While the Mustang and Challenger are fairly faithful modern interpretations of their respective forebears, Tom Peters (designer of the C6 Corvette) decided he wanted to pick up cues from the '69 Camaro but use them on a car that is edgier and more modern than retro.
"My charge to the design team was for them to do the meanest, scrappiest, street-fighting dog they could sketch," Peters said, adding that he wanted to incorporate the sheer surfaces found in jet fighters like the F-22 Raptor, a plane which also influenced his Corvette work.
While the front-end graphic of a single opening flanked by headlamps is pure Camaro, the sheet metal has a decided point to its nose and the anodized grille in that opening has an even sharper beak. The sharply creased character lines in the power-dome hood and down the side of the car are offset by convex curved sheet metal that gives the car a fuselage look. The roof features a double-bubble inspired by the Corvette, while planar rocker panels sweep into bulging rear fenders to give the Camaro its muscle. The rear end is a fresh look with twin square openings filled by round taillamps.
Inside, designer Jeff Perkins reinterprets the classic muscle-car interior. "Those cars were always kind of mysterious, kind of dark with deeply hidden instruments," Perkins said. "I wanted to pick up those cues but do it in a new way."
His vision is to keep things simple, with minimal use of buttons, switches and read-outs. Two instruments dominate the dash - the tach and speedometer - and use the recurring theme of round aluminum faces set into square bezels. Rather than having a cockpit with the console joining the dash, the two are separate; the dash is one piece from door to door, while the console - which extends into the rear seat - ends just ahead of the large shifter with its baseball-sized knob.
The reborn Camaro rides on GM's global rear-drive Zeta platform, which means that rumors of that architecture's death for the North American market have been greatly exaggerated. Beneath the hood is a 6.0-liter LS2 400-bhp V-8 mated to a Tremec T-56 6-speed manual gearbox. Riding on a 110.5-in. wheelbase, the Camaro measures 186.2 in. in overall length and rides on a fully independent suspension with 4-wheel 15.0- in. disc brakes. The alloy wheels measure 20 in. at the front and 21 in. at the rear.
Because the Camaro shares the same basic underpinnings as the GTO, all indications are that this Chevy variant could join the lineup following the Pontiac's total redesign in 2008. Which means the Camaro could be a go for the 2009 model year.