In an interview with Autoweek, GM CEO Fritz Henderson finally stepped out from under Rick Wagoner’s shadow and stated his firmly held belief that the new Cruze and Spark will spark Chevy’s renaissance. Or, if you prefer, they’ll “fortify Chevrolet as a competitive, top-quality brand in the next two years.” True story?
“I think that in the case of Chevrolet, we have the chance in the next year or two to really put the stake into it, with Cruze, with the Spark and with the next-generation [vehicles] available we’re working on,” Henderson said. “I mean, we have a chance to fully flesh out the Chevrolet lineup.
Did Fritz just say he wanted to put a stake into Chevy? But that’s an unfortunate metaphor, not a genuinely odd, unsettling remark. Here’s the genuinely odd, unsettling remark.
“I think the Camaro is a wonderful halo vehicle for Chevrolet, but it can also be a core model,” Henderson said.
Unless you redefine “core,” the Camaro doesn’t have a hope in hell of generating the kind of sales Chevy needs to survive—even in it’s new, truncated form. Please tell me Henderson knows this.
Why shouldn’t Camaro be a core model? It’s fantastic, and has numerous possibilities for powertrain options.
Putting top quality into Chevy is the only way they’re going to keep any market share. Nobody is going to buy half done crap from Detroit any more, and I think they FINALLY woke up and realized that if they don’t get real, they’re going to get gone.
The Camaro is a good idea that needs to be well executed and built upon. For once, a vehicle that’s not a copy of a previously best selling Asian product.
When one is stuck and can’t move forward backing up is the other option. Maybe the rocking will get some momentum going. I doubt it. Has reviving 40+ year old discontinued models saved any auto makers lately?
Living in the past seldom helps in preparing for the future. Did the Challenger save Chrysler? The Camaro will be no more than a flash in the pan before the whole GM house burns down. With gas prices rising again and job losses still at a high level, who but a few nostalgic baby boomers want these fake antiques?
I have yet to see my first new Challenger on the road.
It’s fantastic, and has numerous possibilities for powertrain options.
Uhhh… such as? You can’t really put an I4 or a hybrid powertrain into a Camaro. I mean technically you could, it would just be ridiculously stupid to put anything but a high-output V6 or V8 into a heavy RWD sports coupe named “Camaro”.
Uhhh… such as? You can’t really put an I4 or a hybrid powertrain into a Camaro. I mean technically you could, it would just be ridiculously stupid to put anything but a high-output V6 or V8 into a heavy RWD sports coupe named “Camaro”.
Why? Because it’s “traditional”?
That’s the sort of crap that gets automakers’ minds stuck in the past while in the present they’re getting strung up by their underpants on a flagpole by their competition.
nevermind, double post. see below
Why? Because it’s “traditional”?
That’s the sort of crap that gets automakers’ minds stuck in the past while in the present they’re getting strung up by their underpants on a flagpole by their competition.
Anyway, yes, tradition is a part of it. People buy muscle cars for a few reasons, one of these reasons is power. A 4-cylinder engine won’t provide adequate power for a large RWD sports car. Camaro wasn’t engineered with small engines in mind.
Also, Camaro is its own brand at this point, and diluting it further with low-output models would be exactly that same sort of crap you’re talking about – brand mismanagement that killed GM.
i think fritz is high on the fact he’s had to run the camaro line double time to satisfy demand… when was the last time they had to do that?
some time last century?
also i thought it had been confirmed that they were going to make a turbocharged 4 cyl. Camaro?
this is inline with Australian ambitions for a 4 cyl. Holden Commodore (nee. Pontiac G8) which is what the Camaro is based on
there are also talks of a diesel model – how fashionable a 4 cyl. or diesel Camaro would be?
Wolven- A “Consumer Reports” car is what GM needs.
f8- 4 cylinders have plenty of power for a “muscle” car. It’s the sound that’s the issue.
Plus Ford sells plenty of low power Mustangs
I’m hoping the Spark will be a cool, nerdy city car.
The Daewoo reputation isn’t great.
It could be a core model if they work at it and improve it each generation and not leave it to die a slow 10 year death like so many others.
As for the 260 hp making it into the Camaro? Why not? Ford has no problems selling V6 Mustangs with less power and less fuel efficiency.
i don’t see the point of the mustang six
it’s a big car, it doesn’t have a lot of space inside, it has a slow crappy 1990s tech v6
why not buy a small hatch or even a chevy cobalt?
to me mustangs are about v8s – i also don’t see the point of a camaro v6
just buy a pontiac g6?
It’s too bad people don’t bother to give the facts even a cursory glance before spewing crap.
Like the fact that the reason GM got rid of the Camaro in 2002 was that it failed to sell even 50K units annually? Or the fact that Lutz said they need to sell over 100K units a year to just break even? Do you really think that given the competition, economy, and potential for gas prices to go higher helps GM sell enough Camaro’s to break even?
Why shouldn’t the Camaro be a core model? Ford sells significant numbers of the Mustang, and Fiatsler and Hyundai have competitors in this segment. I suppose it dosen’t have to be a “core” model in terms of sale numbers, but at least by popularity and something that “defines” the Chevrolet brand. Maybe.
I hope, at least, that in the future, Chevrolet will be bringing out cars that will finally compete. If GM can bring the Cruze, Spark and Orlando to market reasonably prices, I think they may actually have a chance to succeed.
GM has serious problems. They are at a hugely uncertain time right now. But, if you’ll pardon me for using a John McCain reference here, but if you trim the fat from GM, I think they can become competitive, and at least be on the path to viability. Because the US taxpayer (You and me) has already had our dollars sunk into this boondoggle. We might as well root to get a return on our unwilling investment.
the Camaro is a result of ‘old’ pre-GFC, pre-carpocalypse/carmageddon GM
hell i’m sick of the bastard already since it’s been with us since the original “Transformers” movie two years ago
in that light GM had little choice but to go ahead with the Camaro since they were too far gone to stop production
at best it was a niche model in a healthy debt fueled economy
right now what is it? a nice new deck chair on the Titanic?
on the face of it the Camaro is an interesting car… sexy and a halo model but it’s real insignificant and it could be the last interesting GM in a long time when things go really bad soon
To those talking about putting 2.0 Ecotec turbo in the Camaro: I’ve read that GM contemplated going this route, but the fuel economy was worse than with the 3.6L DI.
Considering that the Solstice GXP gets ratings of 19/27 on premium and the 700-pound heavier Camaro LT gets ratings of 18/29 on regular, I think GM made the right choice.
If I can find the link (I think I read it on the GM Fastlane blog), I’ll post it.
Throughout the history of the Mustang, Camaro, etc. the big sellers were the sixes and the bottom-end V8s. Most of those “1969 Z/28″s out there today went out the plant doors with a 250 six and a Powerglide – and believe me, a ’66 Mustang with a 200 six and a 3-speed stick, or a ’69 Camaro with a 250 and a ‘Glide, are really hideously awful cars to drive.
They are, fundamentally, high school girl cars. They were a cheap first car. And that’s the role the bottom-end ponycars still have to fill.
Back in the day, all GM’s cars shared a pile of parts, the steering box for a Camaro came off the same line as the steering box for a Chevelle, the powertrains, the rear axles, so you had massive economies of scale. One of the many ill effects of GM’s mass abandonment of RWD back in the ’80s was that there was minimal economies of scale on something like the Camaro – maybe you could share some truck engine pieces and an S10 rear axle but that was about it.
So when Lutz says they have to move 100K of the things to break even – I’d put the problem differently. They need to be selling 30-100K of each of five very different models that share the same running gear – not necessarily body platform, but drivetrains and suspensions and brakes – in order to make the exercise a success.
As for ‘small hatch or Cobalt or G6’ – the G6 is crap, the Cobalt’s mostly crap. And I’m not generally a fan of front-wheel drive.
BUT…the Cobalt SS is damn near the most fun you can have on four wheels. It still looks like a sow’s ear but it’s ALL silk purse underneath. It has VW/Honda-levels of mechanical refinement, it’s faster than a Mazdaspeed3 around any track you can name and it doesn’t beat you up like the Mazda does. Material quality still not VW, but it drives better.
And that 260HP LNF motor would do just fine in a Camaro. Actually, it’d do even better in an old BMW 2002 (or the old Cortina GT project sitting in my side yard if the budget stretched that far) but it’ll do just fine in the Camaro.
yeah but the camaro isn’t that cheap any more
$24k in LS format you can’t even buy any more
more like $26k for a v6? are many people gonna spring for that?
f8- 4 cylinders have plenty of power for a “muscle” car. It’s the sound that’s the issue.
Plus Ford sells plenty of low power Mustangs
Which n/a 4 cylinder engine in GM’s arsenal makes the same amount of hp/torque as the V6 in Camaro or even the Mustang V6? You can slap a turbo on a four-banger Cobat SS-style, but there’s no point in doing that – a turbo four offers no fuel economy or cost benefits over a V6.
If you’re talking about putting an I4 into a Camaro then there better be a good reason for it, like great fuel economy (and I guess that’s about it since I see no other reason to offer that powertrain option). A naturally aspirated I4 will offer better fuel economy but nowhere near the same amount of power. I don’t even think this is debatable. And it’s not even like GM has Honda-like ability to extract lots of hp out of a fun high-revving four-banger, every one of their n/a Ecotecs is completely unremarkable.
Well the CEO of General Motors said as much to the Press and the UAW that for GM to bring forth new models, they will be coming from off shore including Korea, China and as usual Mexico, maybe Viet Nam as well, holy cow how the World has changed in just a few years!
Lets face it, all these Companies want to save Money, thus they will purchase vehicles from cheaper Labour Markets, and so it goes eh?
Today or I should say Friday, the price of Gasoline is indeed on the way up, our dollar is up too, so people hang on to your wallets as Gasoline is on the move!
I am not “amazed” at all at GM’s ambitions. They have excellent product right now with more good stuff in the pipeline.
You really want to buy a car that was designed while the engineer sat glued to cnn.com trying to figure if GM was dead and if he would need to move his family in with his parents to avoid being homeless?
GM will be lucky if the 2010/2011 models come off the line with transmissions…
“there are also talks of a diesel model – how fashionable a 4 cyl. or diesel Camaro would be?”
in europe, germans get boners over turbo diesels…
For what it’s worth, I haven’t bought an American car in 30 years. Every time I looked, from 1979 on, all I could see was crap. I’ve bought Toyota’s (Tercel’s, Corolla’s, Sienna’s, 2 Supra TT’s, RX’s and GS’s) since then. Two month’s ago I decided to buy a Nissan GT-R. I told a friend (who’s a hardcore gearhead) about this and he told me I was an idiot. He said for the same money I could get a Camaro and mod it to what ever level I wanted. I spent some time researching things and wondering about the state of GM. Yesterday I ordered a Camaro SS. And I’m now seriously considering a Cobalt SS just for sh*ts and grins.
So, if GM can get someone like me to come back, maybe there is some hope.
I could never figure out the rationale behind the DI V6 as the ‘Base’ Engine in the Camaro. It’s the Option engine in the CTS and the Base engine in a Chevy? Also, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was a more expensive engine than the Uplevel V8s.
My guess is that 1) They didn’t want a low content V8 as the Base engine because people would simply buy that and mod it and 2)They didn’t want the Base V6 from the CTS because it didn’t out perform the V6 Mustang by a sufficient margin.
I’ll be interested to see how the DI V6 sells over time. I can’t see GM making the same profit margin on that as they do the V8s.
I take back what I said in my retro editorial. That camaro looks good. It is too heavy though, although if low cost gasoline persists for a few years, that may not stop it from being successful. However, once again, GM is behind the times. They should have made the Camaro smaller, and lighter enough that a fuel efficient engine could have given it some pep.
But did someone say the Spark is a Daewoo? Calling a Daewoo a Chevy is (please tell me I didn’t have to say this for this crowd) real stupid. The Spark should be called the Karma because it’s going to bite GM in the ass with reliability problems.
No mention of the Volt as a “core model”?! Thank goodness.
This is wonderful news. Now GM will start to make money again, because every stealership knows, they can sell the Camaro for 5k over MSRP, PLUS a thousand for the nitrogen tire fill up.
I can feel the economy recovering already.
The Camaro is “core” because it HAS to be. They just paid for design, development, and getting it into production. They MUST recover those costs or the game is over. Fortunately, it looks like they did a good job on it. And I want one. :-)
f8- nobody said it would be NA, just that it could be a 4 cylinder. 200 HP would be enough and that’s easily possible. V8 Camaros in the 80s had under 200HP.
There is no point, it’s just possible.
David Holzman- The Spark was designed in Korea by GM Daewoo much like the current Saturn VUE and the upcoming Chevrolet Cruze.
Daewoo has become GMs development arm.
Having the new Camaro as a ‘core’ model is entirely understandable when considers that the ‘new’ GM will be vastly smaller than the old one. Shifting the emphasis to niche models (sold in much smaller numbers) is probably the only hope GM has of surviving. God knows they don’t seem to be able to do it like the have in the past with high-volume, low-quality, mainstream products.
It also means a third place sales position for GM, right behind Toyota and Ford, is all but assured.
rudiger:
GM will be lucky to be in third place. Chrysler is already a mess… Bounced checks for lemon laws after Obama says the vehicles are backed by the US Government. Sadly this is just the start since the Ch. 11 is just warming up.
GM is 10X as complicated as Chrysler so the mess will be 10X bigger..
How many GM checks are going to bounce? How many people will prefer to ride a bicycle before they touch a GM product ever again?
Wagoner was right about one thing.. Bankruptcy is not a valid option to save GM… So it won’t be saved….
GM is on the wrong side of the point of no return…
GM has 3 core models: The Malibu, The Imapala, and the GMT1500 truck.
Everything else has been re-launched dozens of times (B-car offerings), or produced intermittently to the point alienation (Camaro, anything RWD that’s not a truck), dumbed down (mid 90s buicks and cadillacs) or just plain screwed up (the roof of a Pontiac Solstice).
For a better example of how this type of car is a “core” model, we should actually be considering the Ford Mustang. At least that never went away.
ford really sells that many mustangs over the camaro/challenger?
Samir: so true. That may have been what he meant by a “core” model.
Mustang hasn’t gone away in more than 40 years. But everything else has. Taurus was a “core model”. Thunderbird was. The result of letting new models languish after big expensive launches and no further development, they died from lack of involvement by their corporate parents.
Even the Cavalier could have been a core product to Chevrolet had they given it the same sort of attention Toyota gave the Corolla. 20 years of brand recognition pissed away. Perhaps a bad example, but still another instance of taking value and destroying it with cynicism and neglect.
But they’ve been humping and dumping what could have become core products until the only core models left are GM and Ford’s trucks. And the Corvette and Mustang.
The only reason that there’s any hope for the Camaro exceeding minuscule sales numbers is that gas prices have been low enough for people to pull the trigger on buying a 3800 lb 2+2 with a small trunk opening.
As has been said, you can put a turbo 4 in there, but it will have to pull 3700 lbs around through a lossy rear-wheel drivetrain; there is no mileage to be gained, there, so the V6 was a good move. Calling this a “core vehicle” is only possible if ‘juice’ stays below $2.50.
I actually like the car, but I’m going to wait a year for the bugs to get worked out, but if gas is back up to $4.00/gal, even the V6 would start to look like a “gas hog”.
On the Daewoo-Chevy issue – GM has been rolling out Chevrolet as its sub-Opel brand throughout Europe for a while, and all those Chevrolets are Daewoos.
You’ve heard of the Chevrolet Lacetti, of course? (you do watch TopGear, don’t you?) What about the Chevrolet Tacuma? The Epica? The Matiz?
The only one of that line we get here is the Aveo, which isn’t exactly a stellar piece of hardware, but you can more or less smell a future direction for the brand in all that.
JEM- The US gets the Lacetti as the Suzuki Forenza and briefly got the Epica as the Suzuki Verona.
None are great, which worries me about the Spark.
I know I’m a little slow on the uptake here…. but I just realized that there will never be a Firebird version of this car!
Anyone think a gas guzzler is a “core” model to GM Progressive owners? Get real.
GM has 3 core models: The Malibu, The Imapala, and the GMT1500 truck.
The interesting thing about that is GM is more than willing to neglect the former two in order to chase yet another Hail Mary (Camaro). Call me back when the Impala gains a Commodore drivetrain and Statesman length.
And as for people wondering why GM isn’t about to introduce a I4 for the Camaro, here’s two words for you to chew on.
Iron Duke.
Besides, I don’t see any hot sells for a 4-banger mullet machine, especially when it seems so out-of-character and so…..1980s. :)
The Spark is a joke.
Remove the funky seat fabrics, remove that silly instrument cluster and trim its eyebrows (headlights) and it’s an Aveo, clear and simple.
And the Aveo is a bad egg. In Oz (where it’s sold as a Holden Barina) it can’t even compete (sales, reviews) with the Hyundai Getz, which is the rental car agencies vehicle-of-choice.
When you can’t compete with the rental set, you’ve got problems…
Well, if one interprets “core model” to mean “the only thing that’s going to get our name in the press besides our financial predicament,” it kind of makes sense. If I were Henderson, I would think a whole host of heavily publicized Camaro special editions (i.e., low-investment buff-book bait) sounded like a pretty good idea.
I read in C/D about how GM is axing the Cobalt SS, Impala SS, and HHR-SS. That and that alone is the reason my next vehicle will be a Ford. I could have cared less about GM’s financial problems, their perceived lack of quality, or dealership experience, but when I found out about this self-castration-for-the-sake-of-appeasing-Uncle-Sugar I lost all respect for GM. Perhaps this is a side effect of Bob Lutz’s departure. I don’t know. What I do know is I’d rather buy my next car from a company of uncompromising dicks than a bunch of appeasing pussies. Don’t know if anyone in GM that matters reads these posts but if there is know this: YOU COWARDS JUST LOST A CUSTOMER.
The Camaro will be a core model when GM proliferates the Zeta platform throughout its remaining divisions. Zeta, along with the Kappa and Sigma platforms is one of the best GM has out there (Epsilon notwithstanding) and it would be a shame to axe it with the G8.
I say the G8 should be reborn as the next Impala, make it a different and unique offering to compete with the Maximas, Avalons and Azeras out there.
Isn’t there some way Kappa can be re-engineered to make it more competitive with the Miata? Or at least make it flexible enough to underpin Cadillac’s sub-CTS entry? Something about an Epsilon-based sub-CTS is just backwards thinking.
Isn’t this the same Cruze that was delayed until 2011, then delayed ‘indefinitely’ due to a severe lack of funding to finish designing it and put it into production? The same car who’s engine plant (to be shared with the Volt) was cancelled back in January? How in the heck can it be considered a “core model” when its effectively dead and on life support?
Likewise, how can the Spark be……anything, given the inability to even fund the repackaged Daewoo?
GM is as dead as Chrysler.