HSV spent '$10 million plus' on Camaro

HSV has spent more than $10 million to bring its right-hand drive Chevrolet Camaro to reality.

That investment includes the engineering, development and testing of a locally-developed right-hand drive solution for the left-hand drive Camaro built at Lansing in Michigan and the ‘remanufacturing’ process at HSV’s Clayton plant in Melbourne.

The total cost was revealed to motoring.com.au by HSV managing director Tim Jackson at the launch of the Camaro this week.

“If you wrap the whole thing up it was probably north of a $10 million number,” he said.

While that’s a huge spend for HSV, albeit not as big as some of its Holden Commodore programs, it is dwarfed by the $100 to $400 million estimates for a factory Chevy right-hand drive Camaro program.

It has been General Motors’ inability to make a business case stick for a RHD Camaro despite a number of attempts that has given HSV the opportunity to come up with a local program.

The Camaro SS retails in Australia for $85,990 plus on-road costs. About 70 per cent of the 550 examples planned for production in the first batch have already been claimed by buyers. A second batch is planned but not confirmed.

HSV insists on calling the modification process ‘remanufacturing’ because it believes the traditional ‘conversion’ term doesn’t do justice to its efforts.

“We want people to understand we are not just cutting here or shoving there, or we left the steering rack where it was and put some chain across,” explained Jackson “It’s not that, it’s all-new parts going in.

“The manufacturing is to original equipment standard expectation. But what’s different is the manufacturing, because we don’t build it from the ground up.”

HSV has developed a six-station process to remanufacture Camaro. Currently, the line is completing three cars per day and it is taking 130 man-hours per car from the start of disassembly to completing the final checks.

As the 51 workers on the line become more familiar with the process the plan is to speed the line to about six cars per day and 80 man-hours per car.

“We are not pushing the cars through, we are taking our time to make sure the guys do the job properly,” explained Camaro production line manager Andrew Wills.

While HSV already remanufactures the Chevrolet Silverado to right-hand drive and Walkinshaw Group provides the same service to American Special Vehicles for RAM trucks, that process is less complex because the cabins can be unbolted from their separate chassis.

The Camaro is based around a monocoque construction, which means it has to be almost entirely stripped back to the bare shell before the modification process can start.

“The only parts not touched are the diff, the fuel tank, bootlid and front and rear windscreen,” said Wills. “Everything else is pulled off the car. So it’s a massive remanufacture.”

There are two main challenges that force such a dramatic strip-down. One is the one-piece wiring harness, which runs throughout the car and is the first item installed into the body-in-white on the Lansing assembly line. That harness has to be removed and replaced by one unique to right-hand drive.

“If that [wiring harness] was all plug and play we could leave at least 60 to 70 per cent of the car together,” said Wills. “But it’s like spaghetti. It’s everywhere -- the boot, the roof lining, the engine bay.”

The other big-ticket item is removing the engine to access the firewall, which has to be drilled and patched as part of shifting the steering gear across the cabin.

“One of the bigger challenges was the lower section of the firewall is a laminated portion of steel, so a panel of steel, another material, then another panel of steel after that,” explained HSV engineering manager Trevor Barallon.

“So that required us to use structural rivets and structural adhesives in those areas to put those panels in place.”

The key components of the variable-rate speed-sensitive steering rack were retained, but encased in a new casting then flipped for right-hand drive.

Other new or flipped components include firewall panels and insulation, plenum water deflector, brake pedal arm, brake lines and transmission oil-cooler lines, while modifications were made to the heater and floor pan (to accommodate a footrest on the right-hand side).

Inside the cabin a new cross-car beam and dashboard were required. The former is sourced from the same supplier that makes it in the USA. The latter comes from Melbourne-based Socobell, which also provides the new dash for RAM and Silverado. The tooling for the new dashboard alone cost more than $1 million.

Underneath the dashboard is a new Heating Ventilation and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) case and blower as well as ducting. The HVAC inlet has been redesigned to draw air from the left rather than right-hand side of the car.

Assembly of the dashboard, reworking of the front seats, airbags and headlights all take place in a separate sub-assembly area at Clayton.

All up, the right-hand drive Camaro requires the installation of 357 new parts, the vast majority of which have been developed by HSV using its own engineering capabilities including CAD (computer aided design), FEA (finite element analysis) and rapid prototyping including 3D printing.

HSV has obtained full vehicle compliance for its Camaro, which means import numbers are not restricted. But that has also required crash-testing four Camaros to meet Australian Design Rule 73/00.

“We passed with flying colours so we were pretty happy with that,” said Barallon.

The objective was not to retune the Camaro into an HSV but retain its original Chevy driving characteristics as much as possible. So in-house and real-world prototype and pilot-build testing has focussed on validation and durability.

All up, about 100,000km of Camaro testing should be completed this year on public roads and at Holden’s Lang Lang proving ground.