Chevrolet Camaro 1969 News

After more than a year of hints and rumours, the right-hand drive reality of the Camaro project has finally been revealed. This pair of right-hand drive Camaro coupes was caught at Melbourne airport by a carsGuide reader, though it is unclear if they were heading out to the US or returning to their home in Australia. GM Holden has been responsible for design and development of the Camaro, which is built up from the same rear-wheel drive mechanical package used for the VE Commodore. It has created dozens of test “mules” which spend most of their time at Holden's Lang Lang proving ground on the road from Melbourne to Phillip Island, though some have been caught doing real-world testing on roads around the Victorian capital. The test cars could have been heading to the US, as Chevrolet is running its own test program at a number of sites including GM's giant proving ground at Milford near Detroit. But those have always been coupes. And left-hand drive. This time, for the first time, the steering is obviously on the right and this firms the betting on a Camaro for Australia following the American introduction next year. The timing is likely to be in the first half of 2010. No-one at GM Holden has confirmed an official plan, with company spokesman John Lindsay again refusing any comment this week. But Brett Vivian, the vehicle line director for the Camaro, is on the record on the possibility for a right-drive version. “We've engineered the car to be right-hand drive and we can turn it on if we need to,” Vivian said in July. The right-drive test cars are identical to the left-hand drive cars which have been seen on the road near Melbourne, and also spotted up-close by carsGuide team members inside Lang Lang. But they still have the military-style body camouflage which has been applied to test cars from the start, despite an edict from GM's global product boss Bob Lutz that it should be stripped away. The undisguised Camaro was revealed several months ago in an official picture taken on the high-speed bowl at Lang Lang. But that was a left-drive car and not the right-side steering model caught at the airport, so perhaps GM Holden is still hoping to keep details of the local program secret until closer to an on-sale date.  

To be certain, this show concept was not the Camaro to make anything but a styling impression. The real drivetrain development for the Chevy star is nearing completion stuffed under a range of Commodore bodies tooling around Australian roads. "There are a few of them out there," GM Holden boss Denny Mooney says when asked at the Detroit motor show about the development program. "It's coming on well." Developed from what was once called the Zeta platform (now the global rear-wheel-drive platform) — the same architecture that underpins the VE Commodore — the Camaro will come to market with the most advanced RWD chassis in the GM world. Yet the Concept's dynamic credentials wouldn't get it a start in a soapbox derby. The rolling platform is a chopped VE chassis engineered for little more than keeping the body shell off the road and getting the thing mobile, this was all about style. Not due in showrooms, including those in Australia, until late 2008, the production Camaro Coupe will be true in style to the concept we were invited to experience at the Homestead Miami Speedway last week. "You have to forget about drawing any conclusions from the driving dynamics of this car — that's not its role at all," says Micah Jones, lead interior designer on the project, explains. "The suspension is pretty much screwed down flat, the gearshifts are like a truck and while it has been really well done as a showcar it is still very fragile." Hopefully, what won't change is the guttural, animal growl the 6.0-litre LS2 and its gaping twin exhaust tips leave in its wake, even with the 3000rpm limit imposed by the showcar's minder. "The instructions given to the design team were to interpret the Camaro as a contemporary design ... and to create the meanest street dog in town," Jones says. "When you look at it from the front there is a sort of growling Doberman there. "In the interior there are definite cues from the classic '69 Camaro — especially in the gauges and dials, which are a reinterpretation of what was unique in that car." One of the visual delights of the concept is the pure, clean engine bay with nothing other than a brake booster and oil and water filler caps left to drag the eye away from the shining engine. The wires and odds and ends that usually give an engine bay its confused look are tucked away under plastic covers on either side of the bay. The milled and polished aluminium engine cover will make way for a more cost efficient plastic version — and that's a pity — as will the carbon-fibre insert on the bonnet interior. With any luck the similarly milled and beautifully integrated strut tower brace will survive through to production. Of the exterior features only the side mirrors, slim to the point of making them useless, and huge show rims will face modification before the showroom sign-off. The long hood, short deck and wide stance of the concept scream performance car. There have been internal rumblings at GM that the roofline needs to be lifted to allow more headroom, but the proportions as they stand are so pure that any serious moves to alter them would result in designers throwing themselves on their own pencils in protest. Likewise, the interior is unlikely to change substantially — at least in style. The deep set anodised main gauges with matching centre cluster are key to the homage being paid to the cars of the late '60s and may survive the final cost analysis. The same applies to the prominent metal-ball gear lever and mountings which, along with the small leather performance steering wheel and retro-styled bucket seats, keep the '60s theme rolling. What is likely to change is the quality of some of the materials — for while the Camaro will not be a cheap model, it is mainstream and needs to be affordable. That it will be desirable is a given, even if it is so ... American.