Creating the 2010 Camaro: A Study in Fast Design

When introducing the 2010 Chevrolet Camaro, GM North America Troy Clarke admitted that the first half of 2009 isn’t exactly a great time to be rolling out a new car, especially what they’re describing as a “sports car for the 21st century.”  After all, given the prevailing economic conditions, times are certainly not ideal.

“But if you’re introducing a car, I can’t think of one I’d rather be introducing than this,” Clarke said of the aggressive new rear-wheel-drive car.

But just as the Camaro SS with a 6.2-liter V8 derived from an engine used in the Corvette has the kind of acceleration that can pin you back into the seat, the design program for what became the 2010 Camaro was similarly high velocity.

And there is a bit of Corvette in it, as Tom Peters, the man responsible for the C6 Corvette design, ultimately headed up the program for the car.

As Peters recalls, he was called into the office of Ed Welburn, vice president of GM Global Design, during the last week of June 2005.  He was told that there was some “good news and some challenging news.”  The good news was that Peters, fairly fresh off the Corvette program, was being given the opportunity to develop an alternate theme for what was to become the 2010 Camaro.  Work had been underway for about six months in the GM Warren Advanced Design Studio under Bob Boniface (who is the lead designer for the forthcoming Chevy Volt extended-range hybrid, so know that the competition is tough).

The challenging news?  Welburn wanted a running prototype ready for photography by October.  And, Peters says, to make matters a bit more time-sensitive, the corporation was about to take the annual two-week shutdown.  So the clock was running a bit faster.

And let’s not overlook the fact that even though sports coupes tend not to have massive sales, they are what are know as “halo” vehicles, so while a customer may admire a Ford Mustang or a Dodge Challenger (two of the Camaro’s key competitors), when they go into a dealership to look at one, they may leave in a Focus, Sebring or Malibu.

The first thing that Peters did was put together a team.  He describes it as a “very diverse team.”  There was a designer from Russia and another from Korea.  There were clay sculptors and engineers.

Peters says that when developing a design, it is key to select an iconic image and then use that as a platform from which to launch.  For the C6 Corvette, he used the 1963 split window Corvette.  For the Camaro, he selected the 1969 model of that car.  And he told the designers that he wanted “The meanest street-fightin’ dog you can sketch.”

When they returned from the break, he took them out of the mainstream of studios at the GM Tech Center and down into the basement to a studio that was not only hard to get to, but harder to find.  It’s called “Studio X.”  As he puts it, “We created our own atmosphere.  The lights weren’t even working down there, so we had to wire them to make sure they could illuminate the model.  The music”—e.g., Thievery Corporation; Groove Armada—“was blasting.  It was loud, and action-packed, a very intense creative atmosphere.”

And it was done for a reason: “When you have a project like the Camaro, everyone wants to see it and to give you their thoughts.  That is wonderful, but if you’re under a time crunch, you want to separate yourself.”

The normal course in developing a vehicle design is to start with sketches, and then to make scale models.  The scale models are used as points of discussion among the people in the studio as well as management.  “We didn’t have time for that,” Peters says.  “We went from the sketches to a model—a full-size model.”

Fortunately, Boniface’s studio had two full-size armatures, upon which models are built.  That saved time.  So they used that structure to create vehicle’s design.  Peters believes that a car must be seen in where it will exist, in the outdoors, so it was out of Studio X and onto the Design Patio.  They mocked up the clay model with cardboard, foam and tape.  They worked in the rain.  “We didn’t want to waste any time.”

At the end of August, there was a “shootout” on the Design Patio.  Studio X versus the Advanced Studio.  Bob Lutz, then GM vice chairman of Global Product Development, and Ed Welburn had to make a choice.  Studio X got the nod.

The model went into the main design studio, where the surfaces were balanced and refined.  The body was scanned to create a digital model.  The team created all of details and parts, such as the glass, doors, lamps in CAD.  Two body shells were cast from the model, one of which became a static model and the other was lowered onto a running chassis.

The vehicle was rolled out to the public the first week of January 2006 at the North American International Auto Show.

What’s the normal amount of time to do what Peters and his team did in a matter of months?  “Normally,” he says, “it takes about a year.”  They didn’t have time for that.