Specifically, based upon the Holden Commodore SS.

 

No matter how much thin side walls look great - the ride is terrible. The stock versions have got to have really nice rims and bigger rear-view mirrors. Fit and finish better be a major issue for the designers and engineers as well. Ford can stay ahead of GM if they remain true to original idea of the '05. Hopefully, Ford will be able to match the 100,000/five year warranty and beat GM. But ack to the basic comment: call it what you will, GTO or Firebird, it will be plain to see that it comes from the Camaro.

 

I guess they didn't learn anything from Monaro/GTO.

 

Different ball of wax...entirely.

 

Tru'dat, a problem with the previous f-bods came down to allocating money, Pontiac raped the treasury leaving Chevy with little or no money to freshen up the Camaro. In the time that Chevy got to do a second front end, Pontiac had several different front and rear appliances for the Firebird with the stickler being that the Camaro smoked the Firebird in sales but recieved less money. All of this helped to create a situation where the F4 cars were stagnant and boring compared to the mustang which didn't have to compete with another car on the same chassis, nor split its funding. In turn we got nifty stuff like the Bullitt, Mach 1, and Terminator.

Fast forward 2008 when the F5 Camaro and DCX Challenger come out in a market that seems to support only about 200,000 cars a year. If the gods were kind and divided the market evenly, your talking only a measely 67,000 cars per manufacturer. Now if the gods were kind again and F5 production split evenly between a Camaro and Firebird your only talking 33,500 cars per division, which might have the same basic chassis and powertrain, but share little else. Even worse I suppose if there where to be a Camaro, Firebird, and GTO. Again for easy math's sake, say Chevy Sold 33,500 cars and Pontiac had to split sales evenly between Firebird and GTO at 16,750 for each. Pretty hard to justify the existance of a car that only sells a bit more than double the GT500's yearly production yet has to sell for thousands less and if GM were fair to the F5 twins, would soak up fifty precent of the F5 budget.