And if there is a Z-28, you'll also more than likely be looking at 40k MSRP, just as the 07-09 GT500. Then of course, Chevy will become greedy, and add ADM markups. Just as Ford did with the Shelby GT500, especially if it gets either the supercharged 6.2, or the Z06's 7.0L lol.

And if that happens, also expect the C-6 Vettes to get a hefty price increase, as a direct result !

 

Actually the Challenger, is both longer and wider over the Camaro.

Here's the dimensions for both. You'll also notice in the chart below, the Challenger is nearly 8 inches longer, over the Camaro in overall length.

Dodge Challenger: Chevy Camaro:


Overall Height: 57" Overall Height: 54.2"


Wheelbase: 116" Wheelbase: 112.3"


Overall Length: 197.7" Overall Length:190.4"


Overall Width: 75.7" Overall Width: 75.5"

 

But you have to admit the Camaro and Challenger are way bigger than pony cars now, and are the size of the midsize two doors of the late '60s -early 70's. The only car to stay true to the pony car theme in dimensions is the Mustang.

'69 Chevelle Malibu 2 door hardtop - length 197.1", width 75.7", height 52.8". wheelbase: 112"

'69 Camaro - Length - 186.0 inches, Height - 51.1 inches, Width - 74.0 inches and Wheelbase - 108.0 inches.

The new Camaro nearly as long and is as wide as the '69 Chevelle and has the same wheelbase; its way bigger than the '69 Camaro. The Challenger's almost the same width & length as the '69 Charger.

 

wheelbase of newer cars is going to look as long as larger models back then in almost every car since we usually have lower overhangs now.

 

ADM stands for Additional DEALER Markup. It's not Chevy getting greedy, but the dealers. This is why even if you are seeing ADM's on a particular model at one dealer, it is possible to shop around and find a dealer that isn't doing that. Or doing less of it.

Personally I'd never pay an ADM, but there are clearly people willing to.

 

dam as you guys notice the mustang sticks out more and it seems the challagner and camaro in black seem dull is it just me? in orange for the challanger its a nice car and red or white for the camaro it looks good but black just dont suit those two

 

422 hp for mid-$35,000?

I wouldn't be surprised is a base Camaro SS costs around $40,000.

 

Here is the Camaro spec sheet from GM's site . Should give you and idea of the Camaro build .Sorry nothing on the Challanger yet.

 

Why you would think that? Dodge is making the base V8 Challenger at about 30k and it comes with loads a features and standard equipment. I think perhaps a fully optioned SS may touch 40k but my guess is that a base SS will be low to mid 30k range my bet is 33k base price for the SS maybe lower. I don't see an IRS a bigger brakes making the Camaro that much more expensive than the Mustang.

Keep in mind Chevy has great value in their performance cars. The Cobalt SS will run neck and neck with a Mustang GT and cost barley more than 22k. The Corvette in base trim and in Z06 trim for the most part can't be touched for the price range. Don't get me wrong I still think Ford will win the bang for the buck award but to think GM will charge over 10k more than Ford for a base V8 sounds kinda crazy!

 

I agree with you that the Camaro wont be priced that much more than the Mustang. In fact, given GM's statement that the V8 Camaro will start under 30k I'm looking for a 29,999 price tag, at least for the first model year.

That said, I'm utterly convinced GM will lose money on every last one they build, and it isn't because of bigger brakes or the IRS. Rather, the cause of all this will be the disaster that is Zeta. I've discussed this elsewhere so I wont go into great detail here. But I will say that, while I agree with you that Camaro's pricing wont be out of terrible out of line with the Mustang, I don't think Red Star was actually wrong so much as he just assumed, and apparently incorrectly, that GM was actually going to try and make money on this one. To wit, if GM were pricing this car to make a profit I would expect a price tag closer to his 40k guesstimate than the 30k sticker price the General is actually delivering us.

 

Because I think that 6.2L 422 hp Camaro is closer to 6.1L 425 hp Challenger SRT-8 than 5.7L 375 hp Challenger R/T. And that's just a Dodge, they took Charger and made a coupe version of it.
I wouldn't be surprised even if Camaro V6 costs as much as Mustang V8.

 

Mid-20,000s for a V6, but under $30,000 for a SS?

Heck, for that kind of a price even I would buy it.

 

I would consider a Challenger but I wont consider a Camaro. It may sound corny, but I wont consider the Chevy no matter how good it is because everything we have seen indicates this is another huge money loser for GM meaning that the Camaro likely isn't long for this world. I stated some time ago that the only way the Camaro would be priced within sniffing distance of the Mustang is if GM decides to take a bath on it, doubting in type that this would be the case since GM has publicly claimed to have learned their lesson regarding cars which don't turn a profit. Shame on me for doubting the stupidity of a company which ever thought that strategy to be a good idea in the first place.

In the end all of this means that the only things GM can really hope to accomplish with the Camaro before it gets the axe like virtually everything else remotely related to Zeta are.....

a: to somewhat bolster their image

-and/or-

b: to siphon sales away from the Mustang potentially jeopardizing that cars future as well.

Neither GM or Ford can afford to play the 'lets lose money' game right now, and unfortunately of those two companies only Ford seems to have figured that out. I'm not interested in a car which legitimately serves to threaten the very existence of the class it plays within. Even more than that, it frankly bothers me to even consider buying a car from a company which, when faced with it's own demise, effectively keeps doing all of the same things which led them down the road to near insolvency in the first place. How many cars which lose money does GM have to design and build before they figure out that the point of a business is to make money? This isn't complicated.

 

What are you basing your "loss" off of? GM isn't doing anything special with the Camaro. They are using an existing drivetrain and chassis, hence using economies of scale.

 

What economies of scale? There are three Zeta-based vehicles at the moment (arguably two since the Statesman is effectively a lwb version of the Commodore in virtually all respects) including the Camaro. All together, including China, we are talking about less than 300k units per year worldwide from a platform originally intended to drastically eclipse that number. The cancellations for this platform far outnumber the models we are actually getting, with the most recent deaths being the STS and CTS replacements but the list goes on far beyond those two cars.

We both already know what all those productions cuts did to this cars fiscal outlook since they designed this platform around how many units they thought they could produce. Even more, if this platform in any way, shape, or form looked like a money maker on any level do you really think it would be on the receiving end of this kind of treatment? GM can't get out of Zeta based cars fast enough at this point, with every week seemingly bringing another cancellation to the table. That tells me all that I need to know, on GM's list of problems Zeta has a prominent place near the top.

The question isn't whether Zeta is losing money, rather it's how much. And with a tiny program like Kappa dropping 10k per unit, I genuinely hate to ask how much Zeta is bleeding at this point

 

The level of horsepower doesn't determine the pricing of the car. As of 09' stats a Challenger R/T with 75 more HP and IRS costs about the same as a well equipped Mustang GT. I don't get "it's just a Dodge"? The platform that underpins the Challenger is actually a very high tech and expensive platform. This same platform is one of the few still in use by Dodge after it's divorce from Mercedes. High end cars like the Mercedes E class and Chrysler 300 use this same platform.

As far as GM losing money, I must admit this car is a huge gamble. I think Chevy is hoping that the V6 model becomes very popular considering that the base model Mustang and Challenger are a joke in comparison. Will the Camaro V6 cost about the same as a GT? I think slightly less cost with slightly less overall performance. I like the idea and with rising fuel prices perhaps beefing up the base model is a good idea for Chevy and maybe Ford and Dodge should follow suit.

 

Why are we comparing a base Challenger R/T vs a well equipped Mustang GT?
Base vs base Challenger cost about $3,000 more than a Mustang.

And did you see how cheap Challenger's interior looks like?

 

The only way to know would be to look at GM's financials. Otherwise, we are both guessing. Like I said, GM used an existing platform and drivetrain. It shouldn't be hard for them to make money on the car, but then again this is the Big 3 we are talking about.

CAFE is killing GM's Zeta and Kappa platfoms.

 

Actually no, I'm not guessing. I can't know how much GM is losing but I can know within more than a reasonable amount of doubt that GM is losing money on Zeta. Literally, everything coming out of GM indicates Zeta is a money loser. Starting with their admission that they build too many money losing vehicles and moving immediately on to the slew of Zeta cancellations which followed that statement...and this compounds GM's problem since auto platforms are designed around a predicted total volume and that end price is affected by the ability to hit that number. Then we have long-standing rumors that Zeta is over budget which have been backed up by the fact that Holden had a project they spawned ripped from them and handed to Caddy/GM Europe for no apparent reason and at no small expense...which goes hand in hand with the knowledge that losing projects, particularly those which were effectively pet projects, is typically doled out as punishment for dropping the ball.

That isn't everything by any stretch, but is is enough. We can ignore what this tells us, but it would be a disservice to ourselves and to the other users on this forum. To be plain GM is all out of credibility with this turnaround. They don't officially say much involving numbers and when they do it is virtually always worse than they alluded to previously. In fact, given what we have seen and heard from GM I would argue that the game has changed entirely with the logical assumption no longer being that their cars make money until proven otherwise but rather that their cars don't make money until proven otherwise. There is simply no longer any reason to assume GM knows how to make a profitable car anymore.

It shouldn't be, but it obviously is. Kappa is a parts bin wonder built on relatively inexpensive soft tooling and GM is losing their shirt on those cars. There is a big gap between what should be and what is at GM, and every day we learn that gap is a little larger than the day before.

[/quote]

That just doesn't hold water. Kappa does fine in this respect and could easily be made to do better. The only justification for cutting Kappa to help with CAFE is if those cars didn't appear likely to help their overall CAFE rating over the next several years. That seems unlikely at best since most Kappa cars appear likely to meet or get very close to the average fuel economy rating new CAFE standards will require for the year 2020, meaning that they would likely improve GM's average for the next several years at the very least and that they certainly serve to improve their CAFE average right now. Kappa is dead because it's a money pit of the first order losing some 10k per unit, not because of CAFE issues.

As for Zeta, CAFE is doing serious damage to that platform, but that has more to do with extreme short sightedness on GM's part rather than a genuine inability to make large cars which are desirable and which fit into the new CAFE scheme of things. Even worse, when it became obvious that gas prices and CAFE requirements were going to kill their plans to build umpteen million 23mpg highway (as rated by the EPA, not CAFE) full size cars GM was slow to respond even after the writing was very obviously on the wall.

The long rumored, direct injection pushrod V8's aren't even a vague production rumor by this point with the best GM can muster being the purported possibility of shoehorning the Kappa's turbo four into these cars as a base engine offering. And frankly, even that 'solution' smacks of desperation since the Kappa twins respectable fuel economy isn't going to translate into much of a benefit once those engines are in the heavier and larger G8. You could reasonably expect to lose at least one mpg in the transition from Kappa to G8 (and I'm being kind) which would leave auto trans, GTDi four-cylinder equipped G8 fuel economy exactly where it is with the existing V6 engine. And we know that they can't be talking about a new GTDi four since the same isn't even on the radar screen outside of a 1.4L unit unsuitable for G8 duty, everything else is just too far out to be of much help to Zeta. (the GTDi unit in the Kappa twins is rumored to be due for an update soon which GM has spun as a redesign, but it is by all indications very modest and would need to pick up several mpg to be of any benefit)

Think about that for a second. Do you think GM doesn't know that what they said about using the GTDi four out of the Kappa twins in the GT and Camaro doesn't make sense? The only logical reason for that statement by Lutz was that he didn't have a good answer so he made one up that sounded good on paper. This is the status quo at GM now. You can buy into it if you want to but two years from now all you'll be hearing from me is a whole lot of 'I told you so'.

 

Well said jsaylor