The times they are a changin’

I saw a rare sight on my way to work today. Pulling out of the gas station was a bright yellow International CXT. For those of you unfamiliar with this seldom purchased, and even less seldomly seen SUV, it is officially now an image of yester years.

The international CXT is the largest SUV every made. It was created a few years back for those who felt that a Hummer H2 just wasn’t what they wanted to be seen in at soccer practice any more. The CXT, or Commercial Extreme Truck, is based off of a Semi-truck. It is 21 ft long, 9 ft high, and weighs over 14,000 pounds, or twice that of a Hummer H1. It was born in 2004, on the heals of Hummers success, when gas was um cheap, and bigger was better.

Oh how quickly they fall.

Today Chevy released the official numbers of the 2010 Camaro. This car hit the car show scenes in 2006. It was impressive, it was beautiful… it missed the mark by a few years. Or, so I thought. Once gas prices hit $4.00 a gallon I predicted that the sports car market (expecially the entry level one) would be hit nearly as hard as the SUV market. We’ve already seen what’s happened to the SUV market. The future of Hummer is in peril, Toyota is discontinuing the Tundra, and Chrysler isn’t going to lease any more cars because of the financial hit it took on the depreciation of leased SUVs. They haven’t released what kind of hit that was, but Ford announced that it lost 2.1 BILLION in residual values from large vehicles coming off of lease. But, I digress.

Back to the Camaro. I thought that Chevy messed up about as bad as it typically messes up (ie, not investing in small, RWD car production 5 years ago) when it chose to keep this car as a concept for so long. How many shows and movies do you need to be in before you release a freakin’ car? I thought the ship had sailed, the market for these cars is going to stagnate, and all of the years you sat with your shiney concept car would all be in vain.

But, could it actually be that Chevy thought this through more than I thought? Perhaps. the first line of the CNN release for the Camaro really shows how things changed in such a short time: “When unveiling new performance models, car companies usually boast about horsepower, engine size and expected zero-to-60 times.

But when General Motors unveiled the 2010 Chevrolet Camaro Monday afternoon, it was the car’s fuel economy numbers that were front and center.”

That’s right, no longer is it about that 4 second quarter mile, or the 350 hp (thank God) now… it’s about fuel economy. The Camaro is no Prius, that’s for sure, but it get’s Mustang V6 fuel economy ratings with Mustang V8 power… impressive. Of course, the next generation Mustang (also with a 2010 release) is going to have better fuel economy as well, I am sure.

In other Ford “time changing” news, they released today that they are bringing in even more smaller, European cars, and re-vamping their truck lines to build them. Proof that you either need to get with the times and change, or get ready to be run over in the long run.

Best of luck to our American car companies. Their products may suck, but they are a huge part of our economy. I really hope that the changes that they are making will turn them around.