Paul Eisenstein at The Detroit Bureau is reporting GM is shelving plans for a 570 HP Camaro Z28. The reason? It would be prohibitively expensive for GM at this time. With a program price around $50 million, the Z28 got the axe in favor of other efforts.

The bad news continues as the convertible, which was previously delayed a year, faces the collapse of the German supplier providing its convertible top. The unnamed source within GM went on to note, despite the bad news, there's still a desire by the program groups to build both of these cars; but it'll take significant engineering finagling to bring them to market for the right price. [The Detroit Bureau]

Chrysler and GM’s decisions to respectively kill and delay the ultimate poser’s cars, convertible muscle cars were made for the same reason: money. The unibody Challenger is, unbelievably, not originally engineered to lose its top. So engineering a model capable of retaining its rigidity is, due to the financiapocalypse, now considered wayyy to expensive. Speaking to Motor Trend, a company insider described the Challenger convertible as, “dead as a doornail.”

Bankruptcy-imminent GM simply can’t afford to roll out its 2010 Chevy Camaro convertible, even though plans for it were built in from the beginning. It’ll need to wait until the company either secures a massive loan, gets bought by the Chinese or sees significant profits from other products that have already been postponed before it can afford to put the Camaro convertible into production.

All this leaves the 2010 Ford Mustang sitting pretty. In addition to the convertible, they’ll show glass roof and coupe versions in LA, all of which go on sale next year. [via MotorTrend]

That top looks pretty smooth to us, sacrificing little in the way of style and interior room. And dare we say it, it may actually have better lines than the hardtop. Also differing in the convertible, we see the wheels are of a different design, though obviously that means nothing on a mule car. In addition to a terrestrial antenna there's also a shark-fin antenna resting in the middle of the trunk lid for satellite and OnStar duties. So, a Camaro Convertible with a possible SS badge on the nose: A pony car convertible not just for teenage girls — what a concept. [WheelsMag via GM Inside News]

Here we go again — first it was the 2010 Chevy Camaro coupe getting the official "leak" by Bob Lutz and Ed Peper, now they've gone and slipped out pictures of the drop-top. There's one shot of the 2010 Chevy Camaro Convertible up above and one more over at GM's little blog project via the link below. [via GM FastLane]