Hmmmm....

Very interesting.

Mr. Perkins' comments at the reception are now appreciated for their full weight - the unresolved nameplate issues had certainly made their way to his ears, no surprise there... and had enough effect on him to mention them there.

 

There was, around... oh... 1995, a proposal for a Camaro that would be known as GMX-320, which would have shared a platform with the current CTS.

We in the supply base had started detailed design on all sorts of components for it, and companies were sourced the production work for those components, but it was killed.

It is likely that any idea of a 2-door CTS died at the same time.

Given how well CTS has done anyway, that may have been a good decision in terms of Cadillac.

While there were idiosyncracies with the design, the "thermal-event-separator" (also know as a "firewall") being too tall being one of them, along with the considerable physical size of the car in question, I cannot help but thinking that the association of Firebird with Camaro at the time helped kill it.

Maybe I'm all wet about that, but the idea of designing and tooling up two vehicles off of GMX-320 when one of them is in a terribly precarious market position amd the other isn't a whole lot better off was surely foreboding.

Which then also begs another question...

Would it have been better in hindsight to launch a revised Camaro in 1999 or so that may have been hit and miss relative to the things the market THINKS a Camaro should be (long, low and sleek come to mind... which GMX-320 wasn't...) - OR - was it better for the name to let the car die and then be reborn into what a Camaro "SHOULD" be in 2009-2010?

It's all hindsight now, and I don't have the answers because that is one super-complicated issue, but that question burns in my mind to this day.

 

well........there was the GMX-280.........about 1996......essentially the Monaro/GTO.........but it would have made a great Monte Carlo......not a Camaro.....so that one didn't last long at all.

the 320 was a proposal...didn't get very far......the idea was to take the frame rails from a Corvette......sans center tunnel (which is very expensive to produce)....and marry to the rear axle and 'bucket' of a CTS......and then build at Bowling Green. The biggest problem I would have had was the planned volume of 40K units a year.....not nearly enough....and the engineering never got very far.........cost was an issue as well..........

Hmmmm....a couple of chapters here!........

 

Wow, so if I'm reading this right, GM wanted to show a Camaro concept as early as the 2002 NAIAS? A full 8 months before production of the 4th Gen ended?

Wouldn't it be great to someday be able to see all these old Camaro concepts....

 

VERY interesting...

We were certainly doing detail design on a hand-operated parking brake at the time (I was working on the self-adjuster...), but it seems that my memory is a little hazy.

Maybe that was 280 and not 320.

BTW - one good thing that could have come out of 320 would have been a hand parking brake for the CTS, as the the foot brake being the only one available has brought on more than a fair share of derisive comments.

 

now you're gettin the idea



we might have to get Pacer to write a book too..............

 

Man I need this book , please write it.

David

 

I am curious if this concpet you mentioned is directionaly similar to the concept that was shown,or was a new direction taken? It seems if it clinic'd that good, some aspects of it would have been kept.

 

Whoa! Scott, SERIOUS question here ... that comment got me concerned ...

... has the new (real) concept been designed WITH or WITHOUT 5mph bumpers?? AFAIK, it's the lack of 5mph bumpers that has kept the current GTO out of Canada. If the concept Camaro lacks these, would that not threaten the chances of it being sold in Canada as well??? I sure hope that's not the case!!!

Anyone else with some insight know anything about this issue??

 

Well if Gumby is who he says he is, it is on a true plat and "a twist and turn from production" I would take that as a yes That is if he really worked on the car.

 

So now that the cat's otu of the bag with the new concept, can we see these things?

 

Ever since I saw the new Camaro concept, I never did think of it as retro, at least not like a lot of other vehicles coming out recently (Challanger, Mustang, Thunderbird). It looks like an evolution of the Camaro to me. I think people get retro confused with using styling cues from previous models. I mean, if it didn't at least look something like the previous 4 generations, then it would look pretty weird, IMO. To me the Camaro has a lot of the character of the previous Camaros, with a blend of the CTS.

Dan

 

For all you retro people I agree the concept shown is not retro. Why? Take a look at the obvious concept on the left which I'm guessing is one that was axed. THAT is RETRO.

 

That that really looks like a 68-69 Camaro!

 

I'm more partial to the design on the left, though the front lights look a bit goofy. It looks less bulky and sleeker (sp?).