In Motion
Anyone who's ever driven a '67 to 69 Camaro will feel right at homebehind the wheel of the new one. It's pure American muscle. Fat-wrappedthree-spoke wheel? Present. Beefy, chrome-handled shifter with roundknob? Check. The tach and speedo are right in front of you, though theyare nonfunctional. It takes all my self-control not to rev the engine tothe moon and sidestep the clutch. ("Hey, you said I couldn't go over 40mph; you didn't say there were instructions on how to get there!")
Of course, you don't want to stall a $5 million one-off, either, so Itake care with the six-speed when pulling away. And you certainly don'twant to drive like a wuss. Let's say we got to 40 pretty quick, and thenthe limiter kicked in. Foot's to the floor, but once you get to the big4-0, that's all she wrote.
The underpinnings for the concept car are Cadillac CTS-V, which give thecar an independent rear. With this foundation and the giant tires(21-inchers fore, 22s aft), it felt a lot more like a real vehicle thanwe expected. The steering was particularly nice. Let's hope they get itthis good on the production model.
In a real automobile, the LS2 with active cylinder deactivation couldprobably knock down 30 mpg on the highway. With the next series of LSengines already on the drawing board, who knows how good it can get?Weight will probably be about 3,650 pounds with a driver, or similar tothat of the 2005-up Mustang GT.
It's no secret that the General is working on a whole line of newrear-wheel-drive vehicles, and we don't just mean Cadillacs andCorvettes here. Rumor has it the next round of full-sized cars (like theImpala) will have north-south drivetrains and differentials mounted outback, like God and nature intended.
In order to justify its existence, the Fifth-Gen Camaro would have tohit a sales bogey of around 100,000 units a year. In the old days, thiswould have been a no-brainer. But considering that Chevy hasn't sold asmany as 50,000 Camaros in a year since 1998, it might be tricky. Fordsold around 158,000 2005 Mustangs and was on target to top that by asignificant amount in 2006. Over 50 percent of those went to women, whoshunned the Fourth-Gen Camaro like the plague, and 70 percent of Mustangproduction was of the V-6 variety.
In order for the Camaro to be a sales success (and ensure its future),the Fifth-Gen will have to appeal to men and women alike, old and young,and most importantly, to those who aren't complete performance freaks.It must be a usable automobile, one that makes people feel youthful, butnot juvenile.
Ford has laid out a pretty simple formula: Fun-to-drive V-6 base model,powerful V-8 mid-level model, followed by a fire-breathing 500-horsevariant on top, all available in coupe and convertible form. We can seehow the Camaro could be a sporty runabout with a powerful V-6, a MustangGT killer with a 400-horse LS3 and Shelby slayer with 500-plushorsepower LS8.
The Camaro concept has the basic ingredients. With a little tweakinghere and there and the right marketing, it could be a runaway success.Let's hope, because if it goes on hiatus again (in GM speak), it'llprobably be forever.