It may show up at NAIAS.

 

What's the "mystery Pontiac" everyone is referring to?


ON another note, it is ironic that GM will pull the press in and show them cars 3+ years out...then tell the press that a new GTO is coming...yet continue to take lumps for having the appearence (to anyone who doen't follow these boards) of not working on a Mustang competitor. If GM came out with a press release in a month or so with a fuzzy sketch and some verbage that a "design study" for a "mustang cometitor" would at NAIAS, it would light the world on fire and make the NAIAS one of the most anticipated in a long time. You wouldn't even have to say it was a Camaro. GM did this in the past for several show cars like the G6 and SS concepts. There is no current Camaro, so it is not like it would hurt sales. I am guessing however, two reasons we have not had such a press release are....

1. The CAW thing is still not straight. But I would imagine if you don't say it's a Camaro..just a "Mustang Competitor" in the press release, you would be okay.

2. The Camaro still does not have final approval, and the timeline is still uncertain. GM does not want to show the car or hint at it 6 months before NAIAS only to have it come out in say 2009 if it does not get fasttracked as expected.

 

That's what I've been saying. They don't have to come out and say "Hey, we're working on a Camaro" but they can say that they are working on SOMETHING. But GM as been kicking Camaro fans to the curb for so long that they've forgotten why we're here. It doesn't even occur to them to throw us a bone. They've got other issues. They'll worry about customers when they're important.

For every "hint" and "rumor" that's been dropped here, there are just as many articles saying there is no Camaro or GM saying "We're thinking about thinking about some kind of Mustang competitor." Obviously, nothing's been kicked off, because there aren't any supplier contracts or other insignificant "Leaks" that occur when you have 5,000 engineers from 300 companies involved and that show "Something" is in development. Call me a pain in the A$$, but I'm still not convinced that we'll see a Camaro within a timeframe to have any sort of relevance. Nor can I see why I should wait instead of, say, buying a Mustang. To put it this way, I've got a 4.5 year old car, $2700 in GM card points, friends in Michigan and I'm not planning any special trips to the NAIAS this year.

 

Bingo. Until there's production purchase orders in place, there's no firm plans. I'm definately not trying to discredit Red or anyone else in-the-know, but this is reality until chips are flyin' in the tool-and-die shops (and even at that point, nothing is really certain).

As far as the marketing "plan" for the GTO goes, that's certainly a mystery. Let's see - GM utilizes Corvette production capacity to the point where they don't offer discounts, and that's on a $50K car. And then on the other hand, there's a 18K/year car that probably costs as much (if not more) to produce, is priced significantly lower, and they're selling less than half as many units. If there's any marketing professors out there, this sure would make for a hell of an interesting case study.

 

Got ahead of the curve. I got the word that GTO would outlive Monaro the same time I got wind of a year extention. Stay tuned.

 

Exactly

This, and the "Pontiac Cobalt", as well as the '07 Solstice coupe, all have come to light since my post. I like what I'm seeing

 

Question is...will the Pontiac version of the Cobalt be allowed to outperform the Cobalt SS.

It you are not going to let your excitement division have cars that perform better than Chevy's...why bother?

 

I'm not sure if every Pontiac needs to outperform every Chevy.

I think Pontiac needs to offer a different driving/ownership experience than Chevy, Saturn, etc. I don't see the point of Pontiac offering the "all up" version of a purposely dumbed down Chevy.

 

Exactly. Selling cookie cutter cars to different divisions, with one dumbed down or another "gussied up" with cladding or whatever is old GM and is a big reason why GM is still in trouble right now. I'll reserve judgement till I see the car, but I certainly hope it looks or drives nothing like the Cobalt.

 

No one said dumb down the Chevy. Let the Chevy people develop the best car they can for their target market (mainstream america). Then hand the chassis off to Pontiac, and let them take it towards thier market (excitment/performance). Pontiac by nature should be more performance leaning than any GM brand except Cadillac's V-Series. If you make it so top of the line Pontiac's perform and have largley the same content as Chevy's...then there is really no point in even having Pontiac.

I am happy to see things like Biltiens on the GP GXP that the Impala doesn't get. You can't have an excitment/performance division that is nothing more than a Chevy with some aggressive styling and a few extra widgets (like HUD)....though some Chevy purist balk at the idea.

Wonder if that turbo 6 cylinder they are putting in the BTS would fit eaisily in the G6? I am sure it would...and I think it would make one fun car