Does it actually make a difference?

Is there anyone on here who is so insecure that he actually cares whether a car is a "chick" car?

 

I guess it's the same thing as Vette using leafsprings, I mean that's antiquity wagon with vietnamese suspension. It doesn't matter that it beats 911 GT2 around the track, it's that dam leafspring suspension that got the buzz going for how american cars are in the stone age.

Most foreign automakers made a move to IRS in the last decade or two even. It's more a new technology gotta have than useful to have, same as DOHC vs OHV argument. If it isn't "new-tech", it's not worth my attention.

Hardly anything that can be done about it.

 

It appeared that you wanted to use one rule for the Mustang and another rule for the fbody. My point was - whatever you do, use the same rule.

 

You're supposed to ding-dong... you're a car nut like me!
I know that because you are on a board like this reading a thread like this <duh> just like I am.
I prefer the land missiles too, but I am also keen enough to realize that the market won't support a car dedicated to pure performance at the expense of daily conveniences. The epitome is a car that offers maximum amounts of both in the same platform.

 

In fact, I just drove my first manual 05 Mustang GT around town yesterday afternoon. A red GT, manual, deluxe black leather interior. The car was awesome IMO. It really felt Lexus-like compared to the previous models. Smooth is understating it greatly. Steering is a one-finger deal, and it responds excellently. Over bumpy interior city streets, the car was as quiet and complacent as a luxury car - NO JOKE.

The most surprising thing I took away from the drive - which NOBODY has thusfar mentioned in the magazines or internet - was the feel of the clutch. OMG - it was effortless to operate!!! The first time I depressed it, I thought something was wrong - it was too light on the foot. It operates as smooth as glass, not "grabby" or peculiar at all. The new shifter is infinitely better than the old one too. All accolades are true in that area.

One (and only) gripe thus far in my new Mustang adventures... the seat belt. It is a pain to reach completely around yourself to grab the seat belt when buckling in. It was a good 8" to 10" behind my shoulder (up on the B-pillar), and the seats hold you so well, it's a real effort to move yourself around that far to reach it once seated. The tiny buckle is a bit hard to get too if you have a coat on. But that's not a lot to gripe about in a totally new car.

One other thing I wanted to note... there is no "MUSTANG" script anywhere on the outside of this car... not on the gas cap or anywhere. But there is a big running horse on the windshield!

.02

 

That wasn't my point...

 

Well, aren't percentages easily thrown off and affected by numbers . So how's that more accurate? Of course the numbers will vary more on the camaro side, because the sample or representative size is MUCH smaller. It's easier to achieve a greater proportion of X buyers/sales when you're dealing with much smaller numbers. Your lambo example makes is a classic example of this. Only 300 guys could have bought lambo's, and that could easily make up something like 90% of their total sales. Hard to compare that to say a higher volume sports car like Vette, and say the vette is a "chicks" car based on percentages alone.

In the end, there's a huge price and class difference between Lambo and Vette, but the Camaro and mustang were direct competitors competing for the same market/customers/sales, and it's odd how one is considered more a males car on here when the other attracts 4 times the guys. The truth of the matter is, Camaro not only failed to sell to the female buyers, but it appears to have failed to sell to the guys as well because of the 1:4 ratio it is giving upto its cross-town rival the mustang. Just my observation because guy sales did poor too when compared to mustang. In fact, you could remove female sales off the mustang, and the mustang would have still outsold total female and male camaro and firebird sales combined. Some strong numbers that are hard to ignore.

If it's not factual, and based off opinion/generalization (which this is), it's pretty much an illusion/stereotype. One could look and say “hey, bug is a chicks car because it has a built in flower-vase” which is generally associated with chicks and a certain group of guys, but that distinction is not anywhere near that clear on mustang, or in my previous example, vette.

Hmmm, I've sat inside both mustang and camaro (owned both), and there's not one single thing inside the camaro that screamed "male" any more than mustang. That only thing that jumped out on me or that i thought of was "damn, these cheap interiors suck, with camaro coming off as marginally better due to layout of cockpit/dash area than mustang". Never tried to associate them with genders.

My 2 cents .

 

Then we agree to disagree...not one point you made can be considered a solid argument.

If 90% of males buy a car, then its pretty safe to assume its a "guy" car. You can't say "Oh well only 300 guys bought this car, so it must be a girl car" It doesn't work like that. I'm not saying whether GM failed at aiming its car at a specific sex, I'm saying that you have to look at %'s more than #'s. I think you grasped that, but I really can't grasp your response to it.

If its not factual, then its an opinion. That doesn't make it an illusion or stereotype, it makes it an opinion If I drive a Beetle, SUV, even a Mini, it feels feminin to me, hense, its a girl car IMO. I'm not stereotyping anything, a car is a car, I doubt one Beetle is going to make me feel different about another one from the factory.

Like I said, we agree to disagree, I don't think we can sway eachothers views one way or another.

 

What’s there not to grasp? Percentages are easily influenced by volume. I could create my own car and sell two copies of it (probably to myself and car-less brother since it’ll be crap), and say that the demography is 100% biased towards young males because 100% of the sales went to males with an average age of 17. Does this automatically make it a "mans" car or a "youth" car? It’s meaningless to tout percentages or proportions when dealing when such low volume, and this is especially true when comparing it to something of higher volume which gives the whole percentage thing less meaning.

But we are NOT talking about some limited edition car who’s production was purposely limited. We are talking about a car that was sold through thousands of Chevy/Pontiac dealerships and whose target market is the general masses much like it has been for the 24 some years before intro of 4th gen. Lambo specifically caters their vehicles to the middle aged affluent male, can something like that be said about Camaro? Did GM cater them to the male crowd specifically with the F4?

You can look at the proportion of male and female buyers and say “yes, the proportions are a bit more male-biased on camaro than mustang”, but you cannot conclude with “it’s more of a man’s car” based off simple proportions alone. That latter statement is not true, and the 1:4+ ratio of male buyers favoring the mustang clearly points that out.


Opinions are usually ones own perceptions (at time illusions) .

Fair enough. Agree to disagree.

Pretty meaningless either way. In the end, the camaro will need all the male and female sales it can get to sell in high volume. It's always been a people's car with most of the gender differences tied to powerplant options more than anything.

 

The Camaro and Firebird appealed to more male buyers than female buyers.

The Mustang appealed to more male buyers than female buyers.

The end.

(The Mustang IS more girly though )

 

There are plenty of dedicated land missles out there...
Lambo's, Ford GT, Ferraris, Vipers....

The compromises assosiciated with these cars, the message Im getting anyway, are what many would want in an F5.

The more purpose driven your car becomes, the less you are going to sell, and the higher you must charge per unit.

So, either PRAY the next Camaro appeals to a huge portion of the buying public, or get ready to pay too much, or not have a car for long (or at all).

It would seem that Ford realized this long ago.

Also, I agree with Gold_Rush, and whoever it was that made the statement that Mustang isnt a girls' car as much as it is a peoples' car. It appealed to everyone. Didnt someone here bring up that more women are buying cars today than men? What would it say about the Mustang if the majority of the buying public was female, and the Mustang still sold more than half to males?

 

AMEN!!!

This guy has got it!

The only part you forgot to put in there is...
If it costs too much for the common folk, and doesn't share many of it's parts with common cars, it will be VERY costly and/or WON'T LIVE LONG either!
It's takes a company's special blessing to keep a car line alive at marginal or no profits, but sometimes they do just for the "halo" effect it brings. It's like paying for live, functional "advertisement".

 

He actually presented his arguments very well, i don't see what in there does not make for a "solid" argument. He did use some "facts", whereas this debate over words which so often goes on here unproductively is truly an opinion, and it does not accomplish much.

And numbers are very crucial in any statistic. That's how it works. You cannot compare a sample of 300 to a sample of 160,000 in the context that you do. 300 is not an accurate representation of 160,000. NOw, if you were to randomly sample 300 buyers of the Mustang, you could use that number as a representative of 160,000, but 300 lambo buyers are such a different demographic than Mustang that it hardly makes sense to compare.

 

So this is an abstract debate on what makes a girl car versus a guy car, with no particular significance attached thereto?

"chick car" certainly seems to be used in a pejorative sense, at least by those who assert that the Mustang is one.

I would hope that a new Camaro appeals to women, because otherwise GM leaves off a big chunk of the potential market. If that makes it a "chick car", I don't care. As long as it has an LS2 option . . . .

 

If the new camaro doesn't appeal to women, it will fail. There is the whole point of this thread in one sentence. Also, lamest thread ever.