Im thinking that alot of there spotlight is trucks..yes I know that its the bread and butter...but look at whats come out and is comming out for 2+2 sport cars, and fear to say it muscle cars from every other automaker..Ford, Mazda, Dodge, BMW, Infinity,Mecedes, and such offering low price..sporty 2+2 cars to the market.. Does GM has this whole filled? the Camaro dies when it would of fit right into this catagory. It may of been a really old design but think the Mustang is fitting in and still competing. All these high performance CARS that are showcased, and whats GM bring us.. the SS line of Trucks...is this somehting we are forced to have?
It just seams were pulling up anchor a little to late..the race already started..
does anyone think there is a new "muscle" car war? and I use that term loosley, for I know it has alot have diffrent meanings to it..but the affordable or should I say attainable fast car is back. and GM has no prouct to fight it with..this is the first time in 35 years with no offering..
but yet we SS trucks...for what?? do they give us a reason to buy them..is there a huge boom in this market that HAS to be filled??
I dont know.. and its not being done where the trucks are better or as equiped with for the competition..

and on the related subjuect...sport compacts are all the rage..where is our little pocket rocket?
hell look at the Dodge SRT-4...not bad for 19,995...another market we have missed out to bring the crowd into the GM fold..then to upgrade to the more serious performance...
we do not have anything..NOTHING..
It just seams that everything TRENDY GM has no response...but they have cool prototypes..
one thing GM bring the OPEL GT HERE! you want something already built fast and looks good..bring it here..along with the Monaro variants..
Seams that everyone other than GM N.America gets it, and knows how to build fast fun CARS...if its out there bring it here.
Seriously..no more prototypes..start making them a reality..take a page out of Dodges book...
It might not be the huge seller like the Trucks..but hey it gives you one thing GM lacks now IMAGE (But I do have to leave Caddy out of that lineup..the only GM line that is making waves, and keeping there distance from the ship)

whats everyone think??? and I totally not thinking right? cus it seams right to me.....

 

i think one of the problems with GM producing an inexpensive sporty car is that they spend to much money on R&D. they have the platforms available, slap a motor on them, design a new shell, and put them in America's driveways for under 25000 fully loaded. instead they work on designs and then ask how does this look how does that look maybe build one here and there and waste money trying to develop somtehing new. GM, DONT DO IT!!! slap an LS1 in an existing platform with some cool curves and get a heartbeat back. right now you are flatlined in the everyday affordable sport car line up.

 

I agree with you, but it isnt entirely fair to accuse GM of not having a 2+2 coupe...we have the GTO Which is really a disgrace to that name. and the pocket rockets? o GM has that covered too, we have the cavalier/sunfire About the new muscle car era...check the sig, ive been thinking this for like a year now. And GM decides to get the hell out of it.

 

Crash course on GM of the late 1990's-101

GM was the last to get into the SUV craze, even ignoring pleas from Cadillac's general manager for a luxury SUV. GM felt the Denali (which was to be a independent line of SUVs) was enough. However, in typical GM fashion, it not only was late to the party, but it overcompensated.

At the same time, GM's board of directors fell for "brand marketing, and hired seemingly everyone they could from OUTSIDE the auto industry. First & foremost, GM is a business, meaning their main objective is to make money. Not being "car savy", GM's decision makers took one look at what Ford was clearing on it's luxury SUVs, and put it's resources towards Trucks & SUVs. At the same time, John Middlebrook, Cadillac's General manager convinced GM's management that a world class RWD Cadillac was in the corperate best intrest, so GM also began a "world RWD/luxury" platform. This pretty much left everything else out to dry.

About the same time, some people were evaluating Holdens to fill in for some Buicks and, yes... even a Camaro. That got shot down more because of territorial mentalities and having perfectly good FWD designs in a "shrinking" car market, so it was viewed as a waste of money to spend on new models in a shrinking market (reflecting this view, Jon Moss in a performance article in 2000 stated the GM's future performance was FWD, and a year later in another article said a car like the Impala SS would never be seen again).

About 2 years ago, someone high on the food chain (ie: GM's Board of Directors) finally asked the question: "Why is our car market share shrinking, while everyone else's isn't"? Rick Wagoner (despite not being a car guy) had the insight enough to start looking for the best people he could find....outside of GM!

Car's weren't selling as much as they once were, so to make them profitable, massive costs had to be engineered out. The first new people on the job came from Manufacturing, Quality Control & Contracting, who got the price down and quality up. Then the "car-guys" came in (designers & marketers), to make the most of what GM has, while at the same time getting new products to market.

Right now we are still in the transition stage. Forget what you heard about taking 18 months to get a car to market from strach. From APPROVAL, it may take 18 months. From strach, it takes alot longer (now down to 4 years. Before a product even goes to comittee, everything from the components to the layout of the factory has to be planned out. If GM isn't going to build a new factory, it has to be arranged around an existing one & co-ordinated. In other words, BEFORE a product is approved, the whole car must be virtually done already.

Bob Lutz 1st got to GM in September 2001. His 1st cars won't be on the market till 2005! And those cars were initially started before he got there! Cars started after he got there will be out in 2006/2007, and those are cars using components from other cars.

Hope this short course sort of answers those GM questions you or others may have.

 

Great points Guion!

One other thing that went on was the significant shift of design and engineering folks into the truck group in Pontiac. That shift has just reversed itself, and a lot of those folks are moving to Warren.

GM made a calculated descision that they needed to put a maximum effort into trucks a few years back. Since then, they have progressively hit quite a few out of the park (GMT-800 improvements, Escalade, Trailblazer, Avalanche, H2). The emphasis is now shifting back to cars.

It's going to take a couple of years to get that end of the business together, but the process is underway.

The clearest indication of how well GM has done in trucks is the fact that they are really putting a hurting on Ford.

 

okay..so why is the biggest automaker the LAST to do anyhting?? always a reactive to whats up....can they not make these possibilities happen..maybee with the GTO comming here it will bridge the gap we need to look around the world for performance..
but basically if something is already done elsewhere..like the GTO..or the Opel GT...then half that cost is done and the time is cut by 3/4's isnt it..
I mean for the Opel GT to be a 4 seat v8 car isnt that hard..it may not be the Camaro but a very good reminder that GM wants to play..call it something else...but if its somethign done already get it here...
so maybee I was right in thinking we are not pro active just re active to automotive trends...(excluding caddy)
call it a chevy II...sounds good??? since people love numbered cars latley..

 

Eazy, because GM is the largest, and perhaps most top-heavy car company in the world. GM-North America has an ingrained conservatism & territorialism that has a tendancy to automatically reject anything that isn't developed here in the US (and Canada).

At the same time, GM is extremely financially conservative. They tend to put money where it's being made, and starve where it's not (seemingly against what appears to be common sense!). If sales of product A are strong while product B is dropping, Ford would normally put it's money in product B, while letting product A continue selling (ie: the 9 year MN12 T-bird vs the twice changed in 10 year Probe...both had the same lifespan). GM on the other hand looks toward killing it.

GM-North America is only just now realizing it has divisions in other parts of the world and it can actually have more products for less money if it taps into them. GTO is sort of an experiment (that the old-guard GM-NA wouldn't even try) in tapping into those resources. Virtually every component in the GTO outside of body structure, interior design & materials, and some suspension components come directly from the US of A or Germany.

Once upon a time, each GM division had a measure of autonomy. Chevrolet had a different program than Pontiac or Cadillac. Today, with the exception of Cadillac and Corvette, GM-NA divisions have no autonomy whatsoever.

However, Holden represents the old GM in that it has autonomy, yet is every bit a part of GM as Chevrolet was in 1968! All parts are GM, all factories are GM, they answer to GM. To think of Holden as anything other than GM isn't honest.

Instead of Chevrolet, Pontiac, or Buick divisions of the past, GM's TRUE divisions are now GM-North America, GM-Holden, GM-Opel, GM-Trucks, Cadillac, and finally Corvette.

 

me getting smarter by the min.

lol..so I was thinking the same way..as you just said..GM is not just N.A. now but a global parts bin ready to make a new car...

Kinda sad if people just want N.A. produced cars..cus there is exciting cars built everywhere but here..lol..

and a Holden or Opel muscle car would fit in with the melting pot of todays young buyers..