GM needs to make resurrecting the Camaro one of its top goals
DUTCH MANDEL
Published Date: 10/1/02
“Just give me the chance,” says Rick Baldick as a semi-conspiratorial smile eases across his face. The wiry fifty-something who acts like a thirty-something grabs armloads of air and walks as if he’s tucked bowling ***** under each armpit. “I got stacks of papers like this waiting to make the case for Camaro. Just give me the chance.”

Baldick should have enough on his plate to keep him busy rather than worry about a car whose fate seemingly has been decided by the profit prophets. As the Chevrolet Corvette brand manager, Baldick has spent the last two years planning Corvette’s 50th anniversary party, which culminates in June 2003. Yet here he is talking about Camaro, and how to save the icon.

That’s a reversal of how GM’s car product food chain works, another indication of sheetmetal czar Bob Lutz’s effect. Historically, GM guys and gals strive to earn stripes toiling on Malibu and Astro van for a shot at the big league that is Corvette, the crème de la crème of GM cardom. Now it seems GM people just want the chance to make good cars, instead of designing, marketing and selling good deals.Putting the F-cars, Camaro and Firebird, to rest has been a slow and painful process.

Talk about it with some within The Tubes at GM HQ, and they point to any number of reasons for Camaro’s demise, including expense, product packaging, rising insurance costs and even the advent of hi-po pickup trucks. One bright soul suggested enthusiasts killed Camaro. Honest, and it could be true.

His hypothesis is that the Camaro team members, a competitive lot, angled to prove their worth and that included making Camaro better than Corvette. F-car folks, themselves dyed-in-the-wool fans, sought the approval, confirmation and direction for Camaro from other enthusiasts—including enthusiast journalists. As journos wrote and chanted the “more power, more muscle” mantra, Camaro engineers obliged.

But in so doing they enabled Camaro to die. The enthusiast media and the engineers moved Camaro spiritually closer to Corvette. That gave Chevy two halo cars and not enough buyers. One had to be sacrificed and it wasn’t going to be Corvette.This guy’s premise is that Camaro should have used brand management—or perhaps what some of us more appropriately call a product shepherd—to save it. I don’t know how I feel still about being thought of as Dr. Kevorkian of the Camaro.

Actually, I don’t want to think this pony car is dead. And it’s not because Ford’s open secret is that a new, tougher, truer Mustang is being prepped for production, proving that a market exists for such a beast. No. I want a place for Camaro because it was so right and so appropriate and it means so much to our automotive lives. Do you realize Camaro is the fifth-most-recognizable car nameplate? How can you lose that kind of “brand equity”?

Should Camaro be on Lutz’s radar screen? You bet. Even before El Camino. Heck, just give it to Baldick and a few of his compatriots to sort out.