Boy this one's hard to read. There's no question that corporate is watching the sales trend for the Camaro, so what does this mean? It doesn't sound like Al was seeking this position; sounds more like they said "you're going over here now". Does that mean they think they need new blood in the Camaro program to revitalize it? Al is an engineer, not a designer, and he did his job giving the Camaro class-leading performance.
Mark Dickens being the "...current executive director of Performance Variants, Parts, Accessories, and Motorsports Engineering" sounds more like he's involved with the way things look on the outside.
Considering that the 7th gen is probably already designed and sitting in a studio room somewhere, GM may not like what they're looking at and are either bringing in this guy to help redesign the appearance, or GM is making the decision that the Camaro is on its way out and this guy is the caretaker to oversee that.
Their statement "We have launched the final variant of this generation of Camaro, so the time is right" is hard to read other than the Gen 6 is done. Not a word about a Gen 7. Nothing like "We're exciting about the next generation Camaro" or anything like that. They even made a specific point of saying that moving Al to EV doesn't mean they're planning on making an EV Camaro or a similar "performance-focused" EV (yet he says they aren't ruling that out).
What this tells me is they're not blaming Al for the decline in Camaro sales, which is good for Al, but what does it mean for the Camaro? If they WERE actually planning an an EV Camaro, bringing Al over now means it'll be years before we see something.
Gen 6 is done, so what's next, and when?
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