No, I didn't miss anything!! This is my WHOLE point. People keep popping up four years later, still saying that the car died because of this or that problem.
When it appears that it was the politics, and not the cars fault!!

 

The CAW didn't have GM's ***** in vice. It was the various levels of Governement that gave huge amounts of money to keep that plant open so they didn't want to invest big and then NOT have a long term commitment for jobs there from GM.

The plant already had a state of the art paintshop that had been built way before the camaro went to Ste-Therese with the help of you guessed it....government money. This plant had been rumoured to be closed 3 or 4 times even before they landed the F-body. It almost closed in 82, 88 and 91-92!

The plant never had a great track record and even though quality can be increased, why reward a plant with a bad track record with a new product especialy if overcapacity was becoming a big problem???

GM simply saw the rear-wheel drive 2 door coupe as a declining market segment. I was only when Ford redesigned the Mustang and that Chrysler brought out their rear drive cars that GM realized they were wrong. GM never seem to know what will sell and wait for others to test the market first.

Had Bob Lutz been at the helm back then at the right time, it's very possible that the camaro would have seen an earlier redesign, but Lutz arrived too late to save it and the agreement between GM and the CAW and the Goverment became a stumbling block.

Lutz new GM needed to do something so they brought in the GTO.

I hope this new Camaro is made and sells tremendously well. I don't really care where it's made. I just want GM to do well.

 

The car didn't fail because the Z28 was below the SS. If you would have reversed the labels you would have had the same result.