'Aussie' Chev stars on GM's stand

The Opel version of the Captiva SUV may have been the 'practical' star of the General Motors Europe stand at the Paris motor show, but it was an out-and-out concept racer that stole the limelight. And it's got strong Aussie connections.

The Chevrolet World Touring Car Championship (WTCC) Ultra Concept Car is the handiwork of a team headed by two GM Holden designers, UK-born Ewan Kingsbury and Breony Crittenden. Kingsbury and Crittenden were respectively the Lead Exterior and Interior Designers of the turbodiesel powered racer.

But the Aussie 'content' didn't stop there -- the initial concept and early design work was developed in South Korea by ex-Holden designer Max Wolff and Steve Eum from the GM DAT Advanced Design Studio. GM Holden's design department in Port Melbourne refined the exterior lines and styled the interior. And while the scale and full-size clay models were constructed at Fisherman's Bend, the interior was digitally designed using GM Holden's advanced virtual design skills and tools.

Taking in other global resources of the GM 'family' GM India Digital Sculptors produced the digital data for the outer skin of the vehicle which was built by Japanese company, YDS, which was also responsible for Chevrolet's recent SUV concepts, T2X and S3X.

Chevrolet WTCC team technical partner, British motorsport specialists, Ray Mallock Limited, took part in the build of the racer itself.

No wonder the program has been described as GM's most global project ever.

According to Kingsbury, the Ultra represents a vision of a new generation of touring car -- "a design icon that bends the present WTCC regulations.

"As the chosen theme of the car was a concept racecar, this immediately gave me license to push the passion and aggression of the styling to the extreme."

The aim of Crittenden's interior for the Ultra was to "bring the sporty nature of the exterior design inside".

"We opted for raw dark surfaces by using unpolished metal or matte carbon-fibre inserts," she said.

Not likely to see a showroom, the Ultra does give clues to the edgy design themes we can expect out of GM's Korean-based small car operation, and perhaps to the design themes Chev-badged Non-USA market product is likely to 'wear'.

GM says Ultra is a fully-functional racecar. It is powered by a 139kW/190hp hot-rodded version of the 2.0-litre four-cylinder common-rail turbodiesel that graces the European-market Captiva. This is mated to a sequential gearbox.

Like the Chevrolet (nee Daewoo) Lacetti-based touring car currently contesting the WTCC, the Ultra is front-wheel drive.

With considerably less weight to lug around and a state-of-the-art touring car chassis, the Ultra should be a blast to drive. The queue for the first track session starts here…