GM...It's finally time to get SERIOUS about the Chevrolet SS sedan!

When the Holden Monaro was cleared to be made ready for the US as the GTO over a decade ago, then General Motors car czar, Bob Lutz boldly projected high sales numbers. The boldness of his projections turned GTO into an event that dealers took full advantage of. And a perfect storm of unrealistic expectations, poor planning, bad timing, and a greedy dealer network made the first number of months of GTO sales beyond horrible.

The RWD sports coupe car was introduced in at the start of winter, not the best time to bring out such a car. As production ramped up, GM picked Pontiac dealers who got the first GTO based on their sales volume, which were all concentrated in the Northeast...again, at the start of the winter. Meanwhile, those dealers were certainly scalping the cars, things were no better in warmer climates. Yours truly was one of the many potential GTO buyers who had money (or preapproved car loans) in hand, ready to drive a new GTO off of the lot if it lived up to expectations on a test drive and a fair price was struck. Instead, some dealers put $20,000 markups on the car. Others refused to allow test drives without signed intent to buy forms signed. And those were the few ready to allow test drives at all....many simply had the car as a take it or not proposition, no test drives allowed.

But it wall wasn't just the dealers who sabotaged the car. Bob Lutz and other GM planners for some explicable reason ignored the sales figures of Mustang Cobras, Mach1 Mustangs, previous year Firebird Trans Ams, and even Camaro SSs...all which sold at a similar MSRP as were on GTO's window stickers (9-12K annually), and predicted GTO sales in the 18-20K per year range. When the car didn't even hit half that number the 1st year, most pundits slammed the GTO as a failure. many used the cars so-called poor sales to justify their view that the GTO's problem was that GM insulted the name by putting it on a car that looked tame (never mind that the GTO has always been a powerful engine in a run of the mill looking family coupe). Even GM's press failed to communicate GTO's intended target (Cobra Mustang) leading magazines and websites to compare the fully loaded GTO to the entire Mustang line......and it fared badly.

With GM's next Holden import, they were going to do things differently. They were going to make sure it was priced right. They were going to sell a V6 "base version" of the car. They were going to build up a large supply before they shipped them. They weren't going to pick and choose what dealers sold the car. To answer critics of the "weak" exterior of the GTO, the G6 came with standard hood scoops, a recessed black out Pontiac grille. While the Monaro/GTO was rounded, the new G6 was angular. GM priced the car right. And last but not least, they advertised the thing. You couldn't watch more than 15 minutes of March Madness that spring without seeing a Pontiac G8 commercial.......The end result? When Pontiac shut it's doors in 2009, it took over a year to unload all the G8s they still had on dealer lots and GM storage lots....and that was after nearly a year of incentives that pushed the price of V6 G8s down near Mustang V6 territory.

This time around, GM's export from Holden was going to avoid all the pitfalls of their pervious 2 efforts. The car went to their biggest division (it could have just as easily went to Buick, since Holden already sells cars under the Buick name). The Chevrolet SS sedan was going to come to the US in one version: "Fully Loaded". It was going to have one engine, the LS3. It was targeted in price right at the Dodge Charger SRT8. Chevrolet chose to sell the car only to dealers who had a good record selling their other performance RWD cars, the Camaro and Corvette. They weren't making any sales predictions, thereby eliminating the pressure of key marketers and the like of pressuring dealers to sell more, or to pile incentives on the hood to meet sales projections if things went soft. They also made the cars essentially special order cars, meaning that the cars were made only if there was a sales slip (or a dealer specifically ordered one). And while the G8 put huge amounts of pressure on Holden's manufacturing capacity, and the GTO literally wore out Monaro's tooling (a car whose production number was to be only 15,000 over 3 years ran 70,000 over 5), the Chevrolet SS sedan would be barely more than the occasional Commodore Redline that went down the line with a Chevrolet grill. To keep investment small, there'd be no advertising budget. The car's advertising appearance would be piggybacked off of the occasional Camaro, Corvette, or the seasonal Nascar advertisement budgets that are used to promote Chevrolet as a performance division...... Does the SS' have a designated advertisement budget??? Does Clint Eastwood wear "Hello Kitty!" briefs? Hardly.

Last year, Chevrolet sold 2,479 SS sedans. That number in itself seems minute, till you realize that up till last September, the Chevrolet SS sedan was well on it's way to topping the Charger SRT8 in sales. But then sales nosedived. Badly. Last month, Chevrolet moved only 93 SS sedans. Only a year before, 239 SSs found homes. In fact, every month this year until August, well over 200 SSs were sold every single month (350 sold in March). In fact, save for the single one that was sold at the tail of October 2013 when the first ones were driven off the ship, last month was the worst month for SS sales ever.

I fully understand that the SS was supposed to be an zero investment vehicle. I also understand that when the business plan was given the OK, they kept production very low because the Aussie/US dollar exchange rate meant that each car imported stood the risk of losing money, and the fewer sold the less money loss. I also understand that the one of the reasons why we even got the SS here was to fill out Commodore's production line and have a product here as a short of showroom topic maker.......But time's come for a different track

A few years ago, just $100 Aussie dollar could buy $120 of ours. Today, it's the other way around!. GM is no longer losing money on the SS, they're making enough on each one that they CAN justify springing for SS specific advertising.

Holden's Commodore sales are starting to sag significantly, so there IS enough production capacity to amp up the number of cars to ship here. Being realistic, no, you aren't going to sell a gazillion big, roomy, V8 sedans in the US anymore. But it's been proven that without money or advertising, the SS sedan has proven that it can not only take on the Charger SRT in sales, but could potentially outsell it....It damn near did it last year.

Think about this: The Chevrolet SS sedan is the ONLY V8 powered luxury performance sedan with over 400hp, that has an optional manual transmission that costs under 60 grand. Even comparing it to a Charger is a bit of a step down. It's more European in looks and handling. Perhaps a poor mans Benz or 5 series....but neither come with a manual.

To Chevrolet in general, but certain GM chiefs in particular.....you're clearing good money on the SS sedan. You have the production capability without squeezing other vehicles made on the Holden line. You've fixed the only issue most genuine targeted buyers had (the manual). The SS is in a perfect position to full in the hole the now deceased Chrysler 300 SRT left behind (yes, incase you missed it, the 300 SRT is dead)......

Now is the time to get serious about selling the Chevrolet SS sedan. Get some advertising out, get a small marketing effort going, and do the job (mindful of past mistakes) that you've wanted to do with a car that's the best all-round sedan General Motors has ever made!