Transformers Special Edition Chevy Camaro Unveiled 299
roelbj writes "Automotive stories are few and far between on Slashdot, but today's news from Chevrolet might just make a few readers' mouths water at the chance to own their own Bumblebee. Today at Comic-Con, General Motors officially announced the 2010 Chevy Camaro Transformers Special Edition. The $995 appearance package can be applied to LT (V6) and SS-trim Camaros in Rally Yellow with or without the optional RS package."
Shouldn't they pay you ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... to advertise a franchise?
Yawn... (Score:5, Insightful)
...wake me when this is offered on a VW Beetle.
Re:And they wonder why..... (Score:3, Insightful)
If they survive, it means they were the most fit to survive. That is proven by the fact of their continued existance. Value judgements are irrelevant to evolution - it's a process, not a pathway.
Re:And they wonder why..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because some people won't mind over paying a little over the going rate to get it like that fresh from the factory. Perhaps cause it's cool and they have too much money to care, or perhaps the really aren't THAT into the performance other than to talk to thier non-car people friends. Maybe the just don't want to worry about getting a hassle if they need warrenty repair work from a dealer.
Just a copy of reasons that come to mind. Its only a few percent increase price, the car companies do well on these deals because it requires you to buy a bunch of other options to get a configuration they will add this package to.
My last car purchase resulted in me getting every option except the smoking package because I had the money and knew I'd like the features and would never get around to adding them later. It was just easier to have them do it. Yes, the after market optins were "better", in both price and performace, but not enough to justify the work and inconvience later. If I really wanna make it a hot car I'll need far more expensive upgrades across the board.
If you think a muffler upgrade on it's own makes you car special in anyway then you are a poser. Posers are who the are aiming for.
Anything that legitimately makes them more money is a good idea. We're not talking about penis enlargement pills level of ripoff here.
Re:And they wonder why..... (Score:4, Insightful)
The issue is that the government allowed those companies to grow so large. I heard one tenth of all jobs in the US are connected to the three auto companies. That number is enough to scare any politician into a bailout.
Thus, the issue is not that the government steps in with rescue funds, the issue is that the government, by allowing mergers, allowed for those companies to grow so large that their survival becomes an issue of national economic stability. One can only hope that the government will take this opportunity to hack n' slash the brands out of the company (like GM is doing with Swedish SAAB at the moment) and make sure a similar situation can never arise again.
Re:And they wonder why..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Did the government just allow for the companies to grow so large, or could one say that the government actively encouraged the growth of oligopolies in certain sectors due to effective lobbying by those sectors? Corporations love competition when they are on the offensive, but they hate it when they are on the defensive, and many American corporations (for numerous reasons) have been on the defensive of late. So, the FedGov hates competition, large corporations hate competition - sounds like a match made in heaven! It seems only when this two peas in a pod arrangement goes sour, and the screwups of the corporate siblings threaten their government brother, that there is realization (too late of course) that this match may not have been for the best.
I'll admit that I don't know a great deal about Libertarian philosophy, but how anyone who works in an economic capacity for the U.S. government can perform their job and say that the government upholds free-market capitalist ideals with a straight face is beyond me. Free market rhetoric must be just some kind of obfuscation to deflect the fact that the much of the US economic system is really a kind of corporate-socialist hybrid, and has been for quite some time (perhaps beginning truly in earnest after World War 2, and the incredible increase in economic power the U.S. was able to obtain when the government and industry joined forces). It appears to be the logical and efficient solution when it works (look at what China has managed to do under this kind of arrangement in the span of only about 20 years!), but watch out when it falters.
Re:And they wonder why..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually if they survive it just means they survived, not that they were "most fit". I haven't kept abreast of the news but I heard about GM having trouble years ago, and if they are still struggling then it could just mean that they used to be very fit, but now are just struggling along on reserves and will die if they don't improve matters. Were they one of the companies helped by the government 'bail out' recently? The bail out was presumably affected by 'value judgements'..
My but it's fun to argue about pointless things online.
Re:And they wonder why..... (Score:3, Insightful)
UGH.
A catastrophic confluence of Smith and Darwin.
What Smith didn't realize, is that humanity doesn't act rationally; what Darwin didn't get, is that he was just recapitulating Smith's tenet's in a world there they worked.
In any case, evolutionary standards are inappropriate for discussing economy. Except in theory- theory which doesn't work in real life.
Mista B, you're proposed superiority of selection fails in the face of human morality. Just as the dreams of eugenicists failed... and for the same reason.
Man is not bound by survival of the fittest. We can choose what is moral, what is right-- and what will survive.
$1000 for some stickers? help me here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not a big car fan, not an American, so help me here and correct me if I've got it wrong.
The deal is you pay $1000 and you get some stickers to stick on your car?
Maybe they stick the stickers onto your car as well, so you don't have to do it and presumably they put them on nice and straight?
Wow, if this is what you get they'd better be very nice stickers.
Re:And they wonder why..... (Score:3, Insightful)
The difference is you can't finance a $600 mod, but when you add it as a $1000 package on top of the price of a car you can make payments on it. Dumb yes, but this is how consumers think. And why it is so very easy to sell car buyers all these packages.
Re:And they wonder why..... (Score:5, Insightful)
I look at it this way. I have a 2000 TransAm WS/6 edition. It's a special edition car, and always will be.
I've known of people who buy the V6 Firebird. They'll swap in the LS1 engine. Then they'll get the body parts from aftermarket vendors to match (nose, hood, tail wing, etc). Then they'll get the logos, decals, etc. They'll put it all together, and have pretty much the same car. Sometimes they'll forget something, like the suspension, exhaust, original wheels, etc. It won't quite be a WS/6, even though it will look like it. Regardless of how perfectly they reproduce it, mine will always be an original WS/6. Theirs will be a modified car similar to the WS/6.
If they ever go to sell it, a VIN search will show that it has the wrong engine, and that particular one didn't come with WS/6 performance package.
To a collector, my car with very few modifications is worth a whole lot more than a car made to emulate it.
In my area, with the mileage and options my car has is will sell retail for $11,300. Someone who modified a regular Firebird (Formula) to look like my WS/6, assuming the dealer overlooked the fact that it was modified from original (which lowers the value), it would only retail for $8,400. As a private sale, the modified car may go for more, but that's all in your salesmanship.
You're not only paying for $20 worth of plastic trim, you're paying for the fact that a particular vehicle was originally sold as that vehicle.
Would I buy the Transformers special package? Probably not. It's kinda silly and childish. But hey, whatever. Some people may like that. It will remain a special edition car, which will always have it's bragging rights. What if someone just adds on their own parts later, and says it's the special edition? Well, when you look it up, you'll find that it isn't. You'll also likely find that they missed some detail in their conversion.
When I work on cars, that's something I hate more than anything. Someone along the line will have converted something, and then you have to figure out what they did so you can get a replacement part that fits. I don't know how many hours I've spent in parts stores with a broken part, asking them to look up various years and models of similar cars to see what some small part came off of.
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Re:And they wonder why..... (Score:4, Insightful)
A company that gets bailed out is fit, just like a virus or tumor. The same could be said for certain business practices. A parasite can hurt its host and still be successful.
Re:Usually when people buy sports cars... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oddly enough cars really don't impress girls that much. It actually impresses the guys more, and the girls follow the guys, so you may improve your exposure chances.
After looking at the pictures. I kinda wish they didn't put the transformers logo on it. Just the Autobot symbols so it looks like the character. Putting the logo on it reminds me of those cheap $3 costumes for Halloween where you get a mask and a plastic smock with the picture of what you are supposed to look like, its name and what show it is from. Just so when you go trick or treating the adults can properly guess who you are and make you feel like you actually did a good job in choosing a cool costume.
Re:And they wonder why..... (Score:4, Insightful)
And if you are lucky, in 40 years or so, the car will be worth the $32k you paid for it when it was new. By then though, $32k will be worth $10k.
Concerning the V6? $25k new, so I would say yours lost value quicker, as if that made any difference.
Moot point, really. Both lost value like crazy.
Re:And they wonder why..... (Score:3, Insightful)
What Smith didn't realize, is that humanity doesn't act rationally;
No, you just don't understand the term in the context it's being used in.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory [wikipedia.org]
"The 'rationality' described by rational choice theory is different from the colloquial and most philosophical uses of rationality."
How long did they take to get this out? (Score:1, Insightful)
I thought ties-in were to be released before or during the film?
This is why US Auto makers are suffering. It needs to work smarter, not just rely on tax dollars and bail outs.
Re:How long did they take to get this out? (Score:4, Insightful)
2010 model cars are on the showroom floor in fall, 2009. That's how the car business works. My bet is that they'll time it with the T2 DVD release.
Bankruptcy, not bailout (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, people forget so soon...
The "bailouts" were the free money given to banks who screwed themselves.
$20 billion to Bank of America
$45 billion to Citigroup
Overall, $700 billion in TARP [wikipedia.org] money set aside for banks who are in trouble, with no restructuring.
GM got a few billion in federal loans, the government is buying about $50 billion in shares, and they have to restructure their organization.
GM Chapter 11 Reorg [wikipedia.org]
Seriously though, we shell out almost a trillion in bailout TARP money in 2008 to save the banks and everybody says "whew!"
We shell out less than 10% of that and everybody spits on the auto industry.
GM's filing ($82b) was not even close to the record for the largest bankruptcy filing.
Last year Lehman Brothers and WaMu declared bankruptcy for $649 billion and $333 billion.
Chapter 11 bankruptcies [wikipedia.org]
I'm not trying to say that GM wasn't mismanaged, any company that goes bankrupt obviously wasn't run right.
I'm just getting sick of everybody spitting on the auto companies, pretending like they are the only reason we are in this mess of an economy.
Part of the reason GM had to get bankruptcy protection from the government was because the banks wouldn't loan them any of the TARP money they were given. Too busy giving bonuses to their executives I guess!
Re:Bankruptcy, not bailout (Score:4, Insightful)
I can agree with you that TARP was amazingly toxic and still insist that the GM bailout was also amazingly toxic.
And in fact, I do. The Bush/Obama Era (a phrase which I'm sadly getting very used to using) has been marked by irresponsible, continuous and ever-escalating raids of the treasury.
And where the fuck did all the war protesters go? When we were losing soldiers daily in Iraq & Afghanistan under Bush, it was the worst thing ever. Now that we're losing soldiers daily in Iraq & Afghanistan under Obama (with the Iraq draw-down going EXACTLY according to Bush's old time-table), everything is peachy-keen. WTF?
I voted third-party, but those of you who voted for Obama should be far more pissed at him than I am. On civil liberties, war policy, domestic spending, everything that matters, he's just GWB with a bad health-care plan who likes playing with car companies. It's sick.
But he doesn't have that dopey smirk or stupid-sounding Texas drawl, so I guess it's all good, right?
Re:How long did they take to get this out? (Score:2, Insightful)