Any takes on what year this was taken? Gone are the days of Camaros stocked up on the Chevy lots that’s for sure

 

'82-'84...

 

86 or 87...

 

1985-1990 GFX, so it's 1985 at the earliest, and that's my guess: 1985. First year for the IROC, but mostly SCs and Z28s on that lot, which you would still see way more of in 1985.

 

1987

 

I went with my dad to buy a new S10 Blazer in 1985. The lot looked a lot like that.

 

Love the picture! Brings back memories or roaming the deal ship lots drooling over the new cars that I could not afford. My take is 87/86' as well. It looks like a Berlinetta in the picture (yellow)?

 

The stripes on the sport coupe were one year only 1986.

 

...without fact checking, and having had an 86 SC as my first car, I also thought they were one year only stripes, though never fact checked that.

 

The white one way in the back looks like an IROC hood

 

LOL, '86 SC was my first Camaro as well.
Red 5 speed with grey custom interior, sitting in the front of the dealership on a ramp. Turned around and traded in my '83 'Vette.
GMAC was giving away money cheap if it was a 5 speed at the time.

 

There's no such thing as a '83 Corvette...

 

You are 100% correct but ther was an '83 Chevette.😄

 

That photo is from 1986. The stripes on the Z28 were different between '86 and '87. This is 1986 here.

 

If I was the lot manager of that dealership I would have made sure the cars all lined up in a perfect straight line.

 

Like this?

 

Or like this?

 

Scott,
Yes, much better

John

 

Way back in the day, in '66 (right out of high school), I was a GM mechanic at an Oldsmobile dealership in Columbus, Ohio. Every Monday morning, at the start of business, the New Car Sales Mgr. had all the service dep't personnel come out on the lot and re-arrange all the new cars on display. He'd stand at the end of each line of cars and have us inch up and back until the cars were exactly in line. He used to drive us nuts with his OCD.

 

I believe that sometimes it is the little details that sets one company apart from another. right or wrong if I went to two different dealers, one was noticeably all over the place with their cars, the other was in nice neat lines I might be inclined to think that the one dealer is lazy and the other took their time to make a nice presentation.

 

My OCD would make everyone around me quit! I would put all the cars in order of their model, then submodel, so buyers can look at a base unit and work their way up. Jumping all over the lots drive me crazy when I'm looking for a car as most salespeople know less about the vehicle then I do.

Why not have all Sport Coupes together, then the Z28s, then the IROC-Zs? Once you find the car with the price you like, choose the color and you're good.

 

These were the days when one of my favorite things to do was to roam around the new car dealer lots on Sunday afternoons when they were not open for business. There was a lot to like. Now, almost nothing.

 

^^^^THIS. The idea was to keep the lot looking like there was constant turnover/sales of the new cars.






I think ^^^^THIS was the idea back then; get potential buyers to do some searching (being led around by a salesman of course), maybe finding a car they didn't even know they wanted.






QFT. There are pickups and SUVs, all of them looking exactly alike all the others. IMO, the only two exceptions are the Corvette and the Mustang, and at least around where I live, very few of either are to be found sitting on dealership lots. Times---and buying habits---have changed.

 

Without getting overly political, the buying habits were forced by our government. With CAFE rules changing annually for cars, but not as much for trucks, the auto manufacturers found loop holes in the rules that allowed them to build so-called cars on truck frames. Or, crossovers/SUVs. The original SUV was a full sized Bronco and Chevy Blazer. Now, everything is an SUV. That's why station wagons went away. Car frame vs mini van/SUV truck frame.

 

The government has definitely impacted the available choices. Personally, I think CAFE should be dumped and the government should stay out of telling manufacturers what sort of vehicles are built. Let the market decide that. The way that CAFE has been implemented, with the "two-fleet rule" for cars (not trucks), was a disaster for the domestic manufacturers. With that, CAFE scores are broken down by domestically produced vehicles and those that are imported by domestic manufacturers. So, GM couldn't import cars that it built in South America and have a lower overall CAFE score. The two-fleet rule was put in place for one reason - to protect union jobs. It cut the legs out from under the Big Three when it came to contract negotiations, with the domestic manufacturers not being able to move, or at least threaten to move, low/no-profit small car production outside the US while keeping high-profit large car production at home.

But so many people just like SUVs and CUVs. They like sitting higher, even if in some of the CUVs it's barely different than a car. This seems particularly true of women, and studies show that women have the most influence over vehicle purchases by families.

 

The incoming administration is planning to kill the $7,500 consumer tax credit for electric-vehicle purchases. We'll have to wait and see what, if any, effect that has on consumer buying habits concerning ICE vehicles, and specifically, high performance ICE vehicles.



The market has always been the driving factor in the type of vehicles manufacturers build and promote. IOW, if there is a reasonable (read, an opportunity for profitablity) demand for a particular type of vehicle, that demand will be supplied. After all, Capitalism is king.

IMO, a much larger reason for the disappearance of performance vehicles in the marketplace is that there is simply little/no demand for such vehicles these days. Young people care nothing about cars in general; many don't even bother to get their driver's license.

I go to all available local car shows in my area. Not only are the vast majority of the owners of the cars in the shows middle-to-older-age; so are most of the spectators looking at those cars. Teens in attendance with their parents are more interested in their cell phones than looking at the cars, it seems.

Performance car/hot rodding is a dying hobby; more proof of this can be seen at the newsstand where car magazines are rapidly disappearing. Yes, it's sad, but it is what it is.

 

I think another reason that performance cars have dropped in demand is that these days, just about everything is fast. You can buy a pretty basic car, and it'll do 0-60 in under 7 seconds, and often under 6.

Back when I bought a Firebird in 1990, it did 0-60 in 7 seconds, give or take a tenth or two. That made it one of the faster cars in the big table of performance numbers that they used to put in the back of Car & Driver. There were big differences between the fast and the slow vehicles back then. You had a lot of cars that were in the 10-14 seconds range to get to 60 mph. 4-5 seconds is a huge difference in acceleration, and the slow cars really did feel slow. (Merging on to the DC beltway in my 85 HP Cavalier was kind of an adventure.) If you wanted a car that moved well, you needed to buy a "performance" vehicle. Now, there's almost no reason to put up with the compromises inherent with performance cars when the garden variety Civic or Corolla zips away from a stoplight faster than performance cars of the past.

You could say that it's all relative. In 1990, that those 12 second 0-60 cars didn't feel so slow. But they really did. There's a huge difference between 7-8 seconds to 60 mph, vs 12 seconds. When you're comparing cars now, 6 or 7 seconds to 60 mph. vs 4 or 5 seconds just isn't a big deal, because all of those times are fast. When you can accelerate that quickly, those 2 seconds really aren't that big of a difference since stoplights and traffic haven't changed. Some cars can do 0-60 runs in less than 4 seconds, but you don't often have the opportunity, much less the need to ever use that sort of power.

 

Chesrown?

 

Jack Schmidt Olds on E Main St. The building no longer exists; worked there for about a year before moving to a Chevrolet dealership. That was several lifetimes ago; an "interesting" place to work.

 

I love the history of old dealerships. Chesrown Olds has been gone for probably 20 years now. Before they switched to Kia, the parts department was still chock full of 60's Olds signage.

Now I'm curious what Chevy dealer you went to, lol.

 

Rodenfels Chevrolet on W Broad St. The building is still there AFAIK but has been vacant for years.

 

I don't recall hearing of that one. Must have been before Bobby Layman opened up?

 

I left Columbus a few years after leaving Rodenfels; I have no knowledge of Layman.

 

It could have been in Franklinton too. When I was a kid there were still some dealers on that part of Broad such as Graham Ford and David Hobbs BMW. I remember Jack Schmidt Olds as well. Later they added Peugeot. His son (or grandson) redeveloped that whole section of Main. I have a Key Olds license plate frame that I snagged from my mother's house. This was from after they moved from the Short North to Brice Road.

 

You guys started something…what dealership sold your 3rd gen

 

I moved out of state around '72; no doubt Columbus changed quite a bit after that time. I can't remember any of those dealerships but know the auto industry went through huge changes since that time; dealerships closed, were bought out by others (the case for Rodenfels, which was bought by another Chevrolet dealership before it closed), or changed locations.

For myself, I left GM service department work in '68; in less than 2 years time, I'd had enough of some of the stuff that went on in them. Back then, car dealership service departments were like the Wild West; favoritism, shaky business practices, and plain old underhanded customer "service" seemed to be commonplace.

 

Of course if you buy a Chevrolet in Columbus now there's a good chance you're buying it from Mark Wahlberg. Yes the Marky Mark himself.

 

Which is what used to be Bobby Layman Chevrolet. There's still several other Chevy dealers in town though.

 

Years ago, Byers bought the Chevrolet dealership where I once worked; they're now out of business at that existing location.

 

Oh that's going to put it in Franklinton then. The big Byers Chevrolet sign that was at I-70 and 315 came down when it closed. I guess in 1968 terms that would be I-71 and W. Broad Street since what is now 315 was I-71 then.

 

Dang, I already forgot that Byers used to be there. Sometime around 2016, they built a new facility down at SR 665 and I71. That's been a booming exit in recent years. Nothing at all like it was just 20 years ago.

 

As someone that has been in a dealership for 25 years, that would be a neverending job. lol Most sales people can't park cars back straight to save their lives. It takes someone with major OCD to stay on top of the lot to keep it straight.

 

That would have been our GM on the new car end, and our used car many for his lot. Both very fussy about stuff like that.

 

I think he owns several Chevrolet dealerships in Ohio these days.




i was out that way several months ago after not having been near there in years. I was surprised at how much it has been developed. The only thing that remains the same is change itself.

 

Yep. From another thread (link below), I posted this: "New models? I don't even want to see 'em anymore and it's because they've got nothing good to offer -nothing that's enhancing the driving experience, but rather a butt-load of crap that hinders the driving experience. I don't even want to see it."

IDK about that. W/o a doubt, govt regs drive trends and affect the course of auto development. No doubt....that's true. But I think that the OEM's have done a pretty fantastic job of meeting criteria, while making cars faster, higher performing, more fuel efficient, safer....all while potentially offering an awesome experience. Potentially. Then they wreck it. IMO two things that kill interest in new cars today are:
*Useless, unnecessary tech that: *Has dubious benefits, and/or *interferes with the driving/ownership experience
*Culture of kids who just don't GAF about cars (or anything) for reasons unknown to me. -This was already mentioned in post #26, but I agree.

I had a little "melt down" one day and lamented about it HERE, but if they'd just add the tech that's necessary to meet the criteria, and keep all the other stupid tech out of the cars....they'd be a LOT more fun, interesting, engaging to drive than the "robots on wheels/"appliances" that we have today.

 

Kids don't care about cars today because the American car scene is non existent. During the 60s, 70s and 80's, we had rear drive cars that had performance, looks, or both. Granted, the 70s didn't provide much in the power world, so they were flashy, like the late 70s Camaro, the Volare based Road Runner, the Trans Am, etc.

Then the 90s came in with the front wheel drive scene and the tone shifted to imports that were more customizable as a FWD car. The 2000's started the SUV craze where cars started getting fewer and SUVs were everywhere. By the 2010's, the cars that remained were large and almost SUV like. I'm referring to the Chrysler 300, the Ford Taurus and even the Chevy Impala. They lost their flare. Why would the younger crowd want any of this?

 

.......when their only interests are "socializing" on their phones and/or playing video games, both of which can be done with no more effort than sitting on their couches?

I would also venture to say that even if a kid got an urge to check out the engine compartment in his dad's car out of curiosity, one look under the hood at all the black boxes, cables, hoses, covers, and assorted gizmos, the overwhelming complexity of it all would quickly have him slam that hood shut and head back to minecraft.

 

They wouldn't.

But those aren't the only cars, that's for sure. There are still 'Stangs, 'Vettes, (used) Camaros, Velosters, Supras, 370 and 400Z's, sporty V Dubs, BRZ/FRC's/GR86....there are options. But who want's 'em? Computers on wheels. I don't.