After a long winter of front-wheel drive frugality and practicality, American customers of General Motors are soon to rediscover the enjoyment of high-performance rear-wheel drive coupes.

They'll rediscover it in the form of the new Chevrolet Camaro (more here), a car that owes much of its design and engineering development to Holden.

GM allowed the Camaro (and likewise, the Camaro's platform twin, the Pontiac Firebird), to die in 2002, due to dwindling sales and apparent lack of corporate commitment to the market.

During the years since the demise of the last Camaro and the Pontiac Firebird, the only V8 rear-wheel drive coupe marketed by GM in North America has been the Pontiac GTO, a design based almost entirely on the Holden Monaro.

That car didn't enjoy the market acceptance in America that it did here, but it was the car that convinced Holden's parent company that the Aussie arm had the rear-wheel drive know-how to design and build refined specialty passenger cars with horsepower pushing instead of pulling.

GM subsequently appointed Holden as the centre of expertise for global rear-wheel drive large car design. So far, that has yielded the Pontiac G8 (more here) and now, the Camaro.

Garth Tander owns a 1969 Camaro, the car that provided the inspiration for the latest model. The V8 Supercar driver shares that first-generation Camaro ownership experience with GM vice president, global design, Ed Welburn. Welburn was the guiding hand behind the development of the re-born Camaro, according to Canadian Gene Stefanyshyn, the Global RWD Line Executive for GM.

Welburn's vision was for a new Camaro that retained the traditional rear-wheel drive layout. The GM subsidiary best placed to develop a rear-wheel drive passenger car platform was Holden. Even better, Holden was already well and truly embarked on the development of a modular platform (the VE Commodore) which could be seconded to the role of supporting the shorter two-door sports model and would reduce the overall development costs for the Camaro to a significant degree.

But the Camaro isn't just a coupe body on a cut-and-shut Commodore floorpan. In fact, according to Stefanyshyn, bridging the gap between production reality and the original Camaro concept -- displayed at the North American International Auto Show (Detroit) in January 2006 -- was a lot harder than that. The production car is markedly different from the concept, although it's not all that apparent unless the two are parked side by side.

It's also markedly different from the VE Commodore which contributed much of its modular platform for the project. The centre section of the Camaro is largely shared with the Holden, but the Camaro uses a short section of floorpan at the rear and a 3-inch (75mm) longer front section -- "dash to axle" -- to reprise the 'long-hood/short-deck' style of the 1960s pony cars.

"The work we were doing -- before the concept -- was to see whether the rear-wheel drive architecture could be used to create a car like that," says Stefanyshyn.

"We came to the conclusion that we needed to put a specific front-end on it... To stretch the nose out to give it that look."

Whilst applauded by American enthusiasts to date, the Camaro has not been without its critics. Some have complained that the car has taken too long to reach the market, since the debut of the concept over two years ago. Stefanyshyn disputes that.

"Actually, this is a very fast program. It will be about a 31-month program.

"To be honest, we showed [the concept] about two years earlier than we usually do, so that's why there's this perception it's taken so long."

Pundits in America have also expressed concern that the new Camaro will be no lightweight. Specifications released by GM indicate the base model will approach a kerb mass of 1700kg, but Stefanyshyn points out that the IRS system alone weighs roughly 60kg and the difference in weight between the 20-inch alloys of the new car, versus the steel wheels of Tander's '69 Camaro would be roughly 10kg each.

Stefanyshyn believes the combined weight of the rear suspension and the alloy wheels in the new car almost account for the weight difference between the two cars, separated by nearly 40 years of automotive progress. The new car manages to be relatively light, despite offering all the safety and fuel-efficiency advantages of new-car design.

Stefanyshyn says that with the direct-injection petrol V6 and the AFM (Active Fuel Management), the new car is considerably more economical than the original Camaro, which was launched in 1967 as an antidote to the runaway success of the Ford Mustang.

In respect of safety, one of the compromises made to bring the Camaro to market was the installation of B-pillars to enhance side-impact protection. That has added to the weight -- and detracts from the 'hardtop' style of the concept -- but also keeps costs down. Stefanyshyn reckons that the only cars coming to market without B-pillars these days are priced at or above US $70,000.

"On side crash, we're going for the top results," says Stefanyshyn, "which in North America would be five stars".

Whilst some testing was carried out in North America, much of the Camaro's validation went on in Australia (crash-testing was conducted at Holden's Lang Lang proving ground) and other parts of the world, including Germany. The specific engineering test vehicle spotted while testing in Germany (more here), was the car Holden placed on display for the media reveal today.

Note that in our earlier report, the car wears amber lenses for its rear indicators, lenses that won't carry over into production for the North American market since the amber indicators are a specific ADR requirement which had to be met before the car could be registered in Victoria. Apparently you can register new LHD cars in Victoria though!

Three issues had to be ironed out in the preliminary design phase for the Camaro, says Stefanyshyn: rear suspension, wheels and the length of the front end. Plainly the car is a testament to the determination of the three camps (IRS, big wheels, long nose).

The Camaro's IRS was a sticking point, but not a persistent one, despite archrival Ford backing the live rear axle school of thought for its Mustang. By the time the subject even came up for discussion in GM, Ford had already enjoyed massive sales success with the 2005 Mustang -- but probably on the basis of its retro styling more so than its live rear axle.

"The only thing we were a bit concerned with was the guy on the drag strip," says Stefanyshyn. "They don't want IRS, but we thought, 'hey, you got 100,000 people and 200 people -- we've gotta give the people a good car'. Right? The guys on the drag strip, they'll figure out -- like the old days… 'cause they used to have people take out the axles they had and put heavier ones in there and big tyres and wheels and all that."
 
On release, the Camaro will only be available in coupe form, with a convertible version to follow about 12 months later, Stefanyshyn advises. The convertible is believed to carry roughly 75kg of extra weight, although the GM guys couldn't definitively confirm that.

GM expects to sell every Camaro the factory can build and the forecast is for around 100,000 units per year, of which 75,000 or thereabouts would be coupes and the balance, convertibles.

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