Terry Box, auto writer for the Dallas News posted this review of the new Camaro.
My comments on the Dallas RSS site appear below. In my vie. Okay so what has this got to do with management accounting. Well it's my blog and I can post what i want but
we are studying value chains that lead to customer satisfaction. In fact it was the failure to do just that which gave toyota honda nissan the foothold it needed. Indeed Detroit did what it usually does letting the pony cars, small light well performing sport vehicles become overweight with behemoth cast iron monster engines by 1972. Amid the move to better emissions the entire muscle pony car era ended as quickly as it began. By 1969 the best idea Detroit could come up with was the 'smog pump' a belt drive air pump that put more air into the mix to better burn emissions. Honda invented the cvcc engine which met al requirements, with no air pump. the future was sealed with that one anecdotal engineering event. What does Deming say, improve forever and constantly this has become Toyota Lean Engineering. But on with my post.
Terry
only$35,835 eh? As I recall at least in 1967-68 one could purchase that 327 Camaro with a four speed and even an air conditioner for one tenth this amount about $3600. This says a lot about what Washington has done for the dollar and for car design. 3900 pounds? My RAV 4 SUV only weighs 3500! I doubt anyone buying the car will remember that Chevy put the four 'gauges' back then in an impossible to read out of line of sight position, which is where they are now. Now honest if you had not known you had the 426 bhp instead of the 400, about five percent and I expect all at the top of the rpm range, would you have known. The problem with car tests is that 0-60 and 1/4 mile times do provide not a baseline but an upper line, that no one outside of car testers ever tries anyway, at elast not on a regular basis. This car had been built by 2007 so it was probably planned in 2005 way ahead of Barney Green Car Frank. As usual I think a much lighter platform with the 4.2 Liter dobule voerhead cam 285 bhp straight six would have been the better idea, esp for insurance purposes. And it might survive the bureaucrat chopping block of politically unacceptable vehicles.
While articles like this extol the virtues of the high performance four speeds of that era, most existed in the press fleets for car magazines. The far more prevalent item in that cost conscious era was what my friend had, a 1968 307 cid with the gosh awful three speed manual. Detroit's refusal to make the far more desirable four speed a standard item paved the way for Toyota et al to do just that, yes their weaker four cylinders required it and Chevy and Ford could 'get by' with the three speed bolstered by V 8 torque, but it was a truly horrible 3 speed tranny, no wonder so many switched so willing so quickly to alternatives. And that is the way it was.
As usual Detroit is late to the party with what is now the wrong product for the times. Whoops again....where is their Scion tc? I doubt the cobalt supercharged will have the life expectancy of any of the Asian brands.
I believe that the reason GM is always late to the party is because of the time they invest in the research of their projects. If the company had known the current fate they would be in today back in 2005, then investing all they have in a pony car to bring the company back to an equilibrium state was a must. And according to all of the automobile magazines on the newstand, the new Camaro proved it. THe SS models were attop the Challenger, Mustang and all other current American muscle cars.
THe company is trying to improve the basic design of the internal combustible engine by introducing active fuel management, or displacement on demand. THis feature cuts off cylinders when not needed to save and improve fuel economy but keep the muscle under the hood, thats what American sports cars are known for, no 4 cylinders here. Also the v6 model Camaro has 304 hp as much as my v8 in my 1999 Camaro yet it gets more miles to the gallon. This is a good thing but to some, they might believe they are improving in the wrong areas.
As for the weight of the car your going to have to ignore this. Sad to say that the new Camaro is a bit on the heavy side and not far from the Dodge Elephant or Challenger. The reason for the weight is not because of the nice upolstery or creature comforts but because of the necessary required safety equipment. THere have been more lives saved today because of this requirement than there were in any car from the muscle car era.
THe only downside of this new Camaro is the return on ivestment Chevrolet recieves. Upon my research online I have found SS models being sold for 10k above the 35K sticker price. This is going to hurt the new Camaro sales and at the same time increase the Corvette sales. Need I say more?
Posted by: Marcos E. | June 20, 2009 at 04:55 PM
Oh and I forgot to add that the reason for the baseline being the 1/4 mile and 0-60 time's are because it is a sports car. You market a car's capabilities. To sell a mini van you advertise the amount of people you can transport comfortably, not how fast you can get there, its the opposite for any sports car.
Posted by: Marcos E. | June 20, 2009 at 05:15 PM
Marcos
Hold on there partner, GM certainly knew the bad shape it was in in 2005 and in 1995. A Friend told me last week his acct instructor in 1971 predicted the defined benefit program would eventually bankrupt GM.
AS for the weight of the car, as I said, my RAV 4 has the same safety euqipment and weighs 400 lbs less. The Smart and Miata weigh a LOT less and have the same safety equipment. Perhaps this class car has to weigh this much as usual for anything designed by a govt committee....as you say this is not time for price gouging....
Posted by: Dennis Elam | June 20, 2009 at 05:26 PM
Ahem
Marcos ..actually Road and Track has tested all sorts of vehicles including a San Francisco streetcar and recorded its acceleration times. But the time of say 50-70 to duplicate passing times on the highway would be more useful. I think the acceleration times are a hold over from the Don Garlitts drag racing era.
Lap times and lateral acceleration I think are more sports car measures, acceleration times look great for heavy front engined solid rear axle muscle cars but tells us little about braking distance or lateral acceleration.
Thanks for your post on this one, nice to have another enthusiast in class!
Posted by: Dennis Elam | June 20, 2009 at 05:31 PM
Engineering update
Actually the cylinder deactivation idea dates from the late 19the century http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_displacement
GM tried this with the 4 6 8 Cadillac but it achieved little fuel economy as yet another GM dud innovation in its worst period of the 1970s-early 80s
Why hasn't GM put overhead cam heads on their V 8s even ford did that, now that would be an improvement, but like harley davidson why do something like that, GM left innovation after inventing the auto transmission about 1948 and the first practical auto air conditioning about 1955, after that well
corvair
pontiac OHC 6, a true engineer disaster
Cadillac 4 6 8
Olds diesel, first was a disaster
Pontiac Fiero which caught fire
three versions of the same car, the Olds cutlass, forecasting the end of Olds
oh well, great examples all of not employing Deming
Posted by: Dennis Elam | June 20, 2009 at 07:32 PM