638HP

History shows us that pre-production concepts and 3rd party renderings can often prove misleading.

The new 5th Gen Camaro is just the latest example. Many despised the pre-production concept/renderings only to have the car grow on us to the tune of 129,405 units produced in the 2010 production year.

Holding out hope GM will once again please us and follow the tremendous market success of the 5th Gen Camaro. It has been quite some time since Corvette has laid a major dud.

Fellow Corvette enthusiasts, let’s not put a knife in Corvette just yet, the game has yet to begin.

LS1LT1

elegant

Let's first see the actual production car.

And opinions change over time. When we bought the first C5 in our Corvette club, it was trashed over its big butt rear end, yet five years later the majority of our club members owned one.

638HP

Well stated

ZeeOSix

I think the latest rendering of the C7 looks pretty good for a first impression, except for the tail lights. Seems the tail lights are the biggest gripe.

I think if GM would have still kept the basic four round tail lights but made them blend with the rear end and the rest of the updated styling, it would get more positive comments.

The first time you see a new design there is always some negativity. After you look at it awhile you start to accept it and see it in a more positive way.

638HP

Nice F22 Raptor picture. The F22 was just in Milwaukee a couple of weeks ago, wow what a powerful machine!

John T

My sales numbers on the Camaro fell quite a bit short of 129,000 + in 2010 but the numbers are still very strong . As we all know , design is very subjective and I personally don't care for the styling of the Camaro but , by the numbers, quite a lot of folks do.

Does anyone know the median age of the Camaro buyer??

Buck-I

C7 is gonna be awesome, and look a heluva lot better than the jalopy renders.. even if they did nail it.

george vee

The C6 technology is 8 years old and it's still a great car, The C7 is going to be state or the art.
I will have one in my garage

McGirk94LT1

Uhhhhhhhhh... wasnt the Transformers movie essentially a test bed to see peoples reaction to it? And didnt "the crowd go wild" to the point that not making the camaro would have been in GM's top 5 worst mistakes ever?

Personally I think the car is incredibly goofy looking, and now that all the F-body fanbois have bought a version of the camaro I'm baffled how its sales march on. The challenger was a huge hit, but its sales have always been a hair less then great(probably because of being overpriced... I'm just sayin). I wouldn't take either over a 11+ mustang, v6 or v8 version. But obviously somebody's still buyin Camaros.

People's reactions to the c7 "pictures"... luke warm at best. And, although the little things can make or brake a car, the Jalopnik picture is VERY similar to the spy photos. I'm hopin for the best, but if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

thirtythird

I thought the rear sucked on the C5 and I still do. I loved the front part quite a bit, though.

I never bought a C5 due to looks.

I think on the C6 I liked it right away. The only thing I did not love at first what the "Camaro" front. It had similar lights and one big air dam opening up front instead of themore distinctive two like the C5 and C4, but to me this did not detract from the overall nice design work on the car. I love the rear work on the C6 quite a bit. It is nicely curved but is not overly busy looking like a lot of other cars.

thirtythird

Also, nice rip-off of the Audi cars with the led underbrow on the lights.

This design may grow on me, I hope it does, but why can't we just be WOW'd right from the get go? I guess I will wait until it is shown publicly. If that is at the Detroit auto show then I will be seeing it there in January.

638HP

I am certain the Split-Window concept car would have wow'd right from the get go. I was blown away when I first set my eyes on that car at the Chicago auto show, I nearly soiled my pants...

BlueOx

As to the Camaro's success, it just goes to show that a LOT of CFers just don't know what sells. This is evident here on a daily basis. I think the Mustang looks like a flying brick, but it sure seems to sell well. There are still a lot of folks here who don't like the C6.

The C7 will do well enough at first but GM has to do a better job of marketing it to a larger audience than the existing fan base. I'm waiting for it to surprise a lot of folks here in a positive way...not that they will admit it. BTW, I am one of those people.

638HP

Camaro is marketed to the Gen-Y's and Millennial's as this age group desires expansive passenger seating to fit all their friends, the need to personalize their ride, while keeping cost down as they can't save for a lick. Let's face it, the Corvette is of no interest to Gen-Y's and Millennial's, the largest buying group on this planet, estimated at 20% of the buying market. Corvette is marketed to the Gen-X's and Baby Boomers, a market that continues to narrow each day that passes by.

Corvette is holding on for dear life, hence why they are turning Euro to keep their market alive.

Jp23rockstar

Well I'm a millennial and when I turn 25, I'm going to buy a corvette.

NSC5

Two big fallacies marketers have to avoid are:

1) Because I love it everyone else will also love it
2) Because I hate it everyone else will also hate it

If I were a designer the minivan would never have appeared. I find the concept and the look hideous but they and their mutant sibling "crossovers" are major automotive players.

Image is key and in order for Corvette to be desirable to a new crop of buyers changes will occur that some long term loyalists won't like. It is a difficult balancing act to bring about change that meets the desires of these two rather different groups with the further requirement of simultaneously meeting cost and market price targets. The "perfect" product isn't absolute perfection for any discrete market segment but it needs to be highly acceptable to enough to be a successful product. When the C7 actually appears then we will see how well the designers did in hitting the mark.

A "controllable wild card" is achieving successful product placement in current media. Ray Ban did a wonderful job in linking up with two Tom Cruise movies, "Top Gun" in particular, which created a tremendous surge in sales and a sustained change in product perception. The Corvette needs placement which will create immediate desire among current potential buyers and a burning desire among the much younger set to own a Corvette one day-sort of like the dream commercial that is posted elsewhere. For me the dream start was a brief ride in a L88 owned by a family friend many years ago when I was 12. After 27 years spent as a marketing Ph.D. and a consultant in enterprise risk management a C7 will soon be a retirement gift given to me by me-unless an unknown rich uncle dies and leaves me all of his estate in which case I will be in the market for a L88 instead

BlueOx

Who the Corvette is marketed to now and who it needs to be marketed to are certainly debatable. I disagree that the Corvette is of no interest to Gen-Y/Millennials...I do agree, however, that they haven't been catered to in the Corvette's design/marketing...yet.

John T

NSC5 -if your wealthy relative passes and leaves money to you , you can have a C7 and a L88 !


I went back to the original Jalopnik article that went with their ZR1 rendering and something really bothers me. Ray Wert says they were shown 2 cars , one base and the other a ZR1, right? I realize that he did not say they did a rendering of the base car but why not? Where is the guy that " rendered the actual ZR1 " ? How hard would it have been to draw the base car too, without the big hood, side vent, deck spoiler and show that pic 6 months later ?

Jalopnik knows what the base car looks like and they could have blown everybody away again with a " re-release " of a base car rendering many months later but all is quiet...

NSC5

Since I don't think I have one it looks like I am on my own for funding

If the designers followed a laundry lists of our wants the selling price would be so high that very few could afford it. Of course what results isn't exactly what the design engineers wanted either because they are constrained by many standards.

I restore and collect vintage amateur radio gear and I have a great example of what results when an engineer has full design control with the resulting positives and negatives. In 1947 Karl Pierson formed his own company after spending many years as the chief engineer of two other successful companies. What resulted was the KP-81 which was a mechanical and technological accomplishment for 1947. It performs very well and the mechanical design is a wonder to behold. A key part of a communications receiver is the tuning mechanism, think of it as being akin to the steering, braking, and suspension systems of a sports car. The KP-81 was built with a very nice gear driven tuning system with sealed ball bearings in all critical locations. But the key component is the variable capacitor and these were custom made with plates of "invar" which remains stable over a very large temperature range. The downside is they are heavy and as they are turned the weight is unbalanced which will cause the controls to drift a bit due to the imbalance. Standard practice would have been to use a felt washer to provide a bit of friction but Karl didn't want to add any additional friction so each capacitor has 3 variable rate coil springs that are adjusted individually to counter balance the weight of the offset plates throughout the rotation. When I restored mine it took about 3 hours just to adjust the 3 springs on each capacitor so that it is properly balanced throughout its rotation and now a single flick of the wrist will spin it through its range but if the **** is released it will stay exactly where it should. It has held this "alignment" for 5 years now but if it goes out again I will probably put felt washers behind the tuning ***** as a practical fix.

This receiver had a lot of other neat design features and when it was released to market it was priced at exactly twice the price of its most likely competitor and yet I am sure money was lost on each one sold even if you ignored development costs. These design details added very little in terms of actual user benefits but greatly increased production costs. The company sold between 100 and 200 of these in the one year it was available before the company went under and I have one of the very few that has survived.

Before it was released photos of the prototype were shown in magazines and there was a lot of negative feedback about its looks because it didn't have the art deco style that identified his previous designs done for his previous employers but in a few years that "modern" style became the standard for most in the field. It is in the center right of the photo below and above it sits another fairly rare receiver from 1954 manufactured by the "Chevrolet of communications radio manufacturers", Hallicrafters of Chicago. They were the biggest player in the field and the SX-88 was their Corvette in terms of technology and performance, it was the best performer but it cost about as much as a Chevrolet Bel Air of the same era so was hellishly expensive for a shortwave receiver. The receiver was featured in an "expedition" to a small Pacific island that had never been on the air and created a tremendous amount of publicity and led to the sale of many of the company's less expensive offerings that allowed a large group of consumers to own products that had a bit of claim to the fame of the SX-88. And the technology piloted in this receiver spawned a very successful line of followup products which is good corporate practice.

I have high hopes for a successful C7 that will pilot new design technology for coming Corvettes that will trickle down in some form to other more pedestrian Chevrolet offerings.