For way too many years, G.M. produced a line of huge gas guzzling automobiles built around its truck chassis. The Cadillac Escalade, the Chevy Tahoe, and Chevy trucks. They made some mid-size sedans, but they were pretty dull pieces of machinery. They never ventured too far into the small hybrid car market – probably because they didn’t have the engineers, designers and guts to compete with Toyota and Honda. The company failed, but before the government forced reorganization, they decided to resuscitate the Camaro. They are banking on the new Camaro to bring Chevrolet back to life.
Okay, so it’s good looking car, but it’s not the car of the future. It’s a car of the past. It will appeal mostly to boomers who want to try and relive their high-school years by driving around in a muscle car they dreamed of owning when they were eighteen.
The New York Times reports that the new Camaro is GM’s top seller:
Amid the gloom of bankruptcy and a miserable market for new vehicles, G.M.’s new Chevrolet Camaro muscle car is winning over consumers looking for a little excitement in a bland landscape of look-alike sedans and watered-down sport utilities.
G.M. sold 9,300 Camaros during the month of June — more than either its entire Buick or Cadillac divisions could muster on their own.
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While it comes with a big V-8 as an option, the base model has a 6-cylinder engine that gets 22 miles per gallon in combined city and highway driving.
It is also priced for the mainstream buyer — about $23,000 for the base version, and up to $32,000 for the loaded V-8 model.
G.M. began taking orders for the Camaro last fall, and buyers put down deposits on 14,000 of them before the first one was built in March at its plant in Oshawa, Ontario.
“The cars are coming into the dealerships, getting cleaned up and then delivered to customers almost immediately,” said Karen K. Rafferty, a Chevrolet marketing executive.
She said that G.M. had a six-day supply of Camaros nationally; 60 days is considered the norm in the industry.
I would never buy one, but if other people choose this car over one one of those HUGE Escalades or Tahoe’s that take up the entire lane and block my vision, well I guess that’s an improvement.
Maybe the Chevy Volt will catch on when it comes out next year.
