No more Camaro camouflage

Excitement is growing in America as the launch of the new Chevy Camaro approaches.

The Camaro will be the first North American model to be built on the Zeta platform, which was originally developed by Holden for the VE Commodore and WM Statesman. Pontiac's G8 will be the first Zeta product to market, but that's built at the Holden plant at Elizabeth, whereas the Camaro will be built in the Canadian plant at Oshawa.

Hardly a week goes by without new spy photos of the pre-production Camaro appearing in on-line and hard-copy media outlets. Now, Ed Peper, General Manager for Chevrolet, has announced that in accordance with an instruction from General Motors' Bob Lutz, Vice Chairman for Product Development, the Camaro will go forth into the world nekkid.

With the announcement, made on the GM Fastlane Blog site, came a picture of a pre-production model, photographed from the 3/4 rear (pictured) in a small format.

The location appears to be Holden's Lang Lang proving ground and Peper specifically noted in his remarks: "During this upcoming year, pre-production Camaros will appear both on U.S. and Australian roads as we continue with testing and development."

Peper also wrote: "Word has come down from Bob Lutz to remove the camo from the pre-production Camaros so further evaluations could be done for aerodynamics and cooling efficiency."

This sort of tactic inevitably fuels conspiracy theories, so it will come as no surprise that many on-line outlets and subscribers believe that the revelation of the Camaro in all its glory is a measure to counter the increasing number of spy pics appearing on the web and the ensuing on-line controversy.

The latest lot to appear, at Jalopnik.com, showed a car carrier somewhere en route from Denmark to Sweden and carrying two disguised Camaros, a HSV Maloo and four Commodore sedans. Also on the trailer was a disguised wagon, which some have speculated would have been the Pontiac G8 version of Holden's as yet unreleased VE Commodore wagon.

Spy pics of the Camaro's interior have sharply divided opinion and earlier pics taken in Australia focused on such things as the wheels being smaller than the original concept's and roof B pillars developed for the production car that were missing on the concept.

GM's decision to reveal the Camaro in production-ready trim is likely to be just as much about controlling the flow of information concerning the new car and mitigating uninformed speculation as it is about proper testing methods for cooling efficiency and aerodynamics.

The tactic points to production models being on display at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, about a week from now.