Camaro may be sooner than we expect?

[hyperv6]

Don't have anything to back this up . But the Sydney paper has a good artical on the Camaro and some of what is going on. Here is the most intersting part.

Sydney Times Herald:

How Holden will shape the next Camaro

This may seem hard to believe but the finishing touches to the next Camaro are being done at Holden in Melbourne. A team of US designers and engineers have joined their Holden colleagues to transform the concept car into a reality.

Early prototypes have already begun testing on Melbourne roads but they're disguised as Commodores.

Just before Christmas, Holden's engineering division completed the first "body in white" - in layman's terms, the first body built to production specifications.

Disguised handbuilt prototypes of cars that look like the Camaro will be on Melbourne roads within the next few months. Some will be sent to the US for testing as well. Production in Canada is due to start early next year and we should see the Camaro in Australia by the end of 2008.

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New versus old

General Motors' head of global design, Ed Welburn, brought his 1969 Camaro into the company's styling studios in Detroit so his team could use it as a reference when designing the new one. Here, designer Micah Jones explains why the new Camaro looks the way it does.

"When we got word we were going to do a Camaro concept we were all pretty excited. We really had to think about what sort of heritage we wanted to have in this car. Ignoring Camaro's heritage would just be a huge mistake. We looked back at previous generations and tried to define the most iconic models and ultimately the original 1969 Camaro was selected because of its very pure lines, great stance and it was simple.

"The 1969 Camaro was also the inspiration for the interior as well.

"The goal for the Camaro was to interpret the design in a contemporary way and express the fact it's a rear-wheel-drive performance car. You see that a lot of the lines on it shoot back and send a lot of drama and a lot of motion back to the corner and explode onto the back wheels. It's what we like to call the Camaro corner. It's a really identifiable piece of design on this car, it's where all the angles come together.

"The shifter is a nice touch, which has been inspired by the heavy-duty Hurst shifters of the muscle-car era. It's got a polished chrome cap and a ball on the end of it. Pretty simple and pretty strong and purposeful. We've modernised it in the way it's been put together and the general execution.

"We're particularly proud of the general spirit of the car. It has a tremendous amount of personality. The front has a real menacing look to it.

"Tom Peters, the director of the Camaro's exterior design, told his design team to draw the meanest street dog you could possible draw. He was going for a really growling look to it. I overhead him talking one day while the car was being designed. He said: 'The car's coming along real good, it's starting to look like a growling doberman pinscher.' I thought that just nailed it on the head."

It's also likely to be sold in Australia. Officially, Holden is being coy about whether the Camaro will be made in right-hand-drive, let alone sold locally. But at the Detroit motor show last week, senior Holden officials were talking as if it were coming. And they have been for some time now.

When asked whether or not the Camaro would wear a Holden or a Chevrolet badge (or even be called a Monaro, as some have wondered), Holden's straight-shooting boss, Denny Mooney, quickly responded: "Oh, it'll have a Chevrolet badge and it'll be called Camaro. People in Australia know what this car is. You only have to look at the muscle car magazines to see the interest in the classic Camaros."

These were the highlights of the story, the rest was about driving the show car.

I am not sure how to link this but this is where the whole story can be found.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/news/conceptcar...9330815418.html

Can't say if anything here is true and we can argue about this till the car is in the show room. But I have found some of the most reliable info has coming from Austrailia press and web sites [go figure]. Most Detroit people involved look to be working a warm winter down under.

The trucks came early so will the Camaro too? We will just have to watch and wait a little longer. I figure we will be close when the car is seen at the Ring in Germany for tuning.

Edited January 23, 2007 by hyperv6

[Northstar]

Nice find. Early '08 could mean the first pre-production cars coming from the factory, and that could still mean a few months before the first saleable units go on sale, so I think Q3 '08 is the earliest we're going to see it.

[Sixty8panther]

GM is doing what it used to back in the golden era:

Under promise, OVER deliver.