3 replies to this topic

[Jim Difalco]

Came across this article about this Pontiac show car/business politics that I thought was interesting. Chevrolet killed off the Pontiac project so it would not compete with the Corvette.
 
Many of the Banshee design elements borrowed for the 1968 Corvette restyling. The doors look like a direct copy. The rear lights look like they were used on a later model Pontiac Firebird. 
 
The Doomed 1965 Pontiac Banshee XP-833 Was the Beginning of the End for Pontiac

 

[Dave Crevie]

Yeah, it sure does look like the '68 Vette, and it's predecessor, the Mako Shark. 

 

I remember seeing the Mako Shark at the Chicago Auto Show. I was hoping that there would be a production version. What we got was a newly re-imagined Corvette that was as close as practicable.

 

Immediately after the show, Michael Butler, producer of "Hair" and many other "fringe element" theatrical productions, had local Chevy dealer Celozzi-Ettelson build him one on a brand new 1967 Corvette chassis. Good friend and car buddy Bill Teckenbrock copied the Mako Shark body in fiberglass from pictures, and matched the fade-from-dark blue-to-light blue paint. Their parts manager was an amature electrical engineer, and designed and installed dancing pink elephants for tail/brake/turn signal lights. He also built a pop-up fake laser for the nose. The interior was equally bizarre, with valour and mink everywhere. I don't think any pictures exist, unless Bill has some.

[Sloter]

I worked for G.M. back in the 80's and worked on a project called GM80. It was a front wheel drive performance car (Camaro). It was built under the  disguise of a Chevrolet citation. Turbo v6, 20lbs of boost. and 5 speed manual trans. I know your first comments will be a performance front wheel drive car! Yes, it was unbelievable, no torque steer and just plain hauled the mail in 1/4 mile and road course. We ran it against the current vette back then and the vette could not even come close to matching what this GM80 Project (Camaro) could do. The big wigs from up top cancelled the project immediately. Their response was, "We will not have a production car faster than the vette! What a shame, this GM80 Camaro was the real deal! I seen GM so many times blow it when it came to building great cars that perform and quality cars. The most unbelievable thing I saw was not willing to spend 3/4 of a penny (yes 3/4 of a penny) for a grommet to cure large noise from the engine compartment entering the passenger compartment. Also installing additional gussets in the C pillar to stiffen the body. You could feel the difference, even in a blind fold test (yes we did) just to make sure we where not just imagining how big a difference this made. The cost was $15.00 per car and was turned down. Customers would of paid more for the car as this changed the car completely. GM is cheap and I truly believe is about to fail again. They never learn. Their egos and gouging the customer is their down fall.

 

Bob

[Dave Crevie]

The most unbelievable thing I saw was not willing to spend 3/4 of a penny (yes 3/4 of a penny) for a grommet to cure large noise from the engine compartment entering the passenger compartment. Also installing additional gussets in the C pillar to stiffen the body. You could feel the difference, even in a blind fold test (yes we did) just to make sure we where not just imagining how big a difference this made. The cost was $15.00 per car and was turned down. Customers would of paid more for the car as this changed the car completely. GM is cheap and I truly believe is about to fail again. They never learn. Their egos and gouging the customer is their down fall.

 

Bob

They are not the only ones. When I was at CWM we did work for Chrysler. Like all companies, they have quarterly audits, and during those they hit production costs hardest. Manufactured parts are priced out by the tenth of a cent. And their buyers shop around for the best price. We lost, and won, contracts by a 10th of a penny. 

 

One bidding war revolved around the magnesium heatsink casting for the amplifier for neon tail lights. We were already making the parts. Had been for over a year. Dynacast undercut us after one Chrysler company-wide audit. We responded with a lower price. This went on until we had cut our profit to 3.5 cents per part. Dynacast beat us by 3.8 cents. So we packed up all the tooling to produce the part and shipped it to Plano, Texas. At the beginning of the next year, Chrysler had their usual quarterly audit, and Dynacast increased their price for the part, primarily due to a huge increase in the price of magnesium ingot. CWM was able to undercut their price, primarily because we were buying our mag from HydroMagnesium in Norway, and they hadn't increased their price much. So the tooling got shipped back to Chicago. all in the space of less than a year. 

 

So let's review; Chrysler saved .3 cents per part changing to Dynacast. They spent over $3,000 to ship the tooling to Texas. They bought 300,000 parts from Dynacast at a saving of $9,000. They spent another $3,000 to ship the tooling back to us. That leaves them roughly $3,000 ahead. That is how the auditors (beancounters) think. By the way, that doesn't include the cost of labor to package and load the tooling. So they go to the board of directors, and tell them that they made Chrysler money. Maybe they get a bonus, or a bump in pay. (not figured into the cost, by the way) In reality, that profit works out to one tenth of a cent. And this is the kind of thing that made me prematurely grey, and eventually almost bald.

 

(by the way, it was rumored that at the time Chrysler had close to 7000 full time auditors on the payroll. How much did that cost?)