Quote:
Originally Posted by Doug Halsey
GM did that with the Cadillac in the late 70's and early 80's and almost ruined the brand by slapping the Cadillac emblem on POS cars. I saw that in a "history of GM" video. It is also one reason GM took bail out money and Ford didn't.
From the above article, "we find that consumers are willing to pay about $1,100 for a 1-second reduction in the time needed to accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour (a performance improvement of about 12 percent). Because consumers value performance so highly, the requirement for greater fuel economy means consumers must give up performance, leaving them worse off." Which goes to show that performance matters even in the environment that fuel economy is being pushed down our throats.
So GM does have to think in both worlds where tighter restriction apply, yet people still want their high HP cars. For me a NA is the only way to drive, but I'm still curious about the ZL1 LE (so I'm looking at it).
However, I also am not a fool who is easily parted with my money. I still believe that the fifth gen Z/28 is a marvel when it comes to technology and art - keeping in mind the environment that it was born in. I'm hoping that it will bounce back in value once the "tourist" are done buying them.
As for what GM does next will decide if spending a lot of money (70k+ for me is still a lot of money) is worth the few years of driving pleasure or if I should just buy used at half the cost and still have fun. Let someone else take the hit. This decision does effect future car sales, investment in GM research, and GM's bottom line. For GM to disregard this would mean they will eventually go under.
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You can't blame Cadillac for what the government mandated out of their asses when it came to emissions. I worked at GM beginning in 1965 and saw many flavors of cars during my tenure, Cadillac Coupe and Sedan Deville being two of them, and then there was the J car. GM had issues with engineering small cars with small engines. All manufacturers had issues in the late 70's and 80's due to Federal and California meddling. We have come light years since then in many respects but these vehicles will never last as long as the earlier vehicles. .