redzed

The Facts:

1. "Team Corvette" included not only the engineering staff for the Camaro, but the marketing staff as well. I had access to one of the "big wheels" behind both cars, and we spoke over several days. The death of the F-body was WRITEN IN STONE before, or during, the 2000 model year. The end was coming after 2002 regardless of any possible sales revival.

2. The "Big Wheel" wouldn't answer the question of 2003 Federal Side Impact Standards. "No comment" is the only answer I could expect. I assumed that legal considerations precluded an answer, but I also assumed that A-pillar design/windshield angle was the ultimate engineering factor that would eventually end production. I doubt that we'll ever know the whole truth for this issue.

3. The "Big Wheel" said that GM was producing all of the F-bodies it had intended to, and that sales met "expectations." Considering that the Camaro and Firebird were never incentived to a particularly great extent, we should interpret this as an intentional drawdown of production. (Should we blame low F-body profits/losses, weak consumer demand, fleet CAFE averages that must offset SUVs, or the 2003 Safety Requirements? Take your pick.)

4. It was also revealed to me that the 1999 Nomad showcar wasn't intended as a Camaro replacement - and that was when the concept was still fairly new. Something "like the Nomad" was possible, but in the long term. The "Big Wheel" also hinted at an El Camino inspired vehicle (the vehicle in question turned out to be the SSR). I can also reveal that the Vortec Inline-6 isn't intended for any future passenger car - no discussion was made of 4 and 5-cylinder derivitives at the time.

5. Plans for the 5th Generation Camaro were as follows:

a. It would be a lower volume, more upmarket car.

b. The car would be a "more performance oriented" 2+2, similar in execution to the Corvette. However, it wouldn't be built on the Corvette platform.
The apparent intention was to build an even lower slung car, not a "retro" Mustang clone

c. Powertrain choices were undecided, since any new car was expected to arrive after a substantial hiatus. The year 2005 was bandied around, but the issue hadn't been decided, and probably still isn't.

Despite the fact that this information pre-dates the arrival of Mr. Lutz, it came from a candid GM executive who was an automotive enthusiast at heart. I couldn't believe that he would answer my every question -or almost. While I don't intend on the revealing the name of the "Big Wheel," or the entire circumstances surrounding the conversations, I hope this will end some of the uninformed anger surrounding the death of the F-body.

Z28Wilson

Everything sounds ok except the last part. Maybe that was the plan for the Camaro pre-Lutz, but everything lately seems to indicate a return to a high-volume, more conforming Camaro. Which is good in the sense that it will keep the price down, which is what we most desperately want and what Camaro has always been...affordable performance!

------------------
Mark

94 Z28, Red, A4, 3:23
Lone Mods--LPE CAI, !Lapeer Dragway.

Best time: 14.658 @ 95.1
with SES light on and Driver off! (First and only time at track)

The F-body will NEVER die.

Burmite

Good info but I have a few problems with it.

-RedPlanet has emphasized the importance of the V6 in sales.
-Formula79 has told that the 5th gen would have the emphasis on the V6 car with the idea of selling 100,000+ units a year.

This info of a "lower volume, more upmarket car" seems to contradict what we have taken for granted here as the basis of the 5th gen. It contradicts two pieces of information that seemingly coincided so well that we could take it for fact. Unless circumstances regarding the 5th gen's future have changed that much.

-I'm not surprised powertrain choices haven't been decided on. The Gen IV small block will be in prodiction by then with its many variants. The choice of the variant (like the 5.3 is to the LS1 is to the LS6 is to the 6.0) is probably up in the air.

-An even lower slung car? Wow. This car is going to start nipping at the heels of the Corvette a bit too much (A fully SLP optioned 2002 SS nipped quite a bit at the heels of the C5 coupe). But I always overquestion this part, but an even lower stance on this car? What chasis will it be built on?! You can talk about this and that and what you want on a 5th gen, but when it comes down to it, you have to look at realities on the car. An even lower apperance leads me to believe that it has to be Sigma, although I was lead in a thread a few days ago to believe it would be a hybrid W chasis, V chasis, and Sigma all chopped up and mixed into some weird fruitcake. The GTO isn't that low slung and neither is the CTS. This leads me to believe that this is really odd to have a car that low slung a la Corvette. So I'm simply confused here.

-2005? Seems soon compared to other info out there now. So for it to be ready by then, the engine, drivetrain, and chasis must be chosen by now. But it isn't. So I think that's a bit optimistic.

Overall, it still seems like nothing has been decided on and the enthusiasts inside GM are still fighting for a 5th gen.

Doug Harden

The death decision was made in 1996/97. The f-body lived a full two years beyond the original death date. The ONLY reason we got two more years and the LS1 was through the tireless efforts of a few people.

The Camaro will always be a "value" priced performance car....changes will be made to make it more "user friendly", i.e. more upright seating, actual 4 place seating, better visibility, etc....

The efforts are to sell more not less Camaros....at one time they tried to justify a niche car, but that got shot down faster than a turkey at Thanksgiving.

Old info isn't very relavent today.....

cmsmith

You indicate this info is old and it sounds like it. One thing that gets me is the lower ride remark. If the Camaro gets any lower, the next time you go down the road while an army of ants is crossing, the undercarriage will get ripped out. hehehe

formula79

I can only assume who you talked to...seeing as the information he knew and when he knew it...he is not has high up as the people I talk to. To put it simply...eveything pre Lutz is out the window...things change daily at GM. The car wouldn't pass teh new impact standards...and I had a GM exec tell me that point blanks...so i don't see why they would be secretive? They intend to make the next Camaro a high volume car based of a derivitive of the Sigma architecture. There is alot of talk that it will be based off something other than Sigma...howeve rthere is alot of misunderstanding out there. Sigma is an architechture...not a platform. It is highly adapatable and will house many vehicles. Saying that Sigma costs too much becaause its a Cadillac chassis is the same as saying that you can't make a sub-$25K full size pickup because a GMC Sierra can cost upwards of $45K. It is simply a false argument made by someone who doesn't fully understand what they are saying.

Sigma is VERY adaptable..and does not mean one set chassis...It is a term that describes GM's next generation RWD architechture. I know its hard to follow...but that is what I have been told everytime I question Sigma.

guionM

Old information. Alot of what he said was in the Road & Track article on the 5th gen Camaro some months ago (the one with the modified picture of a blue SSR as a Camaro).

The only change in impact standards is the upgrade in side impact, which the lame-duck Mustang has no problem meeting in a cost effective manner. I never found anything that would relate to the windshield, and Chrysler has the same angle & placement relative the driver, so I haven't been won over on that yet.

As far as Camaro based on "sigma", time will tell. Architechure is the structure of the car. The architechure of the W body gives us a wide range of cars in which basically the skin is different. While Camaro is most likely to have sigma components, I don't see a reskinned CTS as a Camaro. Not saying you're completely wrong, but I don't see the tall firewall of CTS being the same as Camaro (by comparison, Ford's DEW's is noticeably lower).

Again, everything we say is just a guess, anything I find is just a guess (though a more educated one), and the people who directly know aren't saying anything to anyone worth a damn. So I'll just rely on the guys in the trenches.

jg95z28

You may find this interesting:

GM gets behind rear-wheel drive

New cars will require investment of millions

Years after steering its customers toward front-wheel-drive vehicles, General Motors Corp. is planning a new series of passenger cars with traditional rear-wheel drive, Vice Chairman Robert Lutz said.

The rear-wheel-drive series is slated for one or more of GM's high-volume U.S. brands -- Chevrolet, Pontiac and Buick.

GM will invest hundreds of millions of dollars to develop the cars and either refit existing assembly plants or build new ones to produce them.

The plan represents a major philosophical shift within GM's engineering and sales organizations. The world's largest automaker committed its high-volume passenger-car programs to front-wheel drive decades ago, spending vast amounts of time and money developing the cars and convincing the American public that front-wheel drive is safer than and superior to rear-wheel drive.

"Over time, we will have a nice blend of some architectures that remain front-wheel drive and other architectures that go rear-wheel drive," Lutz said in an interview at the North American International Auto Show.

The new cars will be based on a less-costly, higher-volume version of GM's new Sigma luxury vehicle architecture, said Lutz, GM vice chairman for product development and chairman of GM North America.

The likely GM candidates to switch to rear-wheel drive include the Chevrolet Impala and Monte Carlo, Pontiac Grand Prix or Bonneville and Buick Century, Regal or LeSabre. GM has also considered the Sigma architecture as a basis for a Camaro or Firebird replacement. The program would also likely spawn the replacement for GM's successful Australian sedan, the Holden Commodore.

Because rear-drive is associated with the classic powerful American sedan and offers the potential to sell image-building, high-performance models, the program could reinvigorate GM's passenger-car sales. GM traditionally dominated that market, but has been losing ground for three decades.

"It's a gamble, unless they plan on a massive rethinking of their product lines," said Jim Hall, vice president for industry analysis at consultant AutoPacific. "GM needs more rear-drive cars, but not every division needs one. It must be based on what's the right car for each division. There are plenty of very happy Toyota Camry and Avalon owners who don't know or care that their car is front-wheel drive."

The Sigma platform is the foundation of the new Cadillac CTS sport sedan. Its basic components and dimensions -- the architecture, in GM development parlance -- will spawn a wide range of future Cadillacs, including the rear-drive replacement for the Seville luxury sedan and an all-wheel-drive crossover wagon based on the Cadillac Vizon concept car. All of those cars will be assembled in GM's new Lansing plant, which opened Jan. 9.

The upcoming Cadillac vehicles will take that plant to its production capacity, meaning that any additional models will have to come either from new assembly plants or existing plants reconfigured to build the cars.

GM would probably need to sell around 200,000 of the new rear-drive cars annually to justify the investment needed to build a new plant, Hall said. However, if the cars replace models GM already builds, such an investment would be part of the normal cost of doing business as GM replaces models at the end of their life cycles.

Changing volume brands to rear-wheel drive will take time, said Lutz, who was hired by GM Sept. 1 and has been charged with revitalizing its product line.

The Sigma architecture was developed as the basis for Cadillacs priced from the CTS's $29,990 to a possible $60,000 flagship sedan, people close to the program say. Lutz refers to the Cadillac architecture as the "premium Sigma platform," while the less-expensive cars will derive from what he called the "high-volume Sigma platform."

Executives at GM's higher-volume brands have previously expressed guarded interest in adding a rear-wheel-drive sedan to their lineups. However, they were concerned over whether their high-volume brands could afford the sort of sophisticated electronic traction and stability control systems that Cadillac will use to make its rear-drive cars manageable on snow and ice.

GM executives close to the Sigma program have said that the architecture could be used for less-expensive cars, but that sales projections would have to justify at least another assembly plant's worth of production before GM would approve any non-Cadillac cars using the architecture.

"It gets very expensive to be the next GM division that wants a Sigma product," one senior executive said. "You have to be willing to commit to the cost of a new plant."

It's very unlikely any existing GM assembly plant could produce the high-volume Sigma cars without being gutted and rebuilt.

The vehicles and the assembly process are intended to be flexible enough that a single assembly line can produce vehicles as different as the compact CTS, full-size Seville and the Cadillac crossover wagon based on the Vizon. The difference for drivers

If the new high-volume rear-drive cars succeed, the program could be the key to reversing decades of eroding market share for GM. It could also change the face of the U.S. auto industry, by forcing GM's competition to respond with similar products.

The Chrysler Group has already committed to rear-drive replacements for its full-size 300M and LHS family of full-size sedans.

While Chrysler's rear-drive program is well underway, GM's move could put Ford Motor Co. at a competitive disadvantage. Ford's only North American rear-drive sedans are the aging Mercury Grand Marquis and Ford Crown Victoria, and the expensive Lincoln LS and Town Car.

GM built its last North American full-size sedan in 1996, when it phased out the Chevrolet Caprice Classic, Impala SS, Buick Roadmaster and Cadillac DeVille. It began its move to front-drive to develop smaller, more fuel-efficient cars following the 1970s oil shortages. GM built 167,103 of those cars in their last year of production.

Front-wheel drive better uses interior space, but it is widely considered a compromise when used in big cars. While it improves traction in slippery or wet conditions, front-drive cars generally cannot handle as much torque or horsepower as rear-drive, meaning that a full-size car often feels underpowered.

New developments in electronic traction control and stability control now allow automakers to make their rear-drive cars more practical for snowy climates.

While those systems can still cost several hundred dollars per car, suppliers and some GM engineers say they believe the cost will fall to the point that they can be offered on high-volume cars without a substantial price increase. The same thing happened with antilock brake systems, which began as $1,000-plus options on luxury sedans.

http://c6firebird.freeservers.com/rwd.html