Chevy Just Sent Us Two Killer Summer Interns

Wow, what a love-fest! If the GM exec whose idea this was is reading this board he's probably going "Hey, did we make that offer in writing?"

As much as I subscribe to the smaller/lighter is better school, I'm sure that a lot of product designers at the car manufacturers also look at it like: "We understand vehicle dynamics so much better than we used to, so that we can make pigs dance rather than waddle. If most of our clientele values the solid thunk of a heavy, well-padded door more than the tinny click of a light one, why should we bother making the minority happy whilst running off the majority?"

That's hard logic to refute (but I'll try). Pleasing the hard-core enthusiast serves a number of functions:

-While the driver of an overstuffed american pseudo-sports car may not want to own its flyweight brother, he/she still wants to be associated with a sporty marque; and if some work isn't put into actual braggable performance accomplishments, sooner or later word will get out that the brand just isn't serious about performance and will lose any cachet it may have with the young and the stylish.

-Engineers that can design a winning bona-fide performance car make pretty good engineers for anything you do - see how Honda used to rotate their engineers through their race program. (Back when Hondas were interesting)

-It's a world market. If your cars are designed only to appeal to middle America, that's putting your eggs in a single basket.

-Gas milleage

I am looking forward to what you guys do with the Camaro. I have driven a few and really like them. You can really throw them around.

You have to remember the next Camaro is based on the ATS Cadillac platform... which is lighter/smaller and stiffer than the current Camaro platform. The LT4 V8 has already been promised by GM that it is not going away...

There are quite a few reasons this car weighs what it weighs. First of all it's based on a sedan. If it weren't it wouldn't likely exist in the first place. If you don't recall the Camaro died back in 2004 of natural causes. It was a gamble to bring it back and as a result it's not a dedicated platform. Secondly cars (all cars) are much stiffer than they used to be. They make your 90s 4000 pound car look like gumby. This is for safety and for handling. The third is styling. They wanted this car to have the proportions of the first gen and in order to do that on the sedan platform it had to be extra large.

I'm glad these cars exist and they're excellent performers. With the power and grip these cars have they'd eat a lot of the members' dedicated race cars for lunch on a track. I drove one and found it to be too big for my personal tastes, but almost all new cars are heavier than old ones and there are reasons for that that make sense to manufacturers and to most of the people who buy them.

I always chuckle when this group tries to give advice to the automakers on what to make. I've bought exactly 2 new cars in my life. Pretty sure I won't be buying new anytime soon. Why would an automaker listen to me?

Have to admit, I kind of like the big beast. But as GPS pointed out, I don't want to feed it tires and brakes. I'll admire from a distance.

Some of y'all seem to forget what happened to the Miata over the years.

To get me to buy a new car from GM it would have to have a NASCAR shape, with the NASCAR 15 inch steel wheels and brakes, and a carbureted V8, in a mass produced chassis...probably a pickup lol.

I would have, but my head didn't fit... No Gurney Bump option that I saw :(