I don't know how many shifts they plan on running at the car plant to build the Camaro ... day shift only? days & afternoons?? or round-the-clock, 24hr coverage??? I think I was told it would be built on days only . Think about this though, I've never heard the exact details on the current car plant, but I know that the truck plant (yep, the nice efficient plant that's being shut-down next year ) is capable of producing 1 truck off the line every ~60 seconds. Let's say they can do about the same for a car. 60 cars per hour, times 8 hours = 480 cars/shift. Built on days only, that's ~2400 cars/week, ~9600 cars/month (4 weeks), ~115,200 cars/year! Hmmm, based on that math, I think they'll only be building on day shifts!

The latest I heard (unless plans have changed, which they shouldn't have??) is that production is slated to begin in September, of non-salable cars ... basically, full production "test mules" that will be given to engineers, execs, managers, etc., to drive, test, and ensure that the line is building a good product. Full production is slated to begin sometime in October.

So, based on ~9600 cars/month, by the time February rolls around, they should have approx. ~4 months' worth of Camaros built, which would be ~38,400!!!

.......... but maybe the little birdie that I talked to was all wrong, and none of that will be true!!!

 

It's going to boil down to demand. At some point production will catch up to demand. When that occurs remains to be seen. Until then, if consumers are willing to overpay, there's nothing we can do.

 

You can get a lease extension of up to three months at the end of your lease. That might be enough time to cover you until you could get a Camaro.

There's a lease extension fee, might be able to get your dealer you're buying from to finagle it a little, but it might be an option

 

I don't think greedy enthusiasts would really be the right term...maybe impatient. my area as a whole has more money than sense. i don't really blame the dealers it's unfortunate for us, but thats fine. i'm just trying to figure out when i can buy...i guess i'll just wait and see...

 

I hope your little birdie is correct, but that goes against what GM announced as the production date (Feb 16th), and logic.. why would GM hold on to almost 40,000 cars instead of selling them as they were produced?

 

Buyers are paying markups for '08 Challengers with 5sp auto transmissions and NO Limited Slip Differentials.'09s get improvements.
Makes you wonder what they will pay for fresh '10 Camaros.

 

Anyone still paying markups on Challengers is a fool. I can order an 09 from any of the dealers within a 15 mile radius of my house for no more than MSRP. I was sitting in one this past Saturday (2008 SRT) that a guy I knew from boating had bought. He had it for about 10 days and it had 61 miles on it. He paid sticker.

Camaro "fever" will be short lived as long as GM keeps production flowing. I'm not saying to expect factory to dealer incentives two months in but MSRP ordering after the first month or so shouldn't be an issue IMO.

 

Those four months won't be spent running the plant at full steam. That's practice time. I would imagine that during those four months they'll build maybe 100 cars. These will be used for crash testing, EPA testing, final evaluation by various people at GM, etc etc. Most of them will be crushed or otherwise destroyed.

GM will not build a Camaro that will be sold to the public until February. They certainly aren't going to sit on thirty-eight thousand cars just so that they can flood the market with them at the release date.

 

when i worked at a supplier to the truck plant we were building 77/hr. same as the line at gm.

 

I thought that Feb. 16th was the date that they go on sale (as in, the first Camaros available can be bought Feb. 16th).

That's what the cars built in September are for . They won't be built for sale ... as of October, they'll be built for sale.

If they don't start building them beforehand, people are going to be even more pi$$ed off than they already are that the car is "late to the party" ... there will be mad line-ups, mark-ups, and more frustration.

Maybe I'm wrong?! But I thought that even GM (or perhaps Scott? ) said way back that the cars would be being built late '08 for a release early '09.

I'll tell you all for sure in a few months when there are lots full of Camaros .

 

I don't have a hard time believing that there will be thousands of Camaros sitting somewhere "waiting" to be sold. I have a picture of thousands of Red Chargers waiting to be detailed with stickers to become Daytonas. Really quite a sight.

 

I apologize, I may have been wrong ...

You may be right .

Seems I can't understand "chirp! chirp! tweet! tweet!" as well as I thought I could! (or I listened to the wrong "chirp! chirp! tweet! tweet!" in the first place?! ) ...

... sounds like they'll have the line running at a minimum capacity during those few months, and while there will be salable cars built, it won't be more than ~a couple - few hundred in total until ~February or so .

Although I could have swore they were actually going to try to pre-build and stock-pile for awhile?!

I guess there are around ~a dozen cars floating around in various states of production right now, while they try to get the line pieced together .