MrFatbooty

Chevrolet plans to take the wraps off a concept Camaro at the 2006 Detroit auto show in January.

Also, Inside Line has learned the automaker is evaluating proposals to revive the classic performance-car nameplate in 2009-2010 on a new low-cost rear-wheel-drive platform.

Among the scenarios under discussion inside General Motors is the development of a lower-cost version of the Sigma rear-drive platform that underpins the Cadillac CTS and STS sedans. Another proposal would take the new rear-drive platform that's being developed in Australia for the next-generation Holden Commodore sedan and spin off a low-cost variant for North America.

GM planners are said to have targeted several body styles for the Chevy and Pontiac brands on a new rear-drive platform, including a sport sedan, a sporty coupe and a convertible. The Camaro and GTO badges could be used on those vehicles, according to company sources.

Across town, Chrysler is said to be preparing a concept Dodge Challenger for the '06 Detroit show, to test the market for a proposed two-door performance car it wants to introduce around 2008-2009 as a potential competitor to the Ford Mustang.

http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do...ticleId=106732

MrFatbooty

The continued success of Ford’s red-hot Mustang is being noticed at General Motors. There has been talk reviving the Chevrolet Camaro as a competitor to Ford’s pony car.

Mark Reuss, GM’s executive director of vehicle architecture and Performance Division, says his engineers are looking to develop a low-cost rear-wheel drive platform that makes good business sense. Reuss spoke to Automotive News staff reporter Richard Truett at the Management Briefing Seminars.

In light of the success of Ford’s new Mustang, has there been any rethinking of plans to bring back the Camaro or some other competitive car?

Yeah, absolutely. It’s not going unnoticed for sure. I think Ford did a great job with the Mustang, and you really have to look at it as a portfolio of cars. They have everything (in price) from the mid 20s up to 40s on that. They’ve done a nice job. And you have to pay attention to that. For many, many years it was SUVs and four doors. I think the market goes back and forth on a lot of this stuff. I think a coupe with a really great package is a great thing to have. The Pontiac GTO right now is filling our niche in the upper end of the Mustang portfolio. But as we go through time, we look at how do we participate?

The rear-wheel-drive program GM was working on, is it killed, frozen or just not on the front burner?

We would like to have a low-cost, rear-wheel platform in our portfolio, but business is very tough right now. You have to look at that and ask how do we do this on a very profitable basis? We have more brands than just the Ford brand. We are trying to make intelligent decisions on how you do a rear-wheel-drive platform for a couple more brands than a one-branded Ford deal. I think Ford has said the Mustang is the main brand but we are going to do Cobras and all these sub-brands that get us into the higher end. We are probably going to do things that have more brand exposure potentially on a low-cost, rear-drive architecture. Sometimes it gets a little dangerous, quite frankly, about who talks about what and what that person in the media writes about it. Like there is some sort of revelation that we are canceling something or starting something. Quite frankly this is a journey we are on all the time.

Does “low cost” rule out using the Cadillac CTS platform?

Well, I don’t know. If you look at the CTS, you have to look at the good things, such as the straight frame barrels on the front that are very efficient for crush and very stiff for vehicle dynamics. We have an short- and long-arm front suspension and a multi-link rear and those … inherently perform very, very well. There are some cost issues compared to a strut suspension. But the geometry and components that you have in a short- and long-arm architecture could change to make a low-cost rear-wheel-drive architecture. We also have aluminum components. We have some pretty expensive materials in there. There are a lot of different ways to get costs down. Right now we are trying to look at what the portfolio looks like for the next 20 years. What are the things we want to do with it? I don’t think the know-how is lacking. It’s specifically, what do we want to do with it over the next 10 years and then making an efficient business decision to address those needs.

Is the CTS a good size to launch other vehicles off?

We have two different widths, one for rear-wheel drive, one for all-wheel drive. We’ve got a long wheelbase version for China. So there’s a lot of wheelbase flexibility there.

Since the Holden Monaro is going out of production, is there pressure to come up with the next rear-wheel-drive architecture?

It’s not really an initiative as much as it is part of doing the business. We are looking at this stuff all the time. When we are ready to make decisions around what we are going to do there it is going to be a lot of where we want to put the car performance-wise, price-wise and brand-wise. Then we will go from there. That’s kind of how we are approaching it. This is an ongoing thing.

What makes the Pontiac Solstice so special that buyers are lining up for it?

The soul of this car is four-cylinder, 20,000 bucks and low-volume.

How would a GXP version of the Solstice be configured, with a supercharger?

Probably not. If wanted to do something we probably would look more globally on how we want to charge the engine. We could use a turbocharger.

What else is the Performance Division working on?

We are actually doing some things for mainline vehicles, such as uplevel engines and with packaging and execution, things we have not been asked to do in the past. I’m launching the Cadillac XLR-V and STS-V, and Chevrolet Trailblazer SS right now. We are spending a lot of time on those launches making sure those cars are right.

Beyond the engines in the XLR-V and STS-V, will the performance division get any engines out of the new Performance Build Center, where engines are made by hand?

Oh yeah, I think so.

http://www.autoweek.com/news.cms?newsId=102918

fastball

As soon as Ford announced they were keeping the Mustang and redesigning it, I knew GM was going to regret canceling the Camaro/Firebird. As they were at the time (2002), they were junk. From the dealer when they were brand new they were rattle boxes. Same as the fox platformed Mustang. But instead of blaming the public that no one wanted a pony car anymore, as GM rather blatently said, Ford went to the drawing board, dumped the fox platform, and worked out what I and many would say is the best Mustang ever. If GM would have done the same with the f-bodies (probably would have dumped the whole f-body configuration completely), there would have been no need to bring the GTO over from the Aussies, and GM could again go head to head against the Mustang.

I gotta admit, Ford won that fight with a TKO. Mustang GT's can't be built fast enough for the demand, and GTO's sit on Pontiac lots.

MrFatbooty

General Motors Corp. is developing a new family of large, rear-wheel-drive cars in a multibillion-dollar program key to the company's success worldwide, three senior company executives confirmed.

The U.S. lineup could include a revival of the revered Chevrolet Camaro coupe toward the end of the decade.

The first of these big new cars will go on sale in mid-2006 as the Holden VE Commodore sedan in Australia.

But Buick, Chevrolet and Pontiac are all to get powerful new sedans that are larger than anything they sell today when production begins in the United States in about three years.

The Zeta program, as it's known within GM, is expected to eventually include cars built in plants employing thousands of people globally, including at least one assembly plant in the United States. Zeta cars are also being developed for sale in the Middle East and China.

GM expects the cars to add sizzle to its brands in much the way the stylish and powerful rear-wheel-drive 300C and Mustang have for Chrysler and Ford. One GM source said some of the sedans will be classified as large cars by U.S. standards, the same as the Chrysler 300. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because it is GM's policy not to reveal future product plans.

In addition to the big Buick, Chevrolet and Pontiac sedans, Zeta is likely to produce the successor to the current Pontiac GTO sport coupe. A large sporty coupe for Chevrolet is also in the works. Outside sources say that car could resurrect the Camaro name. Buick might get a large five-seat convertible like the brand's Velite concept car.

"If the cars have the looks, power and quality, they could be real winners," said Jim Hossack of consultant AutoPacific, in Tustin, Calif.

"There's a strong preference in the market for rear-wheel-drive for top models," he said. "There are some technical reasons for that and some image reasons. People say 'If it's good enough for Mercedes-Benz and Jaguar, it's good enough for me.' "

At one time, almost all cars sold in the United States used rear-wheel-drive, but the layout fell out of favor as automakers turned to smaller front-wheel-drive cars following the oil shocks of the '70s and '80s. Front-wheel drive, in which the engine power goes to the front wheels, works well for small vehicles without too much power, but big cars with big engines are better suited to having the rear wheels propel the car.

Despite today's high gasoline prices, modern rear-wheel-drive cars are so much more efficient than their forebears that GM expects the Zeta cars to be desirable three years from now. The success of Chrysler's 300C has made a number of manufacturers "revisit the idea of adding large rear-wheel-drive cars to their portfolio," said Michael Robinet, vice president of global vehicle forecasts at CSM Worldwide in Farmington.

GM's new Zeta family of cars will use a wide variety of drivetrains in markets around the world, but U.S. versions are likely to come with V8 and V6 engines and five- or six-speed automatic transmissions. Some regions will also get all-wheel-drive models.

A concept vehicle showing what one of the U.S. production cars -- perhaps with a Camaro nameplate -- will look like could be shown as early as 2006, according to a source familiar with the program. The cars should go on sale in the United States in 2008 or 2009. It's not clear which of GM's U.S. brands will get a Zeta model first.

"Chevrolet still doesn't have the big rear-wheel-drive sedan its buyers want," said Joe Phillippi, principal of Auto Trends Consulting, Short Hills, N.J. "The cars should do well for the three brands as long as there's clear differentiation" in their appearance.

The exterior styling of at least one of the U.S. models has been set, a GM source said. GM designers from around the world are working on the project, based in the company's Australian engineering center.

GM expects to build the cars in at least one, yet undetermined North American assembly plant. GM's Australian unit will assemble the cars beginning next year, and production in Asia is also possible.

GM slowed development of the cars earlier this year to rework Zeta's model lineup and concentrate its engineering resources on getting the company's vital full-size SUVs and pickups on the market neat year.

In addition to the U.S. models, the cars are being developed with high-end luxury amenities for China and South Korea, where the Buick name has great prestige, a source said.

http://www.freep.com/money/autonews/...e_20050815.htm

fastball

Note to GM: start talking with your Canadian Union right now.....

If I remember correctly, one of the stipulations GM had to agree on with their Canadian version of the UAW when they pulled the f-bodies is that GM could not produce a car with the Camaro or Firebird nameplate at any other assembly plant other than the St. Theresse, Quebeq assembly plant (where they were built since the 1993 redesign).

Redblurr

seen concept drawings of the camaro and it looks alright, nothing special

blkstangman88

the fox platform wasnt thrown away by anymeans, the fox chassie was used through the early foxs, through the late foxs and the chassie was kept all the way through 98 till they redesigned with independent suspention in 99 till 04. then they went back to the soolid rear axle cuz the independent cant handle as much hp and tq.

fastball

The fox platform was used from '78-'04. They now use a variant of the Lincoln LS platform. Only the '99-'04 SVT Cobra had IRS, and when the new Shelby Cobra comes out next year, it will have IRS as well. The main reason Ford stuck with a solid rear axle on the V6 and GT models is for nothing more than keeping costs low.

Tq has nothing to do with it - the Pontiac GTO has a 366 cu. in. V8 with 400 hp and 400 ft/lbs tq and is very capable at any speed in any gear with an IRS.... but it has a price tag of 33,000.

98CoupeV6

black mustang man you need to learn a bit more about your cars...they use solid rears primarily and for the most part to cut costs. However they also say they do it because solid rear axles provide better grip at drag stripts, but that's a pretty BS thing to say. A small positive doesn't come close to outwighing the many negatives. I've never heard anyone bitching that the Ferrari Enzo needs a solid axle..

MrFatbooty

It's a lot easier to contain wheel hop with high power and big slick tires with a a live axle compared to an independent rear end.