Quote:
Originally Posted by newb
Sales are what keeps a car in the line up. Not the performance. The 4th gen was getting it's butt handed to it in the sales race even though it out performed the Mustang in almost every performance category. And we know how that ended.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SpeedIsLife
The Camaro was mostly the superior vehicle yet the higher prices and associated costs resulted in a much inferior vehicle (the Mustang) clubbing it in sales and driving the Camaro/Firebird out of production.
Better performance does not promise better sales. As I've been saying all along..to the average, non enthusiast buyer..a multi thousand dollar difference matters.
Statistics, performance and raw performance enthusiasts will know exactly how the two stack up and will see the Camaro is much, m uch better out of the box. However John and Jane Public who just want a good looking V8 coupe, but aren't going to track it, or race it, or hot rod it may not be able to justify a large price gap.
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The 4th gen suffered from an ergonomic mess of an interior with its' long dash to raked windshield ratio which was great for aero but did nothing for interior efficiency.
I loved that car but the inside design and materials left a lot to be desired and we all know the most important buyers for our pony cars to stay in production is satisfying women who buy way more than we the enthusiast. We lost due to this narrow focus on performance and no regards to creature comfort.
GM's culture back then was that they knew what the customer wanted because they had been on top for so long and thought that we would buy whatever they forced fed us and some were crappy designs or executions for sure on a lot of cars. They lost their way for more than a decade and it didn't help matters much that they put more investment money into trucks and suv's which were and still are cash cows. They pretty much ignored the car lineup and left some to wilt and die.
That trend will not happen again as long as the current team has anything to say about it, you can bet on that. See 6th gen Camaro for proof of this if you need to.