18 May 06
'You're enjoying driving this car. That's good to see, because that was the idea.'
Camaro project leader Gretchen Darbyshire has noticed a smile on my face as I move the solid aluminium gear lever through its precise gate and reopen with my right foot the gateway to the V8 engine's 400bhp. It sounds fantastic.
'Yes,' she says, 'we worked hard on that, trying lots of different mufflers.'
Well, the ones her team chose don't do much muffling at all. There's a healthy V8 cackle as the revs rise, a racy crackle when I back off. This is a 6.0-litre Corvette engine, the latest, all-aluminium and most powerful descendant of the ubiquitous and venerable Chevy small-block for which former Camaros were just a few of its underbonnet homes. The first of those Camaros were the greatest: the 1968 originals and the 1969 facelifts. And it's a '69 that the 2006 Camaro concept car most closely evokes.
