GMI Public Service Announcement: Pre-Production Cars

[BigAls87Z28]

A GMI Public Service Announcement
Pre-production Cars
March 11th 2008

Before any car manufacturer sells a new car, it must put it through multiple tests in hundreds of conditions, some conditions that the car will never see. Sometimes when car makers put these preproduction cars on the road, they might not have ALL the parts that the car will have when production time comes. Some of these parts are wheels, interior pieces, and even exterior lighting. What some companies will do for testing, is substitute some parts for stuff they will have in the parts bin or random parts from a local auto parts store. Recently there has been attention drawn toward the Camaro preproduction cars that have been driving around the world for testing, namely the headlights.

These headlights are NOT, repeat NOT production. They are not going to be, look similar to, or even be close to production. The headlights are there just to literally shine light on the road so that the car can be street legal. The Department of Transportation says that all road going cars must have running headlights, both high and low beam. So before another person jumps the gun about another preproduction car having some sort of odd or poor fitting parts, remember that these are PRE aka before production cars, and will be fixed before they are sold to the public.

Thank you for your time

GMI Staff


CTS spy shot with auto parts store headlights.


Malibu spy shots with tacked on round lights.


ZR1 spy shot with aftermarket wheels on it.

[Hunid Racks]

It won't work.

There will always be somebody that "thinks" they can see through camo.

[DuSpinnst]

I don't know what GM calls the build levels but I can list Chrysler's and what each one means.

S0 - Hand Built Mules/Pilot Plant (CTC) Builds.

Vehicles usually are two colors, Flat Black and Crash Red. Bumpers are typically Black unpainted pre-production plastic. Cars ALWAYS are camouflaged, and these cars body panels never see the light of day due to body fit and finish.

S1 - First Factory Builds

Vehicles come in all colors, but wheels may or may not be (new models typically NOT) production ready, cars may have prototype bumpers (once again new models typically HAVE prototype bumpers). These cars are the bread and butter of development and engineering people. Things can still change and typically they do. These vehicles can range from S0 quality (as in they will never shed the camo) to near S2 quality (as in they may look sellable).

S2 - First Factory "Production Ready" Builds

Vehicles come in configurations and colors that you the customer can buy, these cars rarely have camo, and are the most common ones seen running naked just before a product release. Many Executive "Fast Feedback" cars are of this type as are early "Fast Feedback" Engineering cars.

All of the above are M plated cars, sometimes S2's have regular plates but this is rare.

[TruckMan]

Does that apply to the towing hitch on the Camero too? I might buy one if it could tow a boat!

[TuffG929]

^Yes. It's for testing only.

[Timekeeper]

Originally Posted by TruckMan

Does that apply to the towing hitch on the Camero too? I might buy one if it could tow a boat!

Nay! That's just a spare part from the Silverados!!!

[HoosierRon]

Originally Posted by TruckMan

Does that apply to the towing hitch on the Camero too? I might buy one if it could tow a boat!

Yes, but the one you have seen is just for evaluation. The production ready hitch can be seen on this Chevy:

[Highlander]

Thank you! Unfortunately, the people who need to read this won't, or they just won't get it.

How many posts state "Those aren't the production headlights!" over on the Camaro thread, and how many more posts exist after that that STILL b*tch about the headlights. Getting some folks to read AND comprehend is a big task!

Thanks for the attempt though!

[Greg Burr]

Originally Posted by HoosierRon

Yes, but the one you have seen is just for evaluation. The production ready hitch can be seen on this Chevy:

Virginia will ban those. If they don't, Hillary will on all things.

[Beau Tie]

Originally Posted by Hunid Racks

It won't work.

There will always be somebody that "thinks" they can see through camo.

It may not work, but at least people can link to this post now when they want to slap some commonsense into a poster going off on preproduction cars.

[Phoenix]

People who complain about pre-production cars are the same people who don't read the article about the spy shots explaining why the prototype looks like it does. This means they won't read this article either so the effort is lost. However I agree with what you say 100% BigAl.

[BigEnos]

Originally Posted by TruckMan

Does that apply to the towing hitch on the Camero too? I might buy one if it could tow a boat!

I swear, if people keep calling it a

CamEro

I'm gonna have to go postal.

It's CAMARO!

[Phoenix]

Originally Posted by BigEnos

I swear, if people keep calling it a

CamEro

I'm gonna have to go postal.

It's CAMARO!

Yeah, that annoys me more than spy shot whining.

[t-rex]

Originally Posted by BigEnos

I swear, if people keep calling it a

CamEro

I'm gonna have to go postal.

It's CAMARO!

You must not be from the Midwest or California. They call it a "Camero" because that's how they pronounce it there!!



Eastern seaboard & the South = ca MARROW
Midwest & California = ca MERROW
Other countries = ca MAH row

[ANT]

It was reading the black camaro thread yesterday, and came upon a few comments like this, just made me laugh, people are retarded. Im sorry that you had to waste your time on something like, people are still gunna complain about theses types of things.

To be honest i kinda like the tacked on headlights on the camaro.