GM Holden’s departing General Manager Denny Mooney recently made it known that Holden engineers are involved with the testing of the new 2008 Chevrolet Camaro. In fact he commented that one of the benefits of Holden being part of the global GM empire is that the local workforce will be ensured of greater stability.

In this case the engineers who worked for many years putting the VE Commodore together have been retained to work on the 2008 Camaro, rather than being biffed out onto the street as was the way in years gone by.

The VE Commodore was the first GM vehicle to be developed using the Zeta rear wheel drive architecture and the Chevrolet Camaro is set to be the first global vehicle to be built using Zeta. So it makes sense to use the Holden engineers. It is fair to say that they are familiar with the platform and will no doubt be involved with the development of other future GM products to use Zeta.

Camaro will use a wheelbase that is 109mm shorter than VE but that hasn’t stopped GM Holden cobbling a Frankenstein like VE Commodore body together over the shorter Camaro platform as seen by at least one eagle eyed Drive reader. You can check out the picture at Drive.com.au

While Drive play down any connection to a new Monaro we can’t help thinking that a shorter wheel base coupe like the Camaro would make a great basis for a new Monaro Coupe. With a large chunk of the development work being carried out for the Camaro, a new Monaro may be economically feasible…maybe.

The Camaro is expected to go into production in 2008 with the first cars to go on sale in North America in 2009. The good news is that we are likely to see the Camaro in Australia. With V6 or small-block Chev V8 power (why would you bother with the V6…) and a very cool modern interpretation of the originals styling we expect the Camaro will be a phenomenon.

Steane

Source: Drive
Image source: CGI Automotive