come out the next year and decimate sales. So the best thing to do is to stop production and say it's dead for good. Introduce the Equinox (to replace the Tracker) to a Canadian plant with a better deal and keep the CAW happy.

All this does is create buzz, people. Can't you see the hints GM is giving you? Yeah, the Camaro might come back...or wait, no it can't. People can't even talk about it under penalty of arrest! Don't you see this is reverse psychology? If it really wasn't coming back, you'd hear something like "But we have this new model the Camaro buyers might like..." You aren't hearing anything. This is one of those cases where no news is good news. and there is so much time left on the original deal with the CAW and St. Therese. If you try and do anything during this time, you are just asking to lose money and support from the CAW. And all this does is give time for the GM designers to work on the Camaro, all while saying it's not the Camaro.

So let me refresh to earlier in my post (because I know it is rather lengthy). what happened when Jordan said he was coming back? Instant ticket sales, instant buzz. Now think what would happen, let's say, if Bob Lutz drives into the Detroit Auto Show 6-12 months after the new Stang comes out. Let's say what he drives in no one has ever seen or heard anything about. All the reporters, all the show-goers gather around a very simple stage GM has set up. People are anxiously looking at the sleek new car and wonder if it is another one of GM's rather out-there concepts. No, they see, it looks like something ready to hit the showrooms very soon, almost a finished production model.

"Ladies and Gentlemen. May I reintroduce you to a friend...Camaro."

Do you realize how stunned everyone will be? Do you realize how much water-cooler, magazine, strip-side, Woodward Cruise publicity and buzz this thing will get? Motor Trend, Autoweek, GMHTP, HPP, Super Chevy, Hot Rod...all showing the new Camaro. It will be instantly everywhere, and the day of the show people will be asking how much and how soon. GM keeps it low-mid volume for the first year and then cranks production once demand goes through the roof.
Now I know as well as you do that Lutz isn't responsible for everything I've posted here. That was more of an attention grabber, but he isn't exactly fugging things up, either.

Please be patient guys. It's only four or five years. (Possibly even less until we see/hear solid rumors) Trust me in saying this will be the best thing for the vehicle, and keep it going well unto it's 50th and 60th anniversaries.

And if it helps you to count days instead of years...
January 13-24, 2006. That's my guess for a debut. If you will read the following article, you'll see that pensions end in 2005 for workers at Ste. Therese. Think about it people...
http://www.themilitant.com/1996/6039/6039_4.html

BlackLS1Z

Man I hope you're right!! *fingers crossed*

BTW: I really enjoy reading what you have to say.....gives hope!


Colin
1998 Z28

Doug Harden

To quote my favorite move, Blazing Saddles.."You use your tongue prettier than a $20 wh*re"........LOL!!!!!

Nice disertation I might add.

The link is exactly the info I have been looking for.....thanks!

Your other post that guionM alluded to some info some of us had been asked not to publish, was also very, very close to the truth.....maybe now people will see the $take$ GM is up against, should they break this agreement...I hope we aren't stirring the pot too much however...don't want to wake the natives so to speak....

Now, tell us more about yourself....I'd personally like to meet up someday! Heck for that matter, there's a half dozen on here that I'd LOVE to have a Camaro "Summit" with some day......

redzed

The deal with the CAW at Ste. Therese was actually better for GM than any UAW agreement. Socialized healthcare in Canada means no expensive private insurance and no health costs for retirees.

One reason Ste. Therese died was because it was the only assembly plant in Quebec - and was located in a separatist Partie Quebecois writing. It's alot easier to kill jobs in Canada when they don't belong to voters of the leading Liberal Party - that's why all of the plants in Ontario were safe.

It amazed me that Ste. Therese was a comparatively modern plant possessing coveted RWD capacity and a good quality record - and they still closed it. Wilmington, Delaware is a dated World War II era factory and produces the Saturn L-series - a car with poor sales and widely criticised quality - and it isn't even being considered for closure.

It's time to stop criticising the CAW. The workers at Ste. Therese held up their end, even when they knew their jobs were already gone. By all rights they should still be working today, perhaps building the Cadillac CTS and tooling up for the upcoming SRX. It's too bad politicians and corporate executives are so short sighted.

Bob Cosby

LOL. Nothing wrong with having hope, but I hope the straws you were grasping at turn out to have some substance.

IZ28

They do. He's very correct.

Doug Harden

I too, don't think the workers at St Therese held any blame and I give them kudos for building the best Camaros ever.......

It truly is amazing to think that the previous short sighted GM exec's have put today's GM in such a predicament.....

tls2000

Where does that mention Ste. Therese? It is talking about two parts plants in Ontario.

Why does everyone believe that the CAW is the reason for the death of the F-body?

FACT: Camaros and Firebirds COMBINED were selling at less than half the rate of Mustang.

FACT: GM did not update the cars for almost 10 years, this tends to cut sales.

FACT: New crash standards were on the way in.

FACT: GM has not promoted Firebird or Camaro actively since at least 1998. At least, not in Canada.

FACT: Ste. Therese was located in a province that is hostile politically to its own country. Which could cause problems in the future.

FACT: Being the only factory in Quebec, it posed difficulties getting parts and supplies to this plant, as opposed to a plant in Ontario, or anywhere else, which has access to literally hundreds of suppliers.

FACT: Ste. Therese was supposed to be able to build a volume of 300,000+ cars. When you are only utilising 1/3 of the capacity of a factory, you will probably wonder if its worth using that factory at all.


Political pressure and investment may have kept the plant there, but CANADIANS are not interested in government handouts to large companies any more. We've seen GM, Chrysler, and Ford all get money from the provincial government or federal government on year, only to turn around and close plants the next.

The only reason that Camaro and Firebird were around as long as they were, is probably because of the CAW. Think about it, the CAW just negotiated a new contract. Their old contract had guarantees about the number of jobs that GM had to maintain. They could not close the plant any earlier than they did. They announced that at the end of the contract, they would shut the plant down for good. If it weren't for the old contract, the plant may have been shut down 2 years sooner.

GM announced the demise of the Ste. Therese plant well before contract negotiations started. This way they had time to ease over any disputes with the union. They also made it an up-front gesture that they were closing the plant. This way the union wouldn't feel deceived.

Please stop blaming a union contract for the demise of Camaro and Firebird. Stop trying to say that they will not bring them back until after 2005, which is when everyone seems to think that the contract expires. The contract expired this year, and then Firebird and Camaro died. This is what happened. It is truly sad, but please get over it.

What we should all be doing right now is trying to convince GM that they have a good business case for producing another f-body. Let them know that you are interested in it. Let them know that you want it. Let them know that you'll buy it ***NEW*** from the lot. Maybe we have a hope of getting a Camaro again some day, but it will have nothing to do with the CAW contract which expired LAST YEAR!!!

That is my $.02.

Darth Xed

I would generally agree with everything you say... however, I do believe there is at least a good chance that the CAW and/or the Canadian govt (at some level (national/provincial/local)) has a hand in the fact that Camaro and Firebird will not be able to come back for some specific amount of time.

Bob Cosby

Ya, what tls2000 said.

Chuck!

Doug, one of the two guys on here who I honestly believe when they type, comes on here and agrees 100% and said the other guy in the know has this info, too. I'll take that.

bulldoguav

Believe it or not, there are quite a few people at GM who did not want the F-body line to die, because it was the second oldest continuous line GM had, in it's current form (meaning no breaks, no change in drivetrain etc). Plus, it actually made a profit. Not much of one, but enough for GM to continue the pony wars with Mustang.

If you'll go back to 1996, you'll see that the strike by the CAW was potentially crippling to GM (they target someone every three years...in 1999 it was Chrysler). If you'll read the fine details of the agreement, GM wanted to sell their two parts plants, but they also wanted to outsource jobs because it would save them money. It has been widely speculated that GM wanted to move the F-body to a multi-use platform since the mid 90s. But if they did that, they would have to ship these platforms, or build them at Ste. Therese. So, they made a deal that they wouldn't outsource jobs, but they could sell their parts plants. The deal also stipulated that the people who went with the plants would recieve their current pay and current pensions for three and nine years respectively. But the deal also lets GM close the plant if the model is discontinued. Now most people know that the deal with the Ste. Therese plant specifically states the word 'Camaro' in the contract. Any vehicle with this namesake in a certain period of time would default assembly to that plant and it's workers. And if GM decided to not let that plant build the Camaro, there would be XXX money due to the CAW and the workers who worked at and supported Ste. Therese.

Taken directly from gmcanada.com website:
Now it's common knowledge that the Sigma plant is in Lansing, MI. Now I'm just theorizing here, but it is entirely possible GM has been planning this ever since 1996. Why not boost the economies of local Michigan towns GM has decimated with layoffs the last ten years? You can kick a dog, but as long as you give it food it will always love you. GM swoops back in with the American-made Camaro, built alongside, or near the Sigma plant. GM had long wanted to pull ou of Ste. Therese for the simple fact that it was in Quebec. Quebec is a very fickle state, and the laws there are somewhat unusual and in a state of flux. A lot of the people who worked at ST have been offered to build the Equinox (I forget where it's being built).

Now, getting back to that contract signed in 1996. This is just assumption here, but from hearing what some inside sources have said (putting two and two together sometimes equals five), it is not too far fetched what I am getting at. The agreement signed in 1996 stipulated workers who went with the new owners of the parts plants. I am hypothesising that the contract with ST and the Camaro was about the same length of time, due to expire towards the end of 2005, beginning of 2006. GM could cancel the production, but no other production was to take place until the contract expired. And seeing as how GM wanted to consolidate on a new platform (yet to be developed at the time), it is entirely plausible that GM would kill the car once the primary contract with the workers at Ste expired in 2002. (The updated design was already being finalized, and GM wanted to put it to the market in 1997).

Now filling in the blanks, you get to where I have gotten. My theory is the Camaro will come back in 2006 as a 2006.5 or 2007 on the Sigma platform, and be built in Michigan. I'd theorize on engine and drivetrain combos, but this is over two years down the road. I'm not as updated on engine design at GM as I'd like to be.


I think I'll be quiet now....I think I hear those black helicopters nearby...

bulldoguav

BTW, a little about me:
I'm 23, engaged and about to join America's finest next month. I get an extended training out in Arizona, flying some UAVs (those Predator drones you keep hearing about being shot down - they aren't very powerful). After that I think I'll be headed to Fort Hood, Tx. Right now I'm planning on picking up a 95 T/A and doing a 383/ATI combo. And when those new 'maros come off the line, my dp will already be in and I'll be going wherever they are built to take mine right off the line.

I've been a F-body fan since I was 10, when I first saw my dream car- a 69 RS/SS in Hugger Orange and Tuxedo hockeysticks. A 396/M21 #s matching car in pristine order. My dad had a 69 T/A back in the mid 70s, but totalled it and almost died. In the past year I've been switching my wants between Ponchos and Chevys. But I'm choosing the 95 T/A for the std features and the styling. As for the 69 I'll have one day, the choice between SS and T/A is a hard one to make...

guionM

Perhaps not the only reason Camaro & Firebird stuck around.

It's common knowledge Holden and at least one GM FWD car was examined as a potential F-body successor. Also, any deal that would say "Camaro", would also have to say "Firebird" if this were the case, right?

CAW seems to have become the whipping boy on this site.

tls2000

Ok, so now we are all starting to come to a bit of an understanding. As Guion pointed out, the CAW is probably not the only reason that GM kept the car in that form for so long. My mistake in chosing my words.

Now, to get to what bulldoguav was saying, I will concede that the Ste. Therese plant may have had exclusive rights to build any new car named Camaro or Firebird.

But the plant and the union are seperate beings. I really would like it if the people of this site would stop blaming, almost exclusively, the CAW for the loss of this car.

Now, going by Guion's hints, I'm going to surmise that Ste. Therese DID in fact have exclusive rights to those namesakes. I will put that together with BulldogUAV's theory that GM wanted a different platform for the car, but wanted a shared architechture with other cars, rather than an expensive, exclusive body.

Now here's a question for all of you theorists. Ste. Therese is gone. The Union has a new contract that no longer includes Ste. Therese, or Camaro. Why is GM not telling us that they will be bringing out a 2006 model year Camaro at the end of 2005? Surely that would calm down the tensions between the F-Body enthusiasts and GM?

Now, to go deeper into my conspiracy theory:

Maybe they want to debut the new Corvette and Camaro together? Maybe they want to put their eggs in one basket, and beat down all of the competition with one fell swoop into the performance market.

Bob Lutz has delayed the C6 Corvette from arriving due to minor changes that he wanted made. Team Corvette has been working on the C6 for what, 4 years now? More?

Everyone knows that the C6 is coming, F-body programs have been hidden within the Corvette budget more than once. Maybe the new Camaro is hiding in the C6 program, just waiting for it's big sister to make an appearance before coming out with a vengeance.

Oh, and to throw more fuel on the fire, maybe they don't want to announce a new Camaro/Firebird, because they don't want to leech sales off of the C5, C6 and GTO. Especially if the new Camaro comes out with no holds barred ***** to the wall performance, in an ergonomic package, in the $20-25k range.

I'm done with my theories now.