Friday, July 10, 2009 |
10:49 - Cam back
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/10/business/10auto.html?em
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The Camaro. Maybe it's not too little/too late after all:
DETROIT — Believe it or not, General Motors has a hit car on its hands.
Amid the gloom of bankruptcy and a miserable market for new vehicles, G.M.’s new Chevrolet Camaro muscle car is winning over consumers looking for a little excitement in a bland landscape of look-alike sedans and watered-down sport utilities.
G.M. sold 9,300 Camaros during the month of June — more than either its entire Buick or Cadillac divisions could muster on their own.
And with G.M. expected to emerge Friday from bankruptcy as a newly constituted company, it is hardly surprising that the Camaro will play a starring role in the company’s coming-out party and news conference at G.M.’s Detroit headquarters.
I saw three new Camaros just on my drive home on Friday. With sales numbers like this, it's easy to get behind a notion like killing Cadillac—if you can't do something well, for God sake don't waste your money trying.
But if you can, well, hey... no sense not building a car company around those few Chevrolet models people actually seem to like, right? Camaro, Corvette, rebadged-G8-as-Impala. Wait: what do these cars all have in common?
“Interest has been phenomenal,” said Paul W. Doddridge, owner of Connell Chevrolet in Costa Mesa, Calif. “It’s the best car they have come out with in years.”
One of his first customers was Scott Wilbur, a 40-year-old elementary school principal who bought a silver V-8 Camaro in June.
Mr. Wilbur had not purchased a G.M. vehicle in a decade, and traded in his Honda Civic hybrid to buy the Camaro.
He even gave up his California-issued sticker to drive in hybrid-only carpool lanes to get behind the wheel of his new muscle car.
“I might not be as environmentally friendly, but at this point I don’t mind waiting in traffic to drive this,” he said.
So that's the secret of how to handle the green/hybrid movement: if you can't join 'em, beat 'em!
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