Interesting piece at the WaPo on the internal tensions at GM over the Volt:
Even now, as General Motors fights for survival, there is something ambivalent about its prescription for saving itself, a conflict implicit in a bit of symbolism that recently greeted arrivals to the Detroit Metropolitan Airport even before they reached baggage claim.
One of GM’s touted new automobiles sat on display in the center of the automaker’s airport gift shop. It was not the coming electric car, the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, championed by Bob Lutz, the GM executive most identified with the Hail Mary that the vehicle represents for the bankrupt company, which faces the immediate future as a ward of the federal government. It was not one of the relatively new GM hybrids. It was not even a mid-level sedan called the Chevy Malibu, which has received flattering reviews and awards, in part for its better-than-average fuel economy.
It was instead a car that flies in the face of all the worries about the American automotive industry, all the calls to make it more environmentally responsible and therefore more viable: the 2010 Chevrolet Camaro SS with a V-8 engine, General Motors’ version of the fast and powerful model that automobile enthusiasts commonly call a muscle car.
Maybe I’m just being naive here, but if the Camaro is a profitable division, and the hybrids and green cars turn out to be profitable, why can’t they keep offering both? What am I missing?
John Harrold
I say this as someone who has never owned a car and rides a bike pretty much everywhere I go.
Moral scolds exist on both ends of the political spectrum. This article is pretty much driven by the point that what people want shouldn’t drive the automobiles in production. Instead production should be driven by what is best for people. And if you don’t know what’s best for you then moralizing schmucks like the author of that piece will tell you what you want.
Death By Mosquito Truck
The gummint is gonna force us all to drive camaros.
jcricket
@Death By Mosquito Truck: Bitchin. Socialism rocks.
My main question is: Am I gonna have to grow a mullet now that Obama has nationalized the hairdresser/barber industry?
ChrisS
People want drive through liquor stores, too.
The only thing worse for GM to showcase is a new SUV. They got in trouble by focusing all their attention on gas guzzlers before.
Whatever… people don’t fucking learn. I could give two shits anymore. Everybody wanted McMansions in the suburbs and three SUVs to ferry them and their brats around to big-box retailers selling chinese crap that they don’t need paid for by credit cards and HELOCs. How’d that work out?
Maybe, sometimes, what people want isn’t priced accordingly because the costs aren’t fully accounted for, and maybe, just maybe, we should be looking for ways to to limit our consumption of energy.
But I’m just a fucking moral scold.
Slaney Black
The Volt is a freakin’ joke. The technology is 2 or 3 major leaps away from the current state of the world. Only point of the Volt is to offer out a shiny carrot of “look, someday we’ll be better than everyone!” It’s an enabler of inertia, not the solution to it.
If they were serious about low emissions, they’d have a credible subcompact ready to go yesterday and a native hybrid and/or clean-diesel drive ready to go out next week.
Alright, they’re in a fucked up situation, so give them a little time. But still, the Volt is not a credible mass-market technology. Subcompact is easy, diesel is easy, and hybrid isn’t too hard either.
The Volt is like getting stomach bypass surgery instead of eating less (subcompact) or exercising (diesel or hybrid). It’s an extreme solution that puts off consideration of reasonable ones.
biff3000
Didn’t they already discontinue the Camaro once? And now they think that’ll be part of the ticket back to solvency? Oh well, I’m sure they know best. *snort*
Tim
@Slaney Black:
Spoken like someone that has never worked in the auto business.
I certainly cannot defend most of what GM has done to put themselves in this position, however it’s not as simple as you would like it to be. I worked there for years, and would regularly lament the fact that they were putting all their eggs in one basket with regard to building trucks. Unfortunately I was one of many who could see the writing on the wall, but were whispers in the wind of a corporate culture that didn’t look past the next fiscal quarter.
GM has an excellent small car coming within a year; it’s called the Chevy Cruze. The problem is that development of the Cruze started well prior to the oil spikes of last summer. They have pushed development of the North American version of the car ahead as far as they could, but GM is not the sole company involved; there is a host of suppliers working on it as well, and it’s no simple matter to get all of them to suddenly push the parts and tooling they are designing ahead of schedule.
With regard to the Volt… GM is already developing the next generation of the drivetrain that will be used in the Volt, but you have to start somewhere. Just like Toyota and Honda lost a great deal of money on the first generations of their hybrid cars, GM is not going to make money on the Volt initially, but they still need to do it to get the whole company and industry on the path to profitable, and much more efficient, extended range EV’s.
If I had to speculate, I would say that the source of tension within GM with regard to the Volt is a result of the fact that their business case for the it is predicated on $4/gallon gasoline.
smiley
@ChrisS:
OT but there used to be a drive-through liquor store/bar in my home town. You could pull up to the window and order a daiquiri, or whatever, to go. They’d serve it in a plastic cup with a lid and a straw. I also remember a drive-through beer distributorship in Pennsylvania.
geg6
smiley: There still are drive-thru beer distributors in PA. There are several within a ten mile radius of my home. But you can only buy cases and the open container law keeps all but the most stoopid from popping any cold ones in the car.
The Other Steve
Don’t worry. gas will be $4/gallon by August.
you read it here first.
Slaney Black
@Tim: Well, yes I appreciate the fact that GM has had a major R&D crunch over the last few decades. You have 8 divisions you can’t rehab 2 without leaving another 3 to wither.
Still the Volt seems like unwise shoot the moon strategery to me. Toyota did hybrid from a position of strength, not weakness. Hope I’m proven wrong.
BTW: why does Detroit hate diesel so much?
gex
@ChrisS: This. But just try getting people to realize the full costs of gas consumption. These car purchasing desires are being shaped by a grossly distorted market. Between the subsidies for the oil industry, the unrealized costs of pollution and sprawl, and not to mention the wars in the Middle East we need to have every decade or so, the cost of the cars that Americans want is not being priced into the vehicle.
Remember what kind of cars Americans wanted just a few summers ago when gas was $4/gallon? They didn’t want the cars that
BMGM (Edit: although I like the typo) is displaying front and center now.malraux
@The Other Steve: While I would bet on $4/gal gas this summer, I wouldn’t bet a lot. That said, next summer I sure as heck would. The summer after that I’d bet on $5-6/gal gas.
steve s
I don’t know about August, but gas will def be $4 a gallon again when the economy recovers. America is about 25% of global demand, and when the recession ends and demand recovers, since the supply is pretty inflexible, price will soar.
When I buy my next used car in 6 months, the decision is going to be about 80% based on MPG and reliability.
Left Coast Tom
They should offer a variety of vehicles. Thing is…nobody has to push GM to make giant lumbering dinosaurs. With more reasonable sized vehicles they’ve had to be pushed every step of the way. Gas was $2/gal. over the winter, it’s now getting close to $3 here, and rising. They ought to have insulated themselves from that by having vehicles that can be competitive whatever gas prices do.
For a normal car company I don’t think it’d be so terrible to feature the Camaro at Detroit Metro right now…it’s certainly better than featuring an Escalade, and they probably need to feature what they have to sell now. But I can see how the choice would make people wonder if GM is “getting it”.
PeakVT
What am I missing?
The stupidity and arrogance needed to be a GM exec. Note that Lutz says (as paraphrased by the reporter) “If you want reliable, go get yourself a refrigerator.” Um, no, Bob.
Jager
GM took a hard look at the sales figures of the Ford Mustang and decided to build the new Camaro. The V6 version gets around the same mileage as a Camry…the big powerful SS V8 isn’t a big gas hog either, as long as you keep your foot out of it. I have a C6 428 HP Corvette that is never below 21 mpg in town and at 85 mph on the highway I’m always well north of 30 mpg, I’ve gotten as high as 35 mpg on longer trips, performance and MPG are NOT mutually exclusive. BTW our AMG Mercedes (big honkin’ V8) is a high 20’s car on the highway too, around 19 in town. I hate this knee jerk reaction that only Toyota and their Prius can save the world.
I rented a Corolla a few months back, 4 banger with an automatic…it hydroplaned on the highway, had incredible throttle tip-in,( you know where you keep pushing down the gas pedal and then all of a sudden the car takes off), on wet San Francisco hilly streets the FWD spun the tires on every signal change. It was fine when it was dry. I’m 6-1 and weigh 210…it was uncomfortable for me to drive and the little pig averaged around 26 mpg for the entire 700 plus miles I drove it…not a great car. The Ford Focus is a much better small car than the Corolla, more comfortable and better mileage in normal driving!
Luc
Lincoln or Ford once had a TV commercial for their giant SUVs featuring dinosaurs (T Rexes; not as a joke, but as a symbol of power). Unintended honesty in advertising?
The future GM commercials will look something like this –
for our smart customers the newest GM revolution brings you the Chevy Cruze or the Volt; for our really stuuupid customers the same revolution brings you the new Camaro.
GM makes everybody happy.
jon
Mr. Cole, the part you’re missing is the massive Government Motors conspiracy to take the fun out of driving. It’s so massive that evidence of it can’t be found except in a Vodkapundit link to a driving test of a Honda Accord that proves conclusively that new CAFE standards will force us all to become people who drive sensible cars that don’t do too well in racetrack conditions. And I guess I should be scared of that, since it would be just wonderful and starbursts and unicorns if every driver out there had a high-performance machine.
Tim
@Slaney Black:
Unfortunately, the development of the Volt is simply another example of typical Big 3 behaviour; don’t do anything until a major event forces your hand. This is typical of many parts of American corporate culture, but I think the auto business has some particularly egregious examples.
One can only hope that both GM and Chrysler can at least learn to be more forward-looking while under the (hopefully brief) control of the gov’t.
The resistance to diesel-powered passenger cars in the US is a bit of a mystery to me, but my theory has two parts:
One; that there are still too many folks around the business that have really bad memories of their last foray into the world of diesel, and it was an epic debacle. I had bad memories of the smokey, noisy mid-Seventies diesels my father owned, but my eyes were opened when I visited Europe in the late Nineties and drove a Ford Mondeo powered by a more modern diesel engine. It was a massive difference. If more Americans had a chance to drive a modern direct-injected turbodiesel powered car, they would be very surprised.
Two; the oil companies are not prepared to handle a significant increase in the demand for diesel fuel in the US. Right now, the refinery system in this country is geared to produce huge amounts of gasoline, but a relatively small amount of diesel. Add to that the fact that diesel and fuel oil are practically the same thing which leads to substantial seasonal fluctuations in the price of diesel. A meaningful increase in demand would force them to start looking at adding refinery capacity, which is something that the oil companies have been reluctant to do for several reasons, the least of which is simply the cost of building new refineries. There are much more coherent discussions of these issues at The Oil Drum, btw.
Martin
The problem isn’t that GM might still sell Camaros (which is not only fine, but desirable if it’s profitable). The problem is the face that GM is putting forward to the public that owns them. Will GM look like Toyota or Honda or will GM look like the GM that just recently went bankrupt? Camaro as the face of the new GM makes it look more like the bankrupt GM than a profitable one.
Gas prices are already near $3/gal here in SoCal and $4 seems likely again. CAFE standards are going to force the Camaro to be a bit player at GM unless they turn it into the equivalent of a 1980 Corvette. There is no scenario in which the Camaro represents the future of GM.
The Volt is the right direction for GM, but it seems that they’re determined to put effort into delivering a production vehicle when the realistic goal is a testbed for future vehicles. They came in too late and they’re trying to jump ahead of other players rather than focusing on refining existing tech. And I agree on the diesel view. If we had to replace a vehicle today, the VW TDI would be our starting point.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
GM currently only markets three good cars (not counting trucks, whole different baby): Chevy Malibu, Cadillac CTS and the Pontiac G8. The Camaro is strong only because of pre-orders and all the middle-aged Chevy guys who wouldn’t be caught dead in a retro Mustang. Give the Camaro two years and it’s sales will flatline like the ‘Stang’s did. GM screwed the pooch by having the car ready 2 years ago, then never producing it.
The Volt is another example of GM dumbing down a vehicle. Never mind the technology ain’t there and the “gas assist” compromise is just that, a compromise. By putting the technology onto the Cruze, well, just another example of GM dumbing down something.
Intead, why they haven’t looked at developing turbo diesels is beyond me. Take an extreme example, the Smart diesel (not the one sold here, that has a Mistubishi gas engine). It’s a 3 cylinder turbo that gets more than 70mpg combined.
Take that concept, make it a 4 cylinder, put it in a good small car and shoot for something that’s getting 50mpg combined.
Part of Lutz’s whinging about the Camaro is standard Detroit anti-CAFE posturing. They feel that in order to meet the new standards, they’ll hafta give up making neat gas hogs like a V8 Camaro. For once, they have a point. CAFE standards, while applaudable in that they want to reduce gas consumption in this country, are argueably not the best way to do it. Hiking the Federal gas tax significantly is the way to do it. But all politicians, including Obama, don’t have the political courage to do that.
Martin
But how do you fare on emissions? That’s the 3rd leg of the equation, especially here in CA and with CAFE standards about to go up. Lowering those emissions often requires yanking a lot of that performance out.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Tim (#20): I’m guessing that Big Oil wouldn’t have too much trouble shifting over to diesel. When they smell a new market and mega profits, they’re incredibly adaptable.
The biggest hurdle in the last 5 years for that was getting stations setup to handle the new diesel fuels. My anecdotal evidence suggests that’s now mostly complete.
VW is the only car maker right now agressively working on delivering turbo diesels to the US market. That’s the good news, the bad news is that it’s VW doing it. They design wonderful cars that aren’t built worth a crap and start killing you with broken stuff right after the odometer turns over 10K. And VW service here in the states is legendarily bad.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Martin (23): The current new turbo diesels being built in Europe meet the CA standards. Again, why Detroit doesn’t agressively pursue this….
Martin
See the VW Polo (60+ MPG) and Lupo (70+ MPG). And these meet the most rigid of the CAFE standards.
Tim has it right – the US infrastructure isn’t geared for diesel, but I think consumers can be won over. Not sure the oil companies can, though.
Martin
That was unfortunately our experience in the early 90s with our Jetta. In the shop at least every other month. It was a really nice car when it ran, though.
PeakVT
Intead, why they haven’t looked at developing turbo diesels is beyond me.
GM has/had/t.b.d. a line of turbodiesels in its Opel division. European particulate standards have been lower until recently, so it was easier to certify the engines over there. But the main reason they haven’t been brought over is that with gas at $2 a gallon fuel economy doesn’t really matter.
Luc
…. and Ford offers a similar turbo diesel Focus in Europe, exclusively.
trollhattan
Simply put, the Camero is and can only be a niche car, not to mention one that looks backward FOUR decades. That’s not the message to send to potential buyers, shareholders, etc. who desperately need a strong message that GM has a future–one based on a completely modern and competitive lineup. I don’t care if they build the bloody things but they can’t and won’t ever comprise more than a sliver of the company’s sales, and are a halo car for nothing else in the lineup.
And yeah, $4 gas is coming sooner than folks care to believe.
The Volt is darn important, and if they’re waffling on it now they might as well hang it up and go build shopping carts.
Jon H
@Jager: “BTW our AMG Mercedes”
A fool and his money, etc, etc.
gex
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: Because bailouts are easier than working hard?
Jager
The AMG has an an ultra low emission engine and the ‘vette exceeds current Ca standards.
I agree we need higher gas taxes and more modern diesels, check out the BMW 3 series with the turbo diesel, high mileage, great performance, but still too pricey. A friend of mine has a new VW diesel, 55 mpg at high (75-80) highway speeds, a really nice little car!
So many times I have been cruising along in my ‘vette at 85 being passed by folks in so called economy cars. At those speeds the ‘vette is killing them in the gas mileage game!
A note on the ‘vette mileage: one night on I-10 on a trip to Phoenix (it was cool and calm) I held the car at the speed limit of 75, it was cranking 1500 rpm and delivered 36 mph for 10 miles. I ran it up to 100 mph and it delivered 28 mpg at 2100 rpm at 120 it dropped to 24 and and in a burst of bravado I took it to 140 and it the mileage dropped to 18 mpg. It was still loafing at that speed since the the top end is somewhere around 180-185, I’m guessing that at top end I’d be at SUV mileage!
Cain
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
And they would be right to fear. We aren’t setup for alternative transport nationwide. The car is still the only cheap way (more than 2 people) to get around in the country. Amtrak is still prohibitively expensive and slow. Until we have fast trains, more hybrid cars, it would look like a punishment by the government. That’s just my personal opinion, if there is evidence otherwise, I”d be happy to read it.
cain
Brian Griffin
I think it may be disturbing because it suggests that the volt is a “new” direction that cannot be culturally absorbed into gm. Like Saturn. Or Saab. Or even Hummer.
gm has cut out all of its non-nostalgic brands, because it never could figure how to develop and market them. the camaro looks like a great car, and that may just portend how lame the volt will be. the camaro is exciting, but the volt has not been at all exciting in anything I’ve seen.
I’m an architect, and it’s easy to see within our own much much smaller design studios who gets their praises sung while working hard at something fun, and who grinds away on technical challenges with talent but no flair. All commodity and no delight leads to poor commodity.
the concern is that the volt will be all “new” but boring; and thus abandoned.
Jay C
Well, it does seem a little off-the-mark to criticise GM’s marketing strategy based on the display vehicle they provide to greet passengers at the Detroit airport. That, almost certainly, was picked for its “sexiness” quotient, i.e. power and speed – after all, if you were choosing a display car for say, the airport in Rome, what would you pick? A Fiat 500? Or a Lamborghini Gallardo?
That said, the comments about the (un)wisdom of Detroit’s perceived engineering/marketing “strategy” seem spot-on. Regardless of the industry’s problems – present and future – there doesn’t seem to be a lot of intelligent planning going on. More (and this may just be me) – a sense that they are merely trying to use the American auto industry’s present difficulties as an excuse to shed a few unprofitable divisions, milk the Government for as much scratch as they can, and then, hopefully, go back to their tried-and-true business model of selling the US public big, high-powered, low-mileage sex-boats: and preferably a new one every two years. And leave (as they traditionally have) the high-fuel-economy market to “foreign” carmakers – who will, no doubt be dismissed as mere peddlers of tinny, overpriced dinky-boxes to those unfortunates unpatriotic enough not to want to drive “real American” cars (i.e. enormous gas-guzzlers) – like “Real Americans” do.
Detroit: where it’s always The Future!
And where “The Future” is always 1980!
Jager
Jon H,
As to “fools and their money”
I’ve worked my ass off for 40 years, put my daughters through graduate school, own a nice, modest home and I’m finally at the point in my life where I can enjoy owning a fine cars(s) without being upside down in debt.
grumpy realist
God, I almost *wish* we would have $5/gallon gasoline….
GM has always been good at generating the “gee whiz” factor with their concept cars. Pity than none of the technology ever becomes reality.
The Volt, as far as I can tell, is GM’s pie-in-the-sky version of vaporware to get the critics off their backs. They’ll come out with 3 cars that cost millions to develop, mutter something about how it all was much more expensive than they thought, (pity that), and sorrowfully shake their heads that oops, it looks like they’ll have to sell the Volt at $80K plus in order to break even, and the US doesn’t really need something like that, do we? And go back to selling SUVs.
Then gas will go up to $6/gallon and we’ll get the hoocodanode dance all over again. Honda and Toyota will have a nice little electric car available for sale and will snarf up even more of the US market. And GM will wring its hands and complain about the evil UAW all over again. Yawn.
Sarcastro
If they’d built the Camaro on the Skystice platform they could have made it 3,000 Lbs (like, y’know, the original Camaro they’re aping) instead of 3,800 Lbs and gotten well over 30 MPG out of it. Even with the 6.2L 425 hp mill. It would also be far cheaper to maintain as it would use up tires and breaks at a far slower rate.
Three reasons they didn’t do that. One, they’re morons. Two, it would eat Corvettes for lunch. And three, fatass, redneck, baby-boomer fucks they’re selling to would bitch because their rotund asses would have trouble getting into a mere 3,000 Lb car.
One and two are fixable (fire people and detune the engine… which would increase mileage even more). Three seems to be an insurmountable obstacle for American car makers.
Brian Griffin
@Jager: on fools and their money… I’d love to have me an amg.
I think you’re right about the corolla and the focus, but the marketing strategy from toyota and honda has been overwhelmingly smarter for a long time, so there’s cognitive dissonance that it could be true. and that’s reflected in what people think are smart purchases.
The prius focuses on it’s technological coolness, and less on it’s environmental awareness. It’s logo is based on the synergy drive, not a leaf. that says to a potential consumer that they are smart for being advanced. gm’s hybrid leaf logo tells consumers they are paying extra to be a tree-hugger. a noble goal, but most people won’t do that without feeling like a sucker. the volt may be headed down that path.
my in-laws think we’re silly for not owning hondas like they do. even tho their crv is in the shop at least as much as our saabs, and it’s years newer. but they honestly don’t believe it ever breaks down, and they will not buy anything else. for example, at 5 years old one of our saabs needed a new throttle body– a big deal to be sure, and they just rolled their eyes at our supposed devotion to the quirky car, weeks later their 3-month-old crv needed one. but that, of course, was a fluke.
in other words, the big 2 1/2 (and saab is still part of that) seem set to make people think you’re a fool for buying their cars, even the ones that are just as good or better.
El Cid
From what I can tell all sorts of people are really excited about buying these Camaros, which, for what they are, are quite bad ass, so right now if GM can sell a profitable car that people like would be a good thing for GM.
grumpy realist
Having read the article, I think Lutz is both correct and incorrect. He’s correct because people do consider cars to be “extensions” of themselves and you pick a car at least partly because of the style you want. (Well, then there are those like me, who got a Nissan because a) the used vehicle was a definite bargain, b) the back seat was big enough for me to put a dog crate in there.)
Lutz’s incorrect because changes in people’s lifestyles means that the muscle car aspect is less and less important for a lot of people. Particularly true because as cars get more and more reliable, I think more and more of us are willing to drive used cars rather than purchase new ones. So we get even more interested in stuff like reliability and good mpg at high milage. Forget about my car sounding like a Ferrari or having zippy acceleration: will it, in fact, *run*?
Furthermore, people don’t have the a) time b) money to deal with a car that might look great but is always in the shop.
So yeah, Lutz–a hell of a lot more of us are interested in reliability than you probably want to admit. Go on and continue selling to the muscle car devotees…and watch your market share shrink even more.
Slaney Black
@Tim: That’s a big help. Thanks, Tim.
Slaney Black
@Sarcastro:
Funny thing… You’d be surprised how little driver’s side leg room your average SUV has. Often less than a compact car. Get those fatass rednecks to sit in a Mini blindfolded and they’d be all like “whoah, this must be 8x bigger than my Suburban!”
Martin
And when the market shifts and GM hasn’t invested adequately in hybrids/small engines/etc. because they put what limited resources they had into Camaros, Corvettes, Escalades, etc., then do we bail them out again?
That’s not a hypothetical – that’s what just happened.
That’s also not to say that they shouldn’t sell them, but I don’t think GM should be making any kind of investment in them either. They can crank out shitty Camaros forever and the same people that have always bought shitty Camaros will keep buying them.
Martin
Getting them into the Mini is the problem, though. When you have a keg resting on your belt buckle, bending and shoving that ass out to get in a low vehicle just doesn’t happen.
My Honda Element has a fuckton of passenger space. I’m just shy of 6′ and there’s close to a foot of headroom over me. But it’s a tiny SUV, surely not big enough for a meat and potatoes American, right?
Oh, and there’s probably no better vehicle for having sex in. No console to get in your way, all 4 seats fold down perfectly flat, tons of headroom, and depending on how exotic your repertoire is, no carpet to get dirty (which would be well beyond my repertoire). What’s more American than that?
Made in Ohio, too. I wanted a US made vehicle and I got one, but not from the big-3.
Jager
I just read one of the road tests on the new Camaro, the V6 is a couple of tenths slower than a ’69 Z-28 V8 and gets twice the gas mileage…cars are one helluva lot better than they used to be. (Am I the only one who remembers cars needing plugs and points every 3-4k and tires that lasted 10k and really, really shitty brakes?)
All the new cars are better and last longer. When the kids were home and we had to haul 2 girls, skis, luggage and a dog…I owned a few SUVs. A Toyota Landcruiser and later a Range Rover, both excellent…when I had them both in college at the same time we downgraded to a Ford Explorer and it was a pleasant surprise, drove it 122k with wih only normal maintenence, buck for buck it was as good a vehicle as the the 2 high end SUVs and got better mileage! No wonder Ford sold millions of them!
burnspbesq
Part of Lutz’s whinging about the Camaro is standard Detroit anti-CAFE posturing. They feel that in order to meet the new standards, they’ll hafta give up making neat gas hogs like a V8 Camaro.
The “no replacement for displacement” mindset is what has to go. Is there not a single engineer at GM who has ever driven a Boxster? You can squeeze an awful lot of fun out of 2.7 liters if you set your mind to it.
J Paul
This is really simple: A Camaro was put on display because it is a brand new model, and has been getting a lot of good press and attention (not to mention the marketing opportunity when “Transformers 2” comes out).
No, the Camaro isn’t going to save GM. It’s a niche car. But sometimes niche cars are necessary to create excitement and recognition for a brand even if they are aimed toward a narrow slice of the buying public.
What would have been the point of putting a Malibu on display? While they are surprisingly good cars (and yes, this is based on actually driving one), they don’t exactly call for attention…and besides, it makes no sense to display a car that people can easily rent at Avis. Displaying a Volt would have been nice, but no one will be able to buy one until sometime in 2010.
bago
Perf: If you’re not prepared to lay down north of 50 grand, you REALLY don’t give a crap about anything but your penis.
Electric motors are torque monsters. City driving with acceleration and braking. Yum.
Build for all three markets. Elite, city, and “Are you sure commuting 45 minutes is a good idea?” varieties. Electric drive trains are useful in all but the “Are you sure commuting 45 minutes is a good idea?” class.
Chuck Butcher
Fer crise sakes, muscle cars have always been a niche market – I’ve owned/own them and been a car enthusiast for over 45 years. Most Camaros were built with gas sippy engines, you got the looks w/o the price tag. The badass SS sells the 35mpg V6. It is a marketing tool, that 6L monster is out of the reach of most buyers and the power is pointless for most. It’s no more than a big goddam sign that says – Cooolness can be your’s, cheap.
Batteries are a problem whether your vehicle is a hybrid or battery alone. It isn’t solved, your Prius will eat you alive at battery expiration. The bet on those cars is that the original owner will sell it before that hits – planned obsolesence.
Aw hell, it’s fashionable to kick the shit out of American cars regardless of realities – like say the 09 Impala we own. Driven one? Owned one? No. But it’s shit because it’s a Chevy.
Bob In Pacifica
Slaney Black at #5.
EXACTLY.
Martin
Or a 1.8L if you’re willing to shave the car down further like the Elise. 190 HP goes pretty far when the weight is under 2,000 pounds.
Bob In Pacifica
Gas was $2.85 here in the San Francisco Bay Area last time I looked. That’s about a buck higher than what it was last winter.
chrome agnomen
sarcastro @39
“…baby-boomer fucks?”
looking at the obesity demographics doesn’t show much difference in rates until you get below 25 years. give them time.
59 year old, 6’5″, 195 lb DFH.
AhabTRuler
C’mon, it’s easy to get performance and mileage out of an engine at constant speed, but I’ll take my Honda civic over any 6 or 8 cylinder vehicle in city driving or stop-and-go traffic. And the hybrids will wipe the road with both of our asses when it comes to mileage in the same situation. Throw in regenerative braking and you’ve got a prime city/traffic car that will kill anything in mileage.
Again, the problem with efficiency is not at highway speeds, it is the average, what, like 2 hours a day that Americans spend in heavy traffic. You want a muscle car for open road driving, well, god love ya, go ahead (although I’ll take that 1.8L Elise mentioned earlier on any day). You drive your V-8 traffic to and from work everyday, say, through Northern Virginia, djer’nidjit.
mclaren
What you’re missing is a future of $10-per-gallon gasoline.
Your logic applies equally well to GM switching most of its production to gas-guzzling light trucks and SUVs in the 1990s. Back then, lots of people probably asked
Maybe I’m just being naive here, but if the SUVS + light turcks is a profitable division, and the ordinary cars turn out to be profitable, why can’t they keep offering both? What am I missing?
GM execs asked that question n the 1980s and 1990s. What they were missing was a future of astronomically higher gas prices.
LD50
All quite persuasive, but the crucial factor that your argument overlooks is this: a Camaro will always be more bitchin than a Volt.
(My parents owned a beautiful pristine ’68 Camaro while I was growing up. (12MPG, IIRC.) I am uniquely qualified to say this.)
Brian Griffin
@Sarcastro: “If they’d built the Camaro on the Skystice platform”
but then it would be a skystice- that may work for some vehicles, but not a camaro. constant rebadging is one their biggest problems. other companies can build very different cars from the same starting point (focus, mazda3, and volvo s40 for example), but gm really seems to have difficulty differentiating within the platforms.
Jager
Europeans live with a tax on engine size, high gasoline taxes, too. We should adopt both in the good old USA. If I had to grind out a miserable commute daily and wanted to maximize value per mile, I’d get KIA RIO, 13k, mid 30’s mileage, 10 year warranty and more comfortable than a Carolla. (and no my dick wouldn’t shrink) I’d upgrade it with 4 wheel ABS, bigger wheels and tires and order it with the electric windows because I’m too lazy to crank!
BTW, Is there anyone as snobbish as the asswipe driving a shitbox Civic, with a loose tailpipe, worn out tires, dirty windows that hasn’t seen a wax job since it left the showroom sneering at my wife in her AMG?
Observer
I currently own a 2nd gen 2009 Prius (45mpg hwy) and a 2009 VW EOS (34mpg hwy w/top down). We’re mainly a Volkswagon family and have fantastic experiences with their turbo diesels going on three decades.
I’ll be getting the 2SS R/T ragtop convertible Camaro when it comes out next year (presumably still 24mpg). The ragtop Camaro is for Fridays and weekend driving. I expect to be seeing a lot of mustang owners in my rearview mirror.
I’m one of those fatass drivers that decided against the Pontiac Solstice. And I wanted the GXP in the worst way. I guess “fatass” is defined as any man over 5’10” an average build for that height – at 6′ and 205lbs I was apparently not the target audience to drive this thing. I fit into the Prius and EOS just fine and they are both subcompacts.
There’s a reason why you mainly see women driving the Solstice and the Solstice’s ugly stepsister, the Sky.
A damn shame Pontiac never released what is today’s Camaro and called it the GTO. Their G cars were as exciting as a baloney sandwich with miracle whip.
Andrew
There is a lot of weird misinformation in this thread…
1) The Volt is more than ready. It has already entered integration vehicle assembly, which is a full chassis, interior, and powertrain. The problem with the Volt is simple economics — it is just too expensive to justify over a normal hybrid.
2) 25mpg in a 400+hp car is GOOD gas mileage. The few that are better include the ‘Vette, which is light and geared for highway cruising, using the same engine as the SS. The normal Camaro rates at 29mpg highway, which is pretty good for a 300hp car.
3) Prius batteries are not a problem. They are lasting well over 100k miles, often 200k, and are valuable, due to their metal content, and so they are being bought back for recycling. A new battery pack is a few thousand dollars, not an unusual expense for a 200k mile car.
jcricket
The American car companies are like the Republican party. Trading on nostalgia, narrow niche-market tactics and good-ol “buy American” patriot fervor. Never noticing that while they may be able to hold on to their current market, the long-term demographics (new car buyers looking for something different) are slipping away.
I think the parallels are pretty good, actually. It’s only that the car companies can’t yell “9/11, terrorism, ooga-booga” and get sales that kept the Republicans doing well longer.
Martin
This is pretty bitchin.
xj - not the auto
@ahabtruler #56
Yep, this is what it should be about. Most driving is local or in stop/go commuting. My ’99 Malibu got 19 mpg when I lived in Fairfax. Now that I live in Hooterville (or is it Pixley?) and drive uncongested roads, I get 25 mpg. BTW, I recommend a Malibu. I’m a lardass and it’s comfy. I only have 105k miles on mine, but that was due to driving to the train/metro for much of its life. Very little has gone wrong in 10 years, rides and handles decently, and was about 4k less than Camry or Accord similarly equipped. My only complaint going forward is that the GM hybrid technology only gives 2-3 miles per gallon more efficiency. Toyota has that beat with Camry hybrid, but you pay thru the nose.
Martin
You say that like economics is some ‘other’ variable to technology. It isn’t. You want a 2.8L engine that weighs 70lbs? No problem, just dial up Mercedes and ask for their F1 engine. They’ll even throw in 900HP (normally aspirated) to go with it.
There’s nothing technologically remarkable about what GM is trying to do with the Volt, *except* for the economics of it. It’s every big as technological challenge as if the tech was available at the needed price but not at the needed performance level.
And 5mpg is in a 900+hp car is GOOD gas mileage. So what? In a world with CAFE standards in the high 30s and CO2 emission levels much lower than they are now, 25mpg won’t cut it, and GM won’t be able to survive on that long tail of high-performance but low volume vehicles. That’s the point. How many 400+ HP consumer vehicles does Toyota, Honda, Nissan sell combined? I believe the answer is zero, unless you want to consider the Lexus 600LH which only crosses 400HP with the hybrid electric motor in the mix. Even the top of range of Toyota’s pickup line (which are pretty capable) don’t hit 400HP.
Jager
My Grandmother bought new a ’64 Chevy II, 4 cylinder, automatic after my Grandpa died. My dad was running a Chevy store at the time and sold it to her. She was used to the Oldsmobiles my Grandfather had always driven, after couple of weeks with her new Chevy II, she called my Dad and complained that there was something wrong with the gas gauge. She told Dad she drove and drove and it never went down. I think those old Chevy IIs got in the mid to high 20’s in an era when 10-12 was the norm. Of course, nobody gave a shit because regular was around .29 cents a gallon. Just think if GM had continued to develop that car, as I recall it was roomy, drove well and Gram’s dark blue number was nice looking in a Grandma sort of way.
burnspbesq
@Observer:
Umm, no. The last car to be called “GTO” was a rebadged Holden Monaro (Holden is GM’s Australian subsidiary), and it was killer. The closest thing there has ever been to a Vette with a back seat, and with a sticker price in the low 30s. Pontiac botched the marketing.
Stan
The Camaro does get 30 mpg in real-world conditions. The EPA highway rating is 29 with the six, which historically outsold the 8s 3-to-1. On that basis, and if the 1.4 turbo really is coming in the Cruze (hate the name, have hope for the car) we’re talking a Focus competitor with Smart Fortwo fuel economy. A $12K base Cruze will be a killer.
Fiat Nuovo 500s have been running around Auburn Hills for two years, but nobody knew what was going on. Now we do. This also means the platform-sibling Panda is coming. We’ve got another tiny, good car with plenty of space. Federalization will not take as long as you’ve been lead to believe, especially with Chrysler’s insanely fast design and development on board and Cerberus kicked to the curb.
The sex car BTW is the Volvo 245. No competition. Its inconspicuous nature helps.
The Sky is garbage. The styling writes checks the suspension cannot cash. It is too heavy for its size, and is the embodiment of everything wrong with American designed car … except the body.
Ethanol. GM is betting on cellulostic ethanol. Nobody is talking about what progress is being made, but I don’t feel good about it. If Coskata can crack it, we’ve got centuries of fuel we won’t be able to burn fast enough.
Jager
I guess Honda, Toyota, Nissan and their various offshoots don’t give a shit about performance…that must be why they are involved in so many levels of racing world wide and they all have high performance divisions and sell those fucking loud mufflers for their econ-boxes. I had the mufflers off my Corvette (while changing systems) and it wasn’t as loud as my nieghbor kid’s old Infinity 4 cylinder! The little shit comes screaming home from wherever kids are at 1am and car alarms go off!
comrade scott's agenda of rage
We’re talking the G8 here. The V8 GT version is GM’s answer to the BMW–it’s that good a car.
Right now with all the incentives, you can get one for as low as $28K. If the cash for clunkers bill passes, you could get at least another $3500 off, possibly up to $4500.
Great car. This is the kind of car Lutz is bemoaning as being lost since CAFE standards would mean a lot of other GM cars needing to be in the marketplace to make up for this thing. Of course if GM had a nice line of turbo diesels in decent platforms, then they could market this kind of car and make good money per unit.
Observer
Umm, yes. Performance is part of sex but sex is also looks. There hasn’t been a sexy looking GTO since the 1969 Judge. GTOs since then have been Hondas with foot. And not that much more foot.
The ragtop 2011 Camaro 2SS R/T promises to have it all.
A muscle car is not about suburban subtlety that comes under the radar of the missus.
It’s the inner 17 year old that pulls his woman close – she knows how the night is going to end and has signed on for that ride with all enthusiasm.
Damn straight and hell yes it’s about penis and testosterone.
Even when the last two are a memory… ;-)
Andrew
Well, the Lexus IS-F and Nissan GT-R are over 400hp. The Tundra can be had with 380hp. Those companies sell lots of cars and trucks well over 300hp. The Germans sell lots of 300 and 400 and 500hp vehicles, even in the land of $8 a gallon gasoline. They are profit and technology leaders. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
25mpg absolutely will cut it if that’s the rating on your high horsepower performance models. The LS3 is an amazing piece of engineering, delivering 30mpg highway in the Vette. It’s probably the best fuel efficiency in any very high performance vehicle.
Martin
But what if that’s also just below the rating on your low horsepower models and you need to move 10 of them for every high-performance one?
That’s my point. Sure, it’s great that GM is putting out high-performance in the $30K bracket to go up against everyone elses $100K cars, but GM can’t afford to offset the kind of volume that $30K cars will generate, especially when the $15K cars are only getting 33mpg highway.
burnspbesq
If VW were thinking, they would be talking to every Saturn dealer about becoming a SEAT/Skoda dealer when Saturn disappears. Then we’d have two whole product lines of decently-made, affordable, economical small cars coming into the US market at roughly the same time as Fiat gets here. If the Skoda Octavia RS wagon was available in the US, Audi would never sell another A3 (they certainly wouldn’t sell me another one when my lease expires in 2011, unless the rumors of an RS3 in 2011 turn out to be true).
Which may explain why it’s apparently not happening.
slightly_peeved
What – you don’t have those in the US? Every second pub in Australia has a drive-through bottle shop. And you can buy individual beers. I’ve never tried opening it up and drinking it there and then though. Not sure if it’s illegal, but I don’t really want to find out. And of course, living where I do, these pubs have top-notch wine cellars. I can drive down to my local pub and buy Margaret River Sauvignon Blanc and Clare Valley Shiraz without getting out of the car; envy me.
Holden Australia have been talking about releasing a Diesel Commodore for years now; Lutz could organise a turbo-diesel Pontiac easily if he wanted. I’m sure Holden would build them if Lutz was prepared to sell them.
Fixed for the rest of the world. American cars were gorgeous back in the 50s, and 60s, but now seem to operate under a different definition of ‘sexy’ that the rest of the world does. Some people seek out the American look here – they do have a shouty, aggressive vibe that some people like. But the recent corvettes look kind of tacky to me, especially compared to the new Japanese sports cars that look like Transformers. The changes made to the Commodore to turn it into the Pontiac make it look worse, in my mind. What is it with taking a perfectly good looking car and sticking a gigantic mesh grille on the front of it? Dodge, I’m looking at you.
Mr Furious
Much like it took Toyota and Honda YEARS for their hybrids to make any money, GM is going to be taking a bath on the Volt for the foreseeable future. It needs to be surrounded by a stable of profitable vehicles—if one of those is the Camaro, so be it.
socratic_me
It is really odd to read through all of these comments and not see anyone note that GM already built an electric car called the Volt almost a decade ago and people who bought it really really liked it.
However, they also refused to market it well and insisted that it only be available via lease, not bought. When they sucessfully pushed back beurocratic oversight enough that they could get away with it, they then refused to renew any leases and then scrapped the perfectly good cars (quite literally).
Good lord how things dissappear down the memory hole. Please, if you actually have even the tiniest interest in this issue and want to sound off without looking like a total idiot, go rent Who Killed the Electric Car? It also gives a pretty nice summary of why Honda and Toyota jumped in and killed the big three on hybrids. Hint: It isn’t because GM couldn’t develop the technology and make it affordable.
binzinerator
Tim has the reason:
@Tim:
That explains most of what you need to know about why the management can’t seem to do long-range strategic thinking or planning. (You’d think that that kind of ability is supposedly what management should be doing and why they get the compensation they demand — such future and abstract thinking is rare and paying for it ought to reflect the rarity of the talent that has that ability. But nope. That’s not what went on here.)
Add to that the blinkered zero-sum mentality of the execs of these different divisions and it doesn’t matter even if all of them could be profitable. They always see it as a zero-sum game.
It’s the same mentality that bankrupted them. All those resources at their disposal — money, creativity, technology, innovation, educated workforce and hell a customer base that genuinely would prefer to buy their products (‘buy American’) all else being equal — and they pissed away those advantages because they didn’t value the long term. They got exactly what they valued the most: quarterly bonuses based on short-term performance. It is no surprise you end up with extremely well-compensated execs who are incapable of strategic planning and eventual bankruptcy.
Which illustrates what I was saying. The source of tension here results from the inability to value long-term thinking. We will see $4 bucks a gallon in the next 5 years. The same people who just can’t see a business case for that now will be slapping their heads and wondering why Japan etc has cars on the road that anticipated that.
Jesus H, we already have seen that happen, including the head-slapping, and it was just stupefying because anyone with any common sense could see the writing on that wall 30 years ago.
GM is fucked. Utterly fucked. Because it’s not products. It’s the thinking that the products reflects. GM is fucked because their senior management is fucked. And this fucked-up thinking — where one side of the boat is bailing water out and the other side is bailing it in — is showing up in this Volt-Camero thing.
They don’t know what to do with what they got because, shit, they never knew what to do with what they got. The management of GM (and the rest of the US auto industry) are the most ill-equipped fuckers imaginable to have the job of unfucking themselves.
binzinerator
@Andrew:
The Volt ain’t ready til it’s ready. Which will be after thousands and thousands of people have driven it out of the showrooms and it works as they were led to believe it would.
Until then, it’s still not ready. As for too expensive over a normal hybrid….more short-term thinking there. Let’s see.. GM is a minimum of ten years too late on the hybrid, and the Volt should have been leaving integration vehicle assembly a couple of years ago — i.e. all production issues solved and rolling them out of the factory en masse ready for the public to buy. And that is because of …. why? Too expensive? They accepted that argument years ago, went down the path it lead them, and they’re bankrupt now. Oops.
25 mpg isn’t good in any car. 30 mpg? That’s only decent. 40 mpg? Now that’s good. But it’s the Prius’ mileage numbers that you are chasing now. With that, 25 mpg is a big effin’ joke.
Speaking of the Prius…that’s good news….for Toyota.
Does the Volt use Prius batteries? I’d be surprised if it did. Even if the Volt uses similar battery technology, the implementation may mean a big difference.
The above kind of goes back to point #1. Prius and its batteries were on the road a dozen years ago.
As much as I hope the Volt to be everything it is promised to be — both as a vehicle and as a savior for GM — I predict a likely fail. One really big problem — like batteries that die after a year or, worse, batteries that catch fire on recharge — will doom the whole thing. And that will be a huge loss and setback for the acceptance of electric vehicles. I really want to be wrong about this, but they need time they don’t have to work that kind of stuff out. And not just barely work, it’s gotta work so well and be so trouble-free lots of people will buy it.
If it doesn’t do anything better than the Prius, why won’t people just buy a Prius?