Do you think all the trash that ford is talking about the deceased camaro will speed up its resurrection? Ive read a few different articles on the new mustang and here and there ford will bring up a comment on how the camaro is gone because it sucked or something. They talk on why the went retro instead of modern and they reply: "we went retro simply because the guys across town decided to go modern, and they're gone now..."(well something along those lines) and they continue to go on saying, "There's simply no meaningful reason to hook your claw into a Firebird or a Camaro, simply because there is no Firebird or Camaro left in those vehicles." And these words came from J Mays... also they claim that the mustang is the most famous nameplate in America...and so on and so forth. And I read different things along the same lines in other mags and articles... Im just wondering since the mustang is getting so much positive publicity and shoving gm's face in it if the executives at GM will wake up and make the next camaro/firebird a priority or at least put it on their "to do" list for the near(not 2-4 years from now but near)future. Im not hurting to buy a new car right now because Im happy with mine and can beat most any car on the road, but pretty soon the mustang is going to be faster then even the LS1 and I dont want to have to mod the hell outta my car to keep up! Please GM, do something!!

 

I hope so.

 

We should probably start a thread were we can reference deragatory Camaro quotes from FORD guys(engineers, execs and such). We should then e-mail copies of these quotes to any and all GM execs in hopes that it pisses them off!!

 

Why bother? They chose to discontinue it, and now they're reaping the rewards, or lack thereof. I hope they feel ashamed but I suspect they are totally oblivious as to what is going wrong. Casually kill one of your most recognized and beloved brands without a second thought and without any consultation with your customers and then expect the people to migrate to FWD sedans and SUV's? Great ideas! Great ideas for going out of business.

 

Trash talk between camps has been thrown back and forth since Camaro's debut in '67...it's nothing new. I remember an article in Car and Driver I believe in the '80's, IROC Z vs. 5.0 where GM engineers proclaimed the 5.0 the "best damn Fairmont ever." And so it goes...trash talk from Ford isn't going to put the wheels in motion, or get them moving faster. Sales will.

 

I find it funny that they say one of the reasons they went retro is because Camaro went modern and was gone.

Well, I got news for them... Mustang wasn't retro (yes we could debate there are some cues, and there are, but the current Stang is not a full blown retro-mobile) and it was/is pretty darn successful.

That has to be the lamest excuse Ive heard yet for bad retro styling.... "IMO" of course

 

OMG!!! Darth had a Freudian slip... Mustang and "not retro" together! Even if it wasn't about the '05's!
Darth - I am warning you now that I have bookmarked, saved-as, and screen-captured that post for future reference in our "retro" conversations!!! LOL!!!
J/K!

Seriously, I do agree with you - the '02 Mustang was not retro in my eyes at all, no more than any other model, so for a Ford guy to insinuate that it was is wrong.

However, I posted a few days ago that I could see virtually nothing in an F4 that reminded me of an F1. Maybe that is what the Ford guy in this article (a link would be great BTW) should have said in some way. The F4 lost the significant styling and design cues that linked it to it's 1st gen. Like you guys have said, the car has evolved, and the links may be seen through the evolution from one car to the next, but not everyone in the world knows what all 4 gens of F-body looked like and what cues changed on each one. Anybody can look at a Mustang and see 1st gen in it - instantly bonding them as common family at a sheer glance. Recognition is very important in this modern car world - we all know that.

 

LOL!


I guess you could counter my following arguement with "Time have changed" , but the F3 and, really F2 didn't have obvious styling cues taken from the F1 either, and both were madly successful...

And, by the same arguement, neither did the 79-93 Mustang!

 

I read the same article (Automobile Magazine, February 2003, on stands now) and it's amazing how 2 different people can read the same thing and come away with 2 different angles to what was printed.

1st of all, J. Mays does not call Mustang retro. Although in this interview it was hinted at, in other interviews he doesn't call his work retro, and in the '05 Mustang's case, in my opinion he's right.

The point J. Mays was making in that article is that Mustang has never forgot it's heritage while Camaro has and that's what led to it's demise (basically the point alot of retro Camaro fans here have made many times over the past couple of years).

The "claws" comment in full context was this: You can go to a Mustang, and you can associate the '05 Mustang (as well as the current one and most all before it) to the original. I think his words were something like hooking it to it's heritage. Something he said you couldn't do with the Camaro, because it's designers was always trying to go more 'modern' at the expense of it's heritage, till there was nothing left.

It wasn't a slam by a long shot. It was him expressing his opinion as to why Mustang is more succesful than the now deceased Camaro.

He didn't say anything alot of you haven't already said in stronger terms, so let's loose the 'oh I'm so offended' act.

Ford's SVT boss, John Coletti, is the guy at Ford that takes pleasure in talking smack about GM (frequently pointing out in very colorful ways that you can't compare a 2003 Mustang to a 2003 Camaro... I think you catch his drift). Classic Coletti:

Colorful guy.

(the whole interview: http://www.pickuptruck.com/html/auto...d/coletti.html )

BTW: The hoopla surronding Mustang has made a difference.

 

I read an article complarig the svt cobra to a camaroSS. And they starting off giving props to chevy. They said that chevy was a good long lasting competator, gm built good, high quality cars. There'd be no market if GM and ford didnt produce the cars. There was a good lengthy paragraph just saying good things about the death of the camaro...

now obciously there have been alot of negative things said...
but I think as long as we keep the camaro alive, they'll do something to bring it back. Anyone remember the dodge stealth? Dont hear that name too much anymore, 8 years after its been taken off the market... I dont want that to happen with such a legend of a car!

 

That is why I said that Gm is looking like a losser in front of everybody who knows about the history of Mustang vs. Camaro

ot is a shame , and Ford is kicking sand in GM face with the new Mustang

 

guionM - Thanks for the info on this "majic article"... I'll try to pick one up next time I'm in Wally-World.

Having not read it yet, I can only go on what's said in this thread, but your perception and interpretation of the comments sound more "realistic" for modern press material.

And BTW, I couldn't agree more about Coletti...
You could make a career out of following this guy around and quoting the smack he puts out! But I for one - LOVE IT! In the 10-years that SVT has been going now, they HAVE made a difference in Ford's perceived performance capabilities, and Coletti is no small part of that. What's most exciting about it is that (for the time being anyways) Bill Ford is writing checks to back Coletti's comments up! They seem to have a good chemistry together.

Unlike Lutz - with his fighter-jets and speed-laden history - Bill Ford has no "performance history", just a passion for the Mustang and Ford's racing heritage... as he should. He's letting Coletti do his performance talking for him. He is passionate about performance though, and especially the Mustang. It takes big brass ones to go on national TV and say "If I could have only one car, I'd want a red Mustang convertible - one with a throaty V8 and a great stereo." And FWIW - HE HIMSELF authorized and basically wrote the que-cards for those commercials. He refused to due them unless he got to say what he wanted to say, not what lawyers and script-writers told him to. He was interviewed and questioned about just that topic by Dateline back in July or August of last year I beleive.

I would have NEVER thought I'd see things like they are now between Ford and GM - never. Ford performance is on a major tear right now, and GM is taking over Truckville.
Like I've said before... it's great to be on top again, but it's very bittersweet to be "performing" against no competition.

 

Yea but trash talking makes for some great innovations and compitition between the mustang and f-body... because GM can ALWAYS come back in the end and say, well our cars are faster than yours ...you talk trash and push us, we'll talk more and push harder... but now that we dont have the fbody anymore, GM has no way to defend itself, nothing to say...it just dropped out of the race and left no replacement...and ford is winner by default. I would hope this pissed someone besides me off

 

Trucksville? Thought Dodge was it's Mayor?

 

I dont have a link to the article so Ill just type it straight from the magazine....


DEFENDING THE PAST : J Mays wanted to echo the 1967-70 Mustang, and the critics be damned.

The new design of the Mustang unabashedly harks back to the Mustangs of the late 1960s, and although J Mays claims that those who've seen it love it, he does appear braced for a critical backlash. "By the way, I'm used to talking a complete beating on the whole retro thing," he says at the start of an interview in his new office at Ford's product development center. "So I could care less what you write, because our customers love this stuff." Nevertheless, he made his case for a new Mustang that references the old:
"Whan we set out to do this car, we said, well, there are a number of ways we can go. We can do a pure retro car, where we say we're doing a reissue, as we're doing with the GT40. We could do something a bit more like the Thunderbird, which is taking iconic cues off the vehicle but filling in the blacks with modern sheetmetal. Or we could just go modern.
"What we ended up doing was taking the same, or simular, route that we did with the Thunderbird. Which is to say, this car's going to have very modern surfacing on it; this car's going to have a very modern stance and wheel proportion; but we're going to keep the iconic cues and do a modern update of those. I can give you an argument for why we did that very simply: Because the guys across town decided to go modern and they're gone now."
"There's no meaningful reason to hook your claw into a Firebird or a Camaro, simply because there's no Firebird or Camaro left in those vehicles. They became something else. And they became something else because, apparently, then the design teams got a hold of them, they thought that history started with them, instead of history starting with a nameplate."
"I think that Mustang is arguably the most famous nameplate in America. The Chevy guys would probably say Corvette, but in terms of sheer passion for a high volume vehicle, it's Mustang. And the amount of equity built up over fourty years tells me that you owe that customer base, and the sons and daughters of that customer base, a vehicle that continues the story."
"The design DNA and visual makeup of the Mustang aren't something we have the luxury of throwing away. So we have to act as a curator i norder to preserve that but at the same time continue to update."