Bull.

Look no farther than your nearest GMT800. My '03 Silverado has a magnesium transfer case.

 

Yup. And grandma's $23,000 LaCrosse has magnesium in it's structure as well.

 

while i dont agree with Bob or Charlie about it being a deal breaker.. i do think this argument needs to be heard... some GM folks (at least Scott) read this board.. and while it's probably too late for the 5th gen, perhaps when the 6th gen rolls around they'll be able to do more for the weight

 

I agreed with most everything else, so I clipped the message to this...

With this, I must staunchly disagree.

There is NO ENGINEER worth a **** working at Ford or GM that would actually WANT to add weight to a performance car. It is NOT "sloppy engineering" that is making these cars portly.
Fact is - the designers and engineers are given an envelope inside which they must work when given a new project - typically a budget and price-target. So their wings are clipped before they leave the nest. They have to find a way to design, test, and mass-produce a part that will do a certain job flawlessly and safely for the minimal amount of investment, or the project will simply be cancelled - end of story. And working in that envelope is NOT always an easy thing to do - it certainly limits your opportunities.

Besides, even if the engineer comes up with a control arm made from aircraft aluminum that squeaks in at- or under-budget, some genius doing a black belt sigma program will come along and find a "cost-savings" by converting the part to steel to save $.78/part across 240,000 parts annually, and it will go back to steel again.

I will assist you in placing the blame for lots of "less-than-optimal" work into many cubbyholes in the industry, but I won't accept the concept that any engineer or designer at Ford or GM would intentionally do "sloppy work" to save the company a buck.

Why do so many people quickly execute the designers and engineers, and never consider management or financial people for causing less-than-optimal product to make it to market?!?!

 

Don't forget the time restraints...

 

I think it's also worth saying that NO company has unlimited resources to throw at any one vehicle project; especially one like the Camaro that is likley be at best, a small positive contribution to GM's bottom line even if it sells "well" - it wouldn't take very many "small" and "inexpensive" cahnges to eat up the profit in a vehicle. You also can't do everything in one model year which is why you'll generally see some fairly significant changes in a "brand new" vehicle in the second model year of production (doing some of the things that couldn't be done in the first year).

If the money isn't there to do the things that engineers and designers would like to do then the money simply isn't there and evey vehicle team has to decide what is really important and where to compromise; they can't please everybody (and it will always be so unless your project is to make the ultimate car with no regards to what the eventual price tag will have to be).

The fifth generation Camaro can be a great car, even if it's not slender (I don't believe any of the previous generation of F-bodies were considered "light" compared to others vehicles of the same model years).

 

DOH!!!

 

Uhhhh.....yeah. Remember back in the late '60s when the Camaro was advertised as "the closest thing to a 'Vette yet"?
Back in those days, there were options of the Camaro that were actually faster than options of the Corvette.
In 1984, I believe it was Motor Trend (might have been Road & Track) that voted the Camaro "the best handling car built in the U.S.", over the Corvette.
Yet while the Corvette has continually gotten better (and lighter-particularly from 1997-on), the Camaro was built on the same basic design from 1982-2002 (save from the front struts in 82-92 and the front shocks from 93-02).
Therefore, since the Corvette has improved so much in weight, power, and handling, I don't think it's so unreasonable to ask GM to improve the Camaro in the same areas. If GM doesn't get Camaro back to when it was "the closest thing to a 'Vette yet", it's not going to sell.

 

Can't keep it affordable but continue to do what they used to. Enough money you could do it, but by time someone spends that much they'd just buy a ****ing vette!

 

Exactly.

if GM wants to build a Corvette with a back seat and call it a Camaro they certainly "can" but I doubt anyone here would be willing to pony up the $money$ to buy it.

 

QFT! I smell an engineer in the house!

 

Don't count on it.



Don't forget the ever changing safety requirements. They account for the majority of weight added to vehicles over the years.

More truth.

There's more than one.

By the time the 6th generation Camaro rolls around, unless the cost of lightweight materials drop significantly, safety requirements will be so much more than they are today that it will probably weigh in excess of two tons. At least that is the direction we are headed if we still want Camaro to remain affordable.

 

Holy diatribe, Batman!

Perhaps I should have written a little differently- sloppy engineering as a result of rush to market. I was alluding to the pissing contest that the bean counters get into with engineering. You must believe when I say that I *know* of what you speak- I'm on the equipment side of semiconductors.

I agree with you. Mis-worded is all.

Also note that I'm not saying that just Camaro needs to be given a full-out engineering effort to save weight. The platform is part of the global architecture, and as such, these benefits should extend to all models- beyond, actually. Everything from Cobalt to Camaro is too heavy, and to me, it speaks to short-term vision (I'm speaking corporate-wide here). And, this problem isn't limited to GM, by any stretch.

It's unfortunate that there isn't an equivalent "Moore's Law" for the automotive world. No one -NO ONE- wants to be the first to put their hands up and say, "we can't do it." So, we are always looking for ways to do things that simply couldn't be done just months before. Understandably, Moore's Law has a profit incentive, which would be markedly less so with an internal mandate for better "whatever."

Perhaps it's just my concern that the direction we're moving puts us in a position of increased oil dependency, not decreased. More weight, larger vehicles- we're running against the current. Sure, we can just throw a second outboard on to fight the current and head upstream regardless, but we'll just run out of fuel sooner. Is my analogy here working for anyone?

What do you think of this guy's ideas? www.oilendgame.com There's a section on vehicle weight.

Todd

P.S. I also don't assume that all engineers are necessarily capable of seeing the big picture on the matter of reducing weight. I work with quite a few engineers that aren't very good at what they're assigned to do.

 

Maybe you can describe exactly what you mean by 'weight issues' and how they would relate to:

(a) the potential buyer?
(b) the car's space/safety/driveability?
(c) Oh, let's not forget the engineers designing the vehicle who need to design with safety in mind.

If you don't care about any of the above and still want a Camaro, take all the trim out, strip and gutt the car completely and take it to the track where I'm sure you'll enjoy it for your intended purpose.

That way, GM isn't just designing the car for your intended purpose alone! It's called thinking outside the square.

Oh and don't expect GM to honour any warranty claims!

 

Wow, your transfer case is made out of magnesium and grandma's Buick has some magnesium. How about you build the whole frame out of aluminum, and add some aluminum suspension to that too. Not even the 50k Vette has aluminum frame, but the 70k Z06 does. There is something to think about. The majority of your trucks weight is not in the transfer case and I like how we don't know how much magnesium is used in grandma's Buick.

One thing that has not helped the weight of cars is the law that said that a vehicle's roof has to support the weight of the whole car without collapse. That will add some weight.