Have No Fear, Bowtie Faithful: the Chevrolet Camaro Will Not Wear a Holden Badge in Australia

by Timothy Cain

Published: October 10th, 2017

have no fear bowtie faithful the chevrolet camaro will not wear a holden badge in

General Motors’ Australian outpost is losing all of its domestic production, but that doesn’t mean Holden is shutting down all of its Australian development operations.

Late last month, we told you the Chevrolet Camaro was going to become a right-hand-drive model five years earlier than originally planned because of special rebuilds by GM’s Holden division.

But once the Chevrolet Camaro goes on sale Down Under, it will not wear the local GM badge.

Rather, Chevrolet’s bowtie will remain affixed to the grille of the sixth-gen Camaro.

Of course, the Camaro remains unconfirmed for the Australian market. According to Australia’s Drive, Holden’s communications director Sean Poppitt referred this week to the Camaro as “the mysterious sports car that we’ve talked about,” while clarifying that some competitors — namely Ford, with its huge global hit of a sixth-gen Mustang — moved more quickly into right-hand-drive markets. By taking a car that is not designed to be right-hand-drive and forcing it to become right-hand-drive, the cost of the Camaro will rise quite sharply. It won’t be competitively priced with the Mustang in Australia.

But it is almost certainly destined to exist. Holden Special Vehicles spokesperson Damon Paull says, “I have read reports about the Camaro coming but we have no comment.” Hardly a denial.

Likewise, Poppitt refused to speak directly about the Camaro, but he informed Drive about the potential branding strategy. “I think it has to wear a Chevrolet badge, it absolutely does,” the Holden communications boss says. “It’s intrinsic to its DNA and to what it stood for, for decades in the U.S., and globally.”

You better believe it. While the Corvette stands off to the side as a near separate entity, the Camaro is proudly Chevrolet.

Last month in the United States, Camaro volume rose 13 percent to a class-topping 7,430 September sales. That made September 2017 the best September for the Camaro since 2009, the Camaro’s year of rebirth. In Australia, Holden Special Vehicles will likely build 1,000 right-hand-drive Camaros per year.

Timothy Cain is a contributing analyst at The Truth About Cars and Autofocus.ca and the founder and former editor of GoodCarBadCar.net. Follow on Twitter @timcaincars and Instagram.

#Australia #Bowtie #Chevrolet #ChevroletCamaro #FutureVehicles #Holden #HoldenSpecialVehicles #RightHandDrive #RightHandDriveConversion

Timothy Cain

More by Timothy Cain

Comments

Join the conversation

2 of 22 comments

Cognoscenti on Oct 11, 2017

Naysayers to the idea of a Camaro wearing the Bowtie in Australia are forgetting that there is a significant group of folks who know and love classic American muscle cars, including the Chevy Camaro. Take a look for yourself! https://www.australianmusclecarsales.com.au/muscle/us_muscle.html http://www.americanmusclecars.com.au/ Consider this point in light of the Camaro design being so heavily influenced by nostalgia, and it starts to make more and more sense.

Like Reply
Spike_in_Brisbane on Oct 11, 2017

Since so much of the rebirth of Camaro was engineered in Australia, it's a shame that the capability to be either left or right hand drive was not built in. The European and Japanese manufacturers seem to have no trouble with the concept.

Like Reply

Recent Comments

Varezhka I have still yet to see a Malibu on the road that didn't have a rental sticker. So yeah, GM probably lost money on every one they sold but kept it to boost their CAFE numbers.I'm personally happy that I no longer have to dread being "upgraded" to a Maxima or a Malibu anymore. And thankfully Altima is also on its way out.
Tassos Under incompetent, affirmative action hire Mary Barra, GM has been shooting itself in the foot on a daily basis.Whether the Malibu cancellation has been one of these shootings is NOT obvious at all.GM should be run as a PROFITABLE BUSINESS and NOT as an outfit that satisfies everybody and his mother in law's pet preferences.IF the Malibu was UNPROFITABLE, it SHOULD be canceled.More generally, if its SEGMENT is Unprofitable, and HALF the makers cancel their midsize sedans, not only will it lead to the SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST ones, but the survivors will obviously be more profitable if the LOSERS were kept being produced and the SMALL PIE of midsize sedans would yield slim pickings for every participant.SO NO, I APPROVE of the demise of the unprofitable Malibu, and hope Nissan does the same to the Altima, Hyundai with the SOnata, Mazda with the Mazda 6, and as many others as it takes to make the REMAINING players, like the Excellent, sporty Accord and the Bulletproof Reliable, cheap to maintain CAMRY, more profitable and affordable.
GregLocock Car companies can only really sell cars that people who are new car buyers will pay a profitable price for. As it turns out fewer and fewer new car buyers want sedans. Large sedans can be nice to drive, certainly, but the number of new car buyers (the only ones that matter in this discussion) are prepared to sacrifice steering and handling for more obvious things like passenger and cargo space, or even some attempt at off roading. We know US new car buyers don't really care about handling because they fell for FWD in large cars.
Slavuta Why is everybody sweating? Like sedans? - go buy one. Better - 2. Let CRV/RAV rust on the dealer lot. I have 3 sedans on the driveway. My neighbor - 2. Neighbors on each of our other side - 8 SUVs.
Theflyersfan With sedans, especially, I wonder how many of those sales are to rental fleets. With the exception of the Civic and Accord, there are still rows of sedans mixed in with the RAV4s at every airport rental lot. I doubt the breakdown in sales is publicly published, so who knows... GM isn't out of the sedan business - Cadillac exists and I can't believe I'm typing this but they are actually decent - and I think they are making a huge mistake, especially if there's an extended oil price hike (cough...Iran...cough) and people want smaller and hybrids. But if one is only tied to the quarterly shareholder reports and not trends and the big picture, bad decisions like this get made.