Camaro, I counted the G8, The STS/DTS replacement and the Lucerne replacement.

Rumored = G8 ST and Crewman.

I just don't think it's as 'gloom and doom' as a lot of people think. The Impala was never a gurantee in the first place (A FWD replacement was being developed along side the Zeta all along)

I could be wrong, but I'm gonna need official GM confirmation of cancelled Zetas before I believe the platform is dead.

 

There is still a currency issue. GM planed on a discount when paying Canadian workers with Canadian dollars. Not anymore.

 

Well, that was roughly the plan.

But now it seems that Cadillac wants Alpha instead of Zeta for it's future models. Therefore, if some people within GM have their way (*cough* GM Europe *cough*) Zeta will be all but dead (And maybe Pontiac and Holden with it) I posted my theory in detail at Cheers and Gears FWIW.

 

I'm not sure if you really want it to fail. I do agree you are a bonafide Camaro expert and fan. You've been here a long time (me too, FWIW). But that doesn't give you a lot more latitude to impugn GM's RWD production plans and strategy, any more than a newbie who just showed up here. I believe we are all equals here.
So you've been around. Me too... long enough to remember some of the silly, rhetorical debates that have ensued (and been stoked by you) on here about curb weight, Z28-vs-Z/28-vs-SS naming, and now the interior mystery. So pardon me if I have a reaction

So you think the Camaro will be gone if the 5gen fails? Are you willing to make the same bet about the GTO name? It was gone for DECADES and they still they brought it back. And plans to bring it back again after the LSx series may turn on a dime, if/when the new CAFE is exposed for the regulatory over-reach it so clearly is.

In 1981, after the second gas crunch, I bet there were not many expecting we would have the incredible performance cars we have today in 2008.
I do appreciate your input, as far as helping clarify things. And there have been some issues I agree with you on, like having a r/w/b emblem on the new Camaro. However we part ways on many other things (fanatical devotion to feather-light, dreamworld curb weights, strange fascination with having a 'slash' in the Z28 badge, etc.)
I'm curious, what do you think my 'agenda' is.

 

Perhaps. But right at this very moment, EVERY GM program is being evaluated. Some which we thought were a foregone conclusion, won't make it. And every program going forward from here on, will be approved or not approved based the long term goal of 35 mpg CAFE by 2020. I can't imagine the Camaro - in it's current form - contributing to this goal, unfortunately. If Alpha MIGHT be the future, I just hope they make provisions for a V8 version. I know, that would be something new for this program.

It's going to be a shakeup - big time.

 

That was about as real a program as there was FOG. It even had a production date assigned to it at Oshawa, which to my knowledge, the other Zetas (other than Camaro), never had. Killing the Zeta Impala was a biggie.

 

You simply can't run a company like GM, on the hope that what just became the law of the land won't somehow apply soon. That may very well be the case, but GM would need to be THE MOST reckless company on the planet to assume so. GM may be many things, but it's not a company run by reckless mavericks.

GM will work within the parameters of CAFE until further notice.

And that will mean smaller, lighter vehicles with smaller displacement engines. It will mean fast forwarding alot of technologies. It will mean more hybrids. It will mean deisels as mainstream powerplants in trucks. It will mean higher sticker prices. It will mean dynamiting all of your paradigms.

 

I hope your right Charlie. I can't figure out how after the past 8 years of skyrocketing energy costs why Honda is able to bring the Fit over here with great success and Merc can introduce a 50 state certified diesel while all GM can come up with is two still born-and-a bunch of aborted 2 ton land barges.

Who does the forecasting there?

 

To GM's credit, they have moved forward in certain areas.

Diesels for example. Did anyone ever wonder why GM acquiesced so easily to Fiat, when Fiat excercised it's "put" option? Partly because fighting them might have jeapordized a joint venture diesel plant, in which GM wanted to retain principal interest in. GM also bought a stake in the Italian diesel manufacturer -VM Motori - which is producing the 2.9 turbo diesel for the CTS. The upcomming, GM Powertrain developed 4.5 V8 diesel, which will probably be a mainstay in future trucks and SUVs.

The purchase of Daewoo was probably one of the best investments in automotive history.

GM also seems to be clipping right along with hybrids and plug ins.

But for the purposes of our discussions in this thread, the focus is on Zeta and it's ramifications to Camaro. And lots of internal politics got us to this point. Namely, the opinion of certain GM managers that Americans don't want small to medium sized premium cars. Strange, since this the world's largest market for BMW's 3 series. Audi A4, MB C class and Infiti's G35 do pretty well too.

Zeta was frought with developemental problems from the beginning. Not the least of which was requiring extensive and expensive re-engineering in order to comply with GMNA's manufacturing process. The other problem - and the one which may be it's death sentence - is weight.

 

Is this coherent? I think not. How could these hefty foreign WunderCars be selling well here, with all that evil curb weight (example: G35 3500-3700 lb).

Ugh. Why should I even kick that dead horse again. It's been clubbed for years without mercy here

 

I agree with alot of what you guys already said plus some.

Just a what if

In the past weve heard from Bob Lutz himself say that Zeta is dead just to slow things down. In another thread, there was a video of a guy who built that 30mpg Tahoe with the saturn engine and electric motor. If that could be applied to Zeta it would add weight but might work for Buick and Saturn. The majority of the engineering being recouped in truck sales.

Hopefully Alpha is in the works. If Zeta dies hopefully Alpha can be stretched from 1 series to 3 series coup size as Camaro. If Zeta is no longer viable here hopefully it can survive in Australia China Europe and maybe Russia till it can meet CAFE. I realze its probably not that simple, just a thought...

Also as mentioned, why are Sigma and Zeta running in parallel? Can the best of both be combined giving more expensive components to Caddy?

 

The 3-series, C class and G37 are all considerably smaller than any Zeta sedan. This is what is meant by "small premium" cars. Which Zeta cars (besides maybe, possibly Camaro) have a curb weight of 3500-3700 pounds?

The G8, Holden Commodore and Caprice sit anywhere from 3900-4100 pounds or so respectively.....Even the new CTS has grown larger and porkier than the car it replaces (no, it's not Zeta though). Still, this seems to back up the point that GM is not interested in smaller premium RWD sedans outside of Europe.

 

The plan was just that. To merge the two, next decade.

Now that Zeta appears to be going away - at least here, one scenario has the next gen CTS on Alpha and Sigma continuing as Caddy's larger car platform. Sort of the same way that BMW has one architecture for the 1/3 series and one for the 5/7 series. We'll see what's in store for Sigma though.

Remember the Torana concept? Creating such an architecture had some powerful support but also some powerful enemies. Had GM gone forward with that, there was more than a pretty good chance that the "Chevy ponycar" , would have been based on that.
We'd have it right about now. And I think Camaro would have been in a far healthier position right now because of it.
Not only would Camaro have a CAFE friendly family of vehicles to share a platform with, the export potential for a tidier Camaro would have been very lucrative I believe. Afterall, Chevy is becoming a global brand and plans on selling 1 million vehicles in Europe alone, by 2010.

 

Could you just imagine what went on inside GM platform engineering the day they heard that teh Govt was looking into raising EPA ratings?

So lets do a little recap for those who are having trouble following along.

6-12 Months ago, GM has possibly 5 home-made Zetas
Camaro
Impala
Lucerne Replacement
Pontiac sedan
large Caddy sedan

Somewhere in the time line of GM putting together a RWD platform we had the two "sport bike" platforms, an "Alpha" and a "Zeta" (funny...A to Z)
Alpha is a smaller RWD platform, possibly not good at large RWD sedans with V8's?
Zeta, or VE that was going tobe made by Holden come hell or high water to replace aging VZ platform.

EPA hits, all ideas now switch to moving to smaller and lighter cars to increase gas milage via weight reduction. Problem is, the Zeta cars that were going to be replaced are possibly being blindfolded, given last rights, and shot, except for a few.
On top of that, success of a FWD Impala also sways vote to bring a large FWD platform back.

If there is a FWD Impala, what does that go on? I would assume this would be a larger version of the Epsilon, since it doesnt sound like anyone else will get a LARGE FWD sedan if the Lucerne replacement will still go RWD, and LaX goes to Epsilon II. With the DTS dead, that leaves no W/G body sized platform available. So Impala is now built on a unique large wheel base FWD platform, or a moddified FWD platform. This would pit the car against teh Taurus/Sable, Avalon, Maxima, TL and now Accord?

Camaro sounds like the only car on that sized Zeta, with a possibility of a Buick getting a larger sedan. Now, GM could sell the large RWD Buick here adn in China since Holden could not keep up with demand for top 2 car markets. Pontiac keeps getting life being jammed down its throught from its only friend, Holden.

Pontiac has no hope. Yeah yeah we keep talking how its gunna get help, but nothing stateside. No G8 for NA, just imports at a low volume. Now, Alpha is a coin toss for Pontiac. If it doesnt get Alpha, then lets look at Pontiac's line up. We have a Pontiac Cobalt, we have a Pontiac Matrix, Pontiac Malibu, Pontiac Commodore and Ute, and a Pontiac Sky. Pontiac is only there to buy volume. Its there to help keep plants volumes up. Pontiac is not getting any love any time soon. The only thing that seperates Buick from Pontiac is China. Pontiac is not sold anywhere else, and eventually IMO will just be removed. Not now, but over time.

Now, we keep goingback and forth on Zeta, lets not forget we have Sigma which when compared to Zeta, seems overkill? I have yet to see a comparision, but a G8 V6 vs a CTS non DI go head to head, id like to see who wins the performance catagory.
On first look, it seems the Commodore has mroe interior room, overall better use of space, larger trunk, and offers the saem performance, handling, and in the same package as the CTS. Problem is the "sophistication" of Sigma vs Zeta.

Now, GM still needs a large RWD platform to make cars like the CTS, DTS/STS type car, as well as the large Buick's and Holdens. How far off is a hyrbid? Take Sigma's SLA front end and a lightend and revised Zeta rear, using aluminum components instead of stamped steel, giving a true world wide platform?
Problem there is that the 25k commodore and the 65k DTS will be the same under the skin. Could GM prevent this type of thinking, and stopping people from peeking under the skirt?

Now we also have Alpha, the other sport bike platform. From what I gather, its a Kappa/Zeta hybrid? Going with what I said before, and confirmed, that going froma smaller platform and growing is better then taking abig car and shrinking it.
So now we have a larger RWD platform to accomodate a 3 series sized car for Caddy. Originally this was going to be Pontaic's baby, its return to performance and status, now all of a sudden is going away (more reason why I think that ship has sailed).
Alpha originally was designed with the idea of being a 4cyl/6cyl type car, a RWD Epsilon if you will. Looking at the Torana concept, we had a perfect G6 type replacement, not to mention a perfect BTS replacement. With Caddy's new look on less is more, they now probably want this platform to itself?

Now, just looking at the line up of cars that will use this platform, NONE seem to be in the market for a V8. Outside of teh M3, C63, and RS4, no other entry level luxury car has a V8. Torana came tomarket with a V6 TT. This poses a problem for Camaro as Alpha would have to be reengineers, cert'ed, and who knows what else for an always loved Small Block Chevy. Again, its easier to make a small car bigger, but noth teh other way around. Hopefully this is the case here. If that were to happen, we probably end up with a Camaro with tighter dimensions, but weight only 100lbs or so lighter then what we are gunna see in 12 months.

Now if Zeta goes tot his Zeta/Sigma hybrid, using Sigma's complex and advanced design with Zeta's flexibility, we can have a CTS sized car to an STS sized car, and possibly a TRUE BRX with RWD focused chassis, and maybe other?
If Zeta and Sigma do not combine, what happens to each of them? Camaro goes away, that leaves a large Buick sedan and Caddy sedan. IMO, it would be in GM's best interests if it created "Zigma" This would give GM a class of midsized to large sedans for thepeople that need them, Holden, Caddy and Buick
Alpha goes to those that want the small RWD flavor, a Camaro, Entry level Caddy, a possible G6 replacement, and perhaps a Holden/Opel replacement.

I dont even want to get into the disaster of putting the Kappa cars on Y. That is killing two birds with one stone. You take the Kappa cars, cheap fun roadsters, and put it on an expensive low volume chassis. You then take 2 of GM's prestiege sports cars, and build then next to a Saturn and a Pontiac. I can hear it now. "GM went from using leaf springs from its pick up trucks, to just using the whole chassis from a Pontiac to make this current generation of Corvette."
Ohhh yeah, and the Corvette fans will set BG ablaze....

 

Here's how I see NA Zeta production:

Camaro - much shorter production period that originally thought.

Impala - dead.

Lucerne replacement - dead. Maybe Buick will get some Chinese market PAs imported.

Pontiac sedan - dead.

Cadillac sedan - dead. Perhaps something off of Sigma, but Sigma hasn't demonstrated it can go as large as Zeta.

Anyway you look at it, the story ends with Zeta dead as a NA player.