Correct. Camaro wasn't discontinued for just one or two reasons. In fact, it's a supreme credit to the people behind Camaro & Firebird that they wern't discontinued earlier.

Issues to the f-body included the "A" pillar, and the need for a reengineering of it or the addition of side airbags; having a factory that had too much capacity and too little storage; multiple vehicle assembly lines (which Ste. Therese didn't & was unable to have); lack of investment or commitment from GM management; lack of investment once the f-body was given to the Corvette guys (if you had a few dollars in your budget, and you had Corvette and Camaro, where would you spend the money?); and that's just scratching the surface!

As for the Camaro name, GM owns it lock stock & barrel (it's even copyrighted by GM). As mentioned above, the UAW strike from about 3 years ago pretty much state that if GM closes a plant that makes a particular model, there is a stipulation that that model can be discontinued only because of drop in sales, and can't be redesigned and reintroduced within a certain period of time without GM paying pretty sizeable penalties to the CAW(Canadian Auto Workers Union) and the province of Quebec (refund a % of the tax breaks GM recieved). If GM were to close Ste. Therese and moved F-body production elsewhere, it would cost them a bundle if done before a certain timespan.

DON'T blame the UAW or the CAW. Notice that shortly after that agreement, GM stopped advertising the Camaro and Firebird.

 

Yes...now its all starting to make sense to me....Drop the sales purposely so you can close down the plant....brilliant or evil scheme?

 

It really pisses me off to know that a bunch of stupid little things like these resulted in the cease of production of an automotive legend. I A a Camaro fan to the core, and I don't think management and accounatnts can know how deeply this affected some people.

 

...thanks your lucky stars that the people responsible for this major FU are gone...

 

Yeah, but I'd still like to give them a bear claw hand to the ear, , followed by a one-knuckle-fist to the base of their cerebellums.

OK, I'll stop being violent now.

 

GM got caught with thier pants down with the camaro.

 

Not to defend the former regime (I think you know me better than that), the 4th gen wasn't initially planned to last as long as it did without a major restyle or a new chassis.

Discounting the factory issue, Camaro was run into the ground. By that I mean a new Camaro was put off and money starved till it was at the point (roughly 1997-98) where GM had to invest money to reengineer the car (right then and there) or the car would have a gap in production or died.

To their credit, they at least looked at the Monaro as a Camaro replacement (they also looked at using a FWD chassis ).

My guess taking everything into consideration, the strike from 1996 played into GM's hands, even though it seemed GM inexplicably gave away the store when they settled.

Consider:

* GM needed to close a plant, the unions weren't having that, the issue of Camaro was up in the air.
* GM had already closed plants in the US, Camaro was made in Canada. If GM closed any more US plants, what would be the reaction of US unions....even they would point to the underultilized F-body plant as a plant that should be closed instead.
* For a new Camaro to be ready by 2002 or 2003 it had to be started in 1996, right about the same time of that strike

Keeping in mind that a car company's purpose is 1st and foremost to make money, there is a tendancy for car companies (like all other major corperations) to have money or management experts running the place. If you have a group (Unlike Rick Wagoner, who is most certainly a different kind of money-guy CEO!) who don't have an apprieciation of product history or even enough knowledge to know who to listen to, the F-body was a huge, fat target for the chopping block. Especially when there is no other chassis around suitable to base it's successor on.

It's a pretty crappy thing, but taking emotion out of it and viewing it from a business sense, it was a pretty ingenious move on GM's part. It also shows the pitfalls of having people from outside the car business running a car business.

The rest of GM's carline sufferend as well. The old team also saved money by making no plans beyond a reskinning of GM's mid & full sized cars. The mid sized cars (Grand Prix, Regal, and possibly Impala) are too far along to change. The Full sized ones aren't.

GM now has a solidly "Car Business" management team in place now. You have someone knowledgeable on products actually running product