Two years after cancelling production on the Firebird/Camaro and replacing them with the Chevrolet SSR roadster truck-thing, GM has now idled the Lansing, MI plant where the SSR is built. Due to a 301-day glut of SSR inventory that nobody wants, GM will idle the vehicle’s production facility for at least five weeks starting in January.

According to the Detroit Free Press, only 8,538 of the 15,055 SSRs produced this year have been sold. “GM remains committed to the Chevy SSR and our customers,” says an official memo from the plant in Lansing. Interesting that GM decided to throw away a car that cost less to produce and sold more than twice as many units, but they “remain committed” to the floundering, ugly, insipid, way-overpriced-at-$42,555 SSR.

Yes, I should grant The General some lease in the fact that the deciding factor behind the F-body’s termination was the fact that the car’s inherent frame design couldn’t match new federal safety regs introduced in 2003, so they thought it would be cheaper to kill the carline than to introduce a fifth generation (which they were due for, incidentally). But then how do you reconcile that GM spent at least as much money designing a whole new platform in the SSR, which has resoundingly failed to meet their sales expectations? It seems like a crock of shit, when you consider that they could have put that money into making a new F-body that people would actually want to buy.

And it seems that GM has realized this as well, not just because the GTO is here to stay, but because of all the rumors flying around about the Camaro’s return. What two years ago was just hopeful speculation seems much more certain now—that in the next few years, some kind of Camaro-esque, smaller-than-GTO, sporty V8 coupe offering will be on Chevy showroom floors. It’s pretty sad that it took them all this time to figure out that people will buy an American sports coupe if you do it right, i.e., the fifth-generation Mustang. Even a lot of Mustang buyers recognize that their favorite steed is less than practical and certainly not up to Japanese engineering standards, but they don’t care, because the Mustang is more fun than anything Toyota has sold for half a decade.

That’s the key, ladies and gentlemen. The fun factor must eclipse the practicality factor in the minds of the buyers. When the car is ugly, or a boat anchor, or costs way too much (read: SSR—you even have to PAY EXTRA for certain paint colors!), that’s not going to happen. But if you can make the car a blast to drive, reasonably affordable to purchase and give it a design you can recognize a mile away, you will have a marketable automobile. Your average Lamborghini must be taken in for expensive, specialized maintenance every six months, oftentimes driven hundreds of miles out of the way to find an authorized regional service center. But yet people (who can afford them) covet these cars anyway because of their brutal speed, their prestige, and their amazing design. It’s possible to design lesser vehicles that people will also covet. It’s been done, and it’s still being done today.

GM just needs to remember how.