I found this on my search page today:

http://www.forbes.com/columnists/200...ahoo&referrer=

Sports Cars Wars.....starting to get some press

 

1) I didn't know that the 350Z was the best selling sports car in 2003.


2) I didn't know that the SSr was a sports car.

 

Scary that the Z car is king. Also scary that the SSR is in the mix. C'mon GM..........

 

Not so surprising about the 350Z.

Why wouldn't sell?

-It has an absolutely world class chassis.
-It has an interesting mix of models.
-It has good power.
-It has a lineage and pent up demand from it's enthusiast base.
-The price is right.

 

Howcome they had the ford T-bird but not the mustange

 

They even included the SSR. A truck, and a not so sporty one at that. The L, which is a lot more sportier didn't even make the cut. Who the heck comes up with this list?

Funny thing is, the Mustang outsells all the cars listed combined.

Btw: How can Nissan consider ther 350z a success @ 36,728 units/year, and GM consider that a failure on the Camaro’s part? The pricing on the 350z isn't that much higher than a nicely optioned z28 coupe to fully loaded SS convertibles (MSRP on 350z is 26.3k-36k). Should GM rethink its sales goals and still consider the camaro a success even if it doesn't sell 100,000+ a year? Looking at the last couple of years, and excluding mustang, the camaro was still near the top as far as sporty car sales, yet they were considered sales failures.

 

Because sports cars are two-seaters.

 

Any 2 seater that sells 36,728 units per year is most definately a resounding success!!!

Don't confuse 2 seaters with F-bodies only on price & performance because we are talking about apples and plums. They are in very different market segments.

2 seaters have limited appeal and a very very limited market. Any 2 passenger car that sells over 20,000 cars per year has nothing to be embaressed about, even at 15,000 per year in that market is pretty high volume.

Camaros on the other hand are competing in a market that is much larger.

It's hard to say that your car is a success at 42,000 cars when your competitor is selling over 130,000 cars per year. In that light & from that perspective, Camaros were in fact sales faliures. (Reasons for this have been beaten to death, so I won't bring them up again )

 

For some reason, I was under the impression that the 350z was a 2+2 coupe. My bad.

Then again, how useful were the camaro's back seat? In all honestly, i don't think the 350z is that less practical of a car. If anything, it's probably more refined and easier on the average joe. Now taking overall practicality into question, is 42,000 from the camaro that bad for a car of its nature?

2 seaters may have limited appeal, but that didn't stop the vette from outselling 2+2 sport coupes like the Supra, 300zx, 3000GT Vr-4, etc....

Another thing....GTO. Now i know they're limited to 18k a year, but what would be wrong with limiting a car like the Firebird to say...30k units a year? Over half the firebirds I see are Ws6 T/A convertibles ($30k+ bird).

True, but wouldn't the 350z, rx8, etc... fall into this market as well? As do many other sport coupes. You could even consider Econo-pocket-rockets like the SRT-4, RSX's, WRX's, STi's, and Evo's competitors as well. These all fall into the affordable sporty car segment. While fairly different, i think a lot of these will end up getting cross-shoped. For instance, Mustang GT and WRX.

True, which is why i said "excluding mustang". I'm looking at this from a bigger prospective. Yes sales were pathetic in comparison to the stang, but as far as sport coupes went, it did fairly well since it was still near the top.

I don't know. It's like Ford not being happy with Thunderbird sales, when in fact, it was one of, if not the best selling premium 2 seater convertibles on the market. Still...they want to put it on a hiatus as well.

I think a lot of this stems from setting too high a goal in relation to the overall nature of the car. I don't think Camaro needs to sell 130k+ like the mustang in order to be considered successful.

 

Well i would agree with that, but one the list they have the lexus Sc430 and Mazda RX-8 and those cars have backseats.