Since the '10 Camaro is going to be within an inch or two of the '04 GTO/Monaro, I never quite understood the logic of doing both. If they made it any larger, it would be a big big boat.

 

Actually, it is news.

Holden was waiting on approval for what was essentially a longer wheelbase Camaro that was to have different sheetmetal (keep in mind who was developing the Camaro ), and also potentially sold under the Pontiac nameplate.

Holden was pushing to make it at Elizabeth City if it wasn't going to be made in North America. That plan started it's death roll when US-Aussie exchange rates went sour & the VE didn't reverse the decline of Australia's large car sales.

Instead, it now seems that Holden is on the early stages of working on "something else" that apparently is the Alpha.

The GTO that was killed 2 years ago was the one that died when GM North America put their Zeta program on hold and reigned in the number of programs based on it.

Holden was ready to do the new Monaro. The fall of the US dollar against the Aussie dollar doomed the GTO as much if not more than CAFE.

The car was piggybacked off of the higher profile Camaro development, and therefore all but invisible. Could have been out 12-18 months after Camaro.

Shame it won't happen now. It would have essentially cost GM next to nothing. Barely more than sheetmetal stamping and interior sourcing.

 

Very, very close Branden.

In 1986, car makers pressured congress to relax fuel economy standards for 2 years by something like 1.5 mpg because they felt it was unreachable and would throw people out of work (this was the time GM's Roger Smith thought nothing of throwing thousands out of work).

But a funny thing happened when congress dropped CAFE numbers for those 2 years....
...actual CAFE numbers rose!! This despite a drop in fuel prices during that same period!

As far as delays, it was actually the emission standards that was delayed several times. I don't have the years (no time to look them up right now), but it was at least 2 and perhaps more times that the standards had to be postponed.


As far as relative development costs go, the 5th gen really didn't cost GM very much at all. The entire Zeta structure cost just $1 billion Aussie dollars ($748 million US dollars at the time), and pulling the larger WM Statesman off that architecture cost $190 million ($142 million at the time), the new Camaro most certainly cost under $500 million. Perhaps alot under $500 million. As a yardstick, the Camaro's 1998 redesign cost $250 million. GM plans to spend over $400 million just redoing the Oshawa plant.

The 5th gen Camaro was done very cheap. Therefore, it could very easily have a short life and still make GM a tidy profit.

There might very well be alot of merit to what you're thinking out loud.

 

Camaro Hood: $25 Million
Firebird Hood: $25 Million
camaro Front Fenders: $25 Million
Firebird Front Fenders: $25 Million
Camaro Headlights / Tails: $25 Million
Firebird Headlights / Tails: $25 Million
New Camaro Wheels: $25 Million
New Firebird Wheels: $25 Million
Adapting Existing Corvette Engine: $25 Million
Pay off Chrysler for using their grille on 98 Camaro: $25 million

Total: $250 Million
I dunno, it sounds really steep to me...

 

he was talking just camaro.

 

Why would GM believe that Camaro would have a relatively short lifespan?

As long as it follows the Mustang's successful formula, there's no reason why it can't continue for as long as Ford sell Mustang... which to me means it will be ongoing.

IMO, the reason why Mustang has been so successful is that it has remained true to its original formula (based on a sedan platform) while Camaro/Firebird tended toward the low-slung Corvette formula. Normally sports cars don't attract as many buyers as muscle cars derived from sedan platforms.

 

We're just talking about this particular generation of Camaro, not Camaro as a whole.

I suspect this gen Camaro will be around less than 5 years but at least 3.

After that, I'd expect a replacement based on a smaller RWD chassis. Whether GM decides to call that Camaro or not (it probally wouldn't have a 6.2 liter 400++ V8) is only speculation.

 

Never really thought to do this before.... but 100K camaros at an average of 25K (probably end up being higher?) is 2.5 Billion dollars

 

So let's start a poll, how long will the next camaro hiatus last.

 

There won't be a hiatus. Unless GM has a 6th gen Camaro in the works and on pace before they kill the 5th gen, Camaro will go away... forever.

 

It's an impressive amount of income, but by the time that you subtract all of the engineering, development, and testing (ED&T) costs, the tooling money, the capital investments, the marketing expenses, and of course the components and labor that go into each vehicle, it starts getting difficult to make any money.

 

Better judge would be say an average profit of 3k after operational and material costs, 100k units = 300,000 dollars.

That may be low on the profit mark I have no idea, just throwing out numbers that might mean more.

 

Um, $3,000 x 100,000 = $300,000,000

 

15% is really frickin' high for a per-unit profit estimate! Toyota, as a corporation, does about 10%. Porsche, the self-billed "world's most profitable car company", does about 1.4B Euro profit on sales of about 7.3B Euro (roughly 19%).

As important as the auto industry is to industrial societies, there's not much money to be made.

 

3-4 years!?!?

It's not even born yet, and an early death is already being predicted by those "in the know"?

That's disturbing, to say the least.