|
By
EWAN KENNEDY
5 March 2006
One of the best surprises on display at the 2007 Melbourne Motor
Show is the Chevrolet Camaro concept car. The coupe is on the Holden
stand and is a great looking machine with a nice amalgam of early 21st
century styling and a late 1960s muscle car.
Just look at the long bonnet and short tail and the way in
which the distinctive guards follow the lines of the wheels.
Though only the concept is being shown at this stage, Chevrolet
has already confirmed that the new Camaro will definitely go into
production, so the lines we see here can’t be too far off the
real deal.
First sales in the USA will be early in 2009. Even better,
Chevrolet has announced it is also going to build convertible
version of the new Camaro and launch it later that year.
Holden is, of course, a division of GM and a considerable
amount of development work on the new Chevrolet is being done
right here in Australia. This country is regarded as one of the
world’s best within the GM empire, even more so after the
success of the VE Commodore.
It goes without saying that this American sporty model will
have a longitudinal front engine and rear wheel drive, just like
Commodore, so our engineers are heavily involved in the new
Chevrolet. This presumably happening at Fisherman’s Bend as I
write this, with testing of prototypes to follow at Lang Lang in
the not too distant future.
The mechanical layout of the new Camaro will be very familiar
to Holden fans. Not only are the engine and differential in the
right place from their point of view, but the car also features a
6.0-litre LS2 V8 engine and T56 six-speed manual gearbox sound.
Chevrolet tells us it will also produce the vehicle in a
lower-cost format with a V6 engine.
Will this new Camaro be sold in Australia, and if so will it
carry Chevrolet badges, or Holden ones? If it was the latter,
could this be Australians' first glimpse of the next Monaro?
The answer to all of the above is yet to be revealed by
GM-Holden. But the concept Camaro hasn’t been air freighted here
just for the fun of it. The attitude of the Australian public to
the car at the Melbourne Motor Show will certainly taken very
seriously by the marketing people. If you want to have your say it
might be an idea to get to the Show as soon as possible.
© Copyright
Marque Publishing Company
|
