What's with the distance from development to production?

[Whelan]

Far be it for me to pick and poke at an auto manufacturer because I am sure the time involved in making a car from scratch or a big redesign takes tons of hours and man power. But what irks me is that given our new age of technology and what not, why manufacturers have not chosen to be more stealthy about their products. Take for instance the Camaro coming out...well...eventually. We saw spy photos of it months before Transformers even came out, actually about a full year ahead. Then it was in the movie, now we keep seeing more and more of the car that has yet to be on the lot for sale. And it seems like another year will pass before we get it. Now I'm not gonna be standing in line cause I am not in the market for one, but don't you think it's been too long for this to come out. I realize they want to get it just right, but it seems to me that it has been put out there so much in media that by the time it comes out, nobody is going to flip their head around and be like, WOW! At least not as much as they may have if it came out with a bang and some awesome commercials.Moving on, you can pick out other cars such as the Ford Verve. It will be in Europe pretty much a full year before we get it, and that will be in 2010. But yet we see a pretty much production version of something we can't have. Where's the ooo, and the aaah and the I want one. It's gone, because they are going to take forever to bring it to market.I just wish that they would take a little more time in keeping the cloak on redesigns. I realize you need public opinions on cars before you put them into production, but giving us teasers or using a smaller group to judge instead of releasing full photos or videos and all these spy shots is just getting ridiculous. I love reading about cars and what's coming out as much as the next person. But by the time I see these things on the road nowadays, I am like, wow, that was only another two years of waiting. The so called Blue Devil was a completely overhauled Vette underneath but using a stock Z06 body for testing. Then the final pictures came out recently showing a tire shredding look that no one had seen before. Better yet, the first one was already auctioned off. And they will be available this year! Now to me that is what should be done, but I guess hiding from the public could be a bad thing. Look at the upcoming Acura RL (*pukes on keyboard*) I guess the market research didn't get very far because the design drawings were nice, but this thing is a Honda Accord with HIDs and LED taillamps. OK, I think that is a good enough rant, but I want to know if you all agree or think its totally fine to have to wait 2 years or more in the case of the Camaro for a so called NEW model to come out after we have already seen the specs and pictures all over the place.

[lovemyraffe]

+1 to that.It seems that by the time the car will actually be on lots, it will be time for a new design.

[GoLowDrew]

I agree with you. Some cars are so played out, on purpose that I lost interest long before the actual car comes out. However, as you mentioned, auto makers can use it to their advantage. But I think the "auto spy" business is big business. Is not that they are not hiding it. The auto spys are better at the game. Digital cameras are so small. It's on our phone now. Then there is the web. It becomes old news in a day.True story. When I lived in SF CA, I actually saw the 1 gen Tacama truck out on a weekend afternoon. That was about 1.5 years before it was released. Back in the early 90s, I had no digital camera, no cell phone (and there were no such thing as a camera phone.) How would I tell the world what I just saw? Most would just brush it off. Afterall, I wasn't sure what I was looking at other than a new Toyota truck.

[ColonelPanic]

Get off the internets and stay off if you don't want to ruin the surprise! Back in the day, we had to wait until we saw a brief blurb and maybe a sketch or pic of something in cammo (if we were really lucky) in one of the auto rags. The first time you found that car on the lot made it special. Now, you just go to a car site of your choice and viola - all the pics and details you want. Not to mention all the stupid photochops that get people all worked up for no reason. It takes some of the fun out of it.On the flip side though, even in the modern age look how long it took for details to surface on the new Vibe! We knew hardly anything about the car until the PR people at GM did their thing. A couple spy shots but that was about it. Not much we can do - spys will be spys, and the automakers will tease us as they please. The cars may eventually get there...

[kostby]

Back in the 1950's new models were shipped to dealers completely covered-up, so they could literally have the unveiling at your local dealer in the fall of the year. Now the information technology world is moving at internet time, and yet it still takes the same two calendar years (maybe more, because of all the additional government regulations of the last 40 years) to move a car from mock-up to production. The sneak peeks and camo-covered cars are just the engineers having fun with us, the buying public.

[Whelan]

I guess my biggest comparo is the Camaro to the Vibe/Trix. Yes the Camaro is a much more popular model, but if they did such a good job hiding the car that even people that worked on it were sworn to secrecy, they could have done a little better with the Camaro. Or at least setup the production so it would run hand in hand with the Transformers movie. I bet you would have seen a ton of orders for yellow with black stripes or even a special edition model done that way, which you still may. But over a year after we saw it in movies. That's a little far fetched for me.