Pure Speculation: Camaro Being Readied to do Battle with Hot-Selling Mustang

Let's just think about that for a minute. GM scrapped the Camaro in 2002 because the car wasn't capable of achieving six figure

GM scrapped the Camaro in 2002 because the car wasn't capable of achieving six figure sales numbers. (Photo: Artist's Rendering)

sales numbers. The less than ideal situation didn't make retooling its plant worthwhile, and there wasn't another car in the lineup that it could possibly have shared platforms with because GM only made front-drivers at the time - other than the Corvette, which wouldn't do. The European derived Cadillac Catera was dead and the CTS had yet to arrive, but both were too expensive to build for an entry-level sports car. The result, Camaro and the even weaker selling Firebird were pushed out to pasture. The irony? Pontiac started development of the rather dated looking Australian-built GTO a year later and resultantly can't even sell half as many examples as it did Firebirds at the end of the old girl's product cycle.

In the meantime, Ford trundled along with its archaic Fox-platform Mustang making a decent profit on each one sold; being that the tooling was paid for so long ago it's been a gravy train for the last two decades. When everybody was

It makes sense that GM wants to show Ford how to build a muscle car. (Photo: Artist's Rendering)

about as sick of the previous generation pony-car as possible, voila, the 2005 model was born and is kicking muscle car dust in every competitor's windshield.

So it makes sense that GM wants to show Ford how to build a muscle car. The problem the automaker faces, however, is the same one it did back when it discontinued the Camaro/Firebird duo, a lack of rear-drive platforms. Sure, the new Kappa architecture is good, but not designed for a midsize, V8-powered sports coupe. The Cadillac CTS's Sigma architecture is good, but too pricy to build if Chevy has any hopes of competing directly with the Mustang V6.