Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Wyndham
Doc, I think through your experimentation and feedback, you discovered something that the Camaro team struggles with on a daily basis: Design is everything to this car.
It's the reason it has succeeded in the marketplace...it's the reason everyone recognizes it on the road...And design is the reason they have to be VERY VERY careful in bringing the car into the next generation.
The Camaro has had a very clear personality through the years, though...and people clearly respond to certain proportions and lines better than others on a performance car.
I, personally, don't see anything "retro" about the current car. I know people will point to things like the side gills and gauges...but I don't see anything more than a family resemblance...retro is way too strong a word, imo. I believe they should follow the patterns of Aston Martin and Corvette....slow, intentional, well thought-out design evolution.
Nevertheless - my thoughts are part of what makes this so difficult to come up with a "solution" to the problem of the 6th gen design.
For what it's worth - the same people that brought us the 14 refresh and the 14 Stingray are working on the new Camaro. I'm not at all worried for the future.  |
Yeah I have to agree. That seemed to be THE number 1 issue with any design I did. I started out putting effort into the driver experience; increasing visibility everywhere I could. I put a LOT of time into thinking through details and explained all that in my write-ups. None of that seemed to matter. People pretty much focused completely on the looks and didn't seem to really care that much about driver visibility or any of the other many things I was working into my designs. I know GM people were looking at those threads so I'm positive they picked up on that... looks are everything with this car. If nothing else hopefully my concept threads helped clarify what the most important element is to a Camaro. Basically; it's looks that matter the most.
I see in another thread from the main page that Edmunds is stating the 6th gen is an evolutionary design which is pretty much what I figured they'd do. The looks of the 5th gen was such a huge success there's really no reason at this point to abandon that styling. With a sleeker, more refined version of that (probably a lot like that huge graphic on the wall of the design studio from a magazine article on the clay model for the Stingray) it could still be an exciting and successful car.
The thing is though...just doing an evolution is only going to go so far unless you plan on doing like Porsche did with the 911 and keeping a basic style forever. They've managed to get away with doing that for the past 50 years but I think after the 6th gen, GM should break out of the mold with the 7th gen and solidly move into the future.
Using the new glasses and amorphous metals like Liquidmetal which can be used with 3D printing, they could make the 7th gen like nothing else we've seen before. And these new technologies are easier to work with, much faster to produce and incredibly strong. Liquidmetal for example is twice as strong as titanium, lighter than aluminum and highly corrosion resistant. It can be used in an injection molding process as well as 3D printing. These new technologies are extremely light weight so the 7th gen could quite possibly be around 3,000 lbs with a Liquidmetal chassis and body panels. And it can be PRINTED. Having the computer print the chassis and body would enable them to do things that couldn't be done by human hands otherwise. All these new technologies are here now; GM should really look into breaking from the old ways of the past and moving into the future. The 7th gen Camaro would be the perfect showcase to do that with.