"Anything new", heh. We're muscle car enthusiasts who keep getting news about how the next gen will be more efficient, and not how it's going to be more powerful. If you want us to be more positive, give us positive news.

I would like a lighter muscle car, too. But I can already buy a lighter car if I wanted to. I want a muscle car first.

LT1. :thumbsup: You can have your cake and eat it too.

And you can change that last number and be happy as well. ;)

The only thing I see from this announcement is prices on new cars going up. I love the idea of weight reduction, but same with CAFE regulations I think they need to have REALISTIC time frames.... giving a deadline of 2016 seems too fast to do and that's what worries me... short deadlines means expensive measures.

That said - Dan Akerson is a beast and I love listening to him talk.

There is no doubt that moving to higher strength steel , carbon fiber type composites , aluminum , etc can help shed weight, but odds are they will add to the overall cost of manufacturing the vehicles. Will people be willing to pay more? Time will tell.

i work for a company that tests automotive components and entire vehicles for all the manufacturers, and we were just commenting the other day just how much a simple control arm has changed over the years.

In the OLD days, they "seemed" to be stamped out of 1/4" plate steel and weighed a ton. Nowadays with all the solid modeling tools they have, the same control arm has morphed into a sleek hollow aluminum casting with much more strength, and only a fraction of the weight.

We have come a long way over the years.

It would be interesting to see how many more people would flock to GM for producing cars they actually want with engines and drivetrains and size they actually want.

Remember when we had CAFE and the car companies figured out that SUVs could skirt the laws by virtue of being classified as trucks? They were much bigger and less efficient than the cars were at the time and what actually happened was that people who wanted a large safe vehicle to protect their passengers and themselves practically jumped over the econoboxes to get their hands on an SUV. I believe if one brave automaker would build a car that people want and sell it at the actual cost (sans the hidden fees imposed to modify buyers choices) they would have a massive hit on their hands.

Weight reduction is good when you can get it affordably, but to add thousands of dollars to the price of a car to get 2MPG more mileage would cost more than the fuel it saves, so it is pointless.

The same weight savings that you get by switching out some piece of aluminum for magnesium (at 50% higher cost) could be accomplished by getting rid of mandates that have porked up our cars to this point. It will lower the cost of the car in the process too.

For example: You can save 10 pounds and $300 by NOT being forced to buy a car with backup sensors and cameras that are required by "law".

You can save 1 or 2 pounds and $50 by deleting the CHMSL as well.

How much does a craptalytic converter weigh and what does it cost?

Cars would be lighter AND less expensive by having less mandatory content. Let people decide which items they buy, instead of mandating them.

It's not weight reduction that is a bad thing per se. It's a good thing. To summarize my last post, they are saving weight by doing things that cost a lot of money instead of finding ways to get rid of useless features that add weight and cost but are being FORCED onto the cars.

We don't need 5MPH bumpers. Learn to drive instead.
We don't need Backup sensors and cameras, learn to drive instead.

Which is more useful?
a) A backup camera.
b) A spare tire and jack.

Yet, one is required and the other is not.

...if NASCAR reduced the Gen 6 Cup car by 150 pounds, it's not very hard for GM to go on a leaner meaner plan as well, it makes sense, and it's easily doable.

The same is true for the "Shut up, because it's gonna be AWESOME!" but in 12 months the "Hey!!!! THIS SUCKS! What idiot said they should do this?!?!?!" crowd.

Weight reduction is a great thing; I just don't think GM will hit their goal in such a short time period. If they do that's great; but no doubt it will drive up the cost of vehicles. I also wonder how they can reduce so much weight without compromising safety. Let's hope they can do it all; a lightweight, high-performance car that gets great gas mileage with a 5-star safety rating.

CAFE standards were not created to reduce pollution. Remember that when debating this stuff folks.

Weight reduction is a great way to increase performance and efficiency if they do it right. Removing weight in the right places can lower the center of gravity and removing weight in general will help in nearly all aspects of performance. I doubt they'll be able to cut fleet weights by 15% by then, but it's not like it is the end of the world if they don't quite meet the stated goal.

Backup camera as is way more useful and a lot lighter than a spare tire & jack. Neither one of them have to be used and if I had to have one it would be the lighter of the two.

It's great to see GM is getting ahead of the game and investing in new technology to lighten things up. Exactly what we asked for.:thumbsup:

This is a positive sign that the "thinking" is going in the right direction, and that GM wants to do business in a profitable way. This type of thinking (among other aspects) is what will get future buyers.

Its easy to say, go cut 400lbs off... actually doing it is going to be a challenge, and one thats not insurmountable.

For example, go pick up a rear view mirror from a 70's/80's car, and then pick up one from a 2005+ model... theres a huge weight increase... in 1 part thats not even structural.

GM just needs to trim weight on everything, not removal of mass but actual engineering to do the same job with less/lighter materials.

...now that statement sounds like something coming from the oval office that we have been putting up with for how many years now, and it's the most most recent gaff that the press secretary is trying to spin.....a play on words, not to you Captain <place that post in context to the current events>...ooops, no politics...sorry....:pound:

A 15% weight reduction isn't a lofty goal. It can be done now, but nobody will want to pay for it when the technology (we already have) is implemented.