[rwhite692]

All the following IMHO, no strong debate or anything…

I liked it right off. Especially now that I’ve been able to see it with people standing next to it, to be able to see how it scales out. To me, It’s bigger than it had looked to be in the early photos. There is definitely a styling edict at work within GM to create “family resemblance” with Corvette (same lead designer). I think the front of the car looks really menacing.

I think it is about as retro as can be and still be “new” enough to appeal to people that are younger than ~40. The roofline and qtr windows, doors, quarters have enough strong first-gen cues for me… The dash too I think strikes a neat balance. I personally don’t want a verbatim re-creation of 1969.

I’m still on the fence with the taillights but I do like the “sunken-in” depth that you can see within the housings themselves, maybe the outline shape could be tweaked some.

I think that, If you go TOO retro with a design, then, after a few years…what do you do next? except…probably kill it altogether.


The new car has to be able to stand on its own and have its own styling evolution path to follow. I think that from what we see in the new car, GM is thinking this way and there is a plan for the car to have some longevity as an evolving design.

I think we also can’t expect to have the same kind of big collective gasp and overwhelming positive reaction that the current Mustang had when it was first shown. Ford was the first in the "nuvo-retro" game and that whole idea was a brand new concept to everyone then, and everyone was so hungry for ANYTHING new and fresh. Now retro is all over the place, and neat designs in general (retro or not) are popping up everywhere.

Also in terms of reaction (esp on the msg boards) a new Camaro (since it went AWAY, unlike Mustang) has been fretted over / debated / anticipated / discussed ad NAUSEUM, for the last 3 years or so, and so there will be no shortage of critics just posting their brains out about it on the net. I think that “negative nellies”, on any subject, any message board (except lat-g!), tend to out-post positive or moderate people by a significant margin.

I’m much more interested to hear what Mr. and Mrs. Joe Average have to say when they see one pass them by as they are walking down main street USA having never seen one before.

I think that FBody sales tumbled mostly because of a lack of practicality. Most people were not willing to live with one as an “only vehicle”. The same problem very nearly killed Corvette before C5, because you couldn’t fit a set of golf clubs into the back of a C4, and that has been rectified with C5 forward.

Anyway, people just couldn’t live with those Gen3/Gen4 back seats. Four office workers can’t go out to lunch in a 3rd or 4th gen, without there being a lot of bitching going on. New mustang has a usable back seat and decent headroom, sales guy here has a GT and I’ve ridden in the back and it’s a complete non-issue. From the looks of Camaro it will be a similar configuration back there.

Hopefully they also will do a good job with the V6 version of the car which will be the volume sales leader esp in fleet and thus extremely important to the bottom line for Camaro. The Mustang V6 is just a great entry-level car and is a screaming bargain with 200 or so HP.

It’s rear wheel drive, LSx powered, it’s actually called a Camaro, and hopefully will be affordable enough to get the aftermarket spooled up in a big way. That alone is enough to make me rejoice! J

Again, just my $.02. I think it will do well, we’ll see!