The future

HSV’s initial build-run of 550 model-year 2018 Camaros will be exhausted by early 2019. What happens then?

The plan is to roll the MY19 Camaro in to the market, adding a manual gearbox option to the line-up.

But that is going to take some sorting out and, as a result, there may be a production line pause between Camaro batches.

The MY18 we get has an Argentine market equipment speci cation and comes with European compliance. That makes the car cheaper to bring to Australia because things like emissions homologation are already signed off.

But there will be no Argentine spec for MY19 and nor will Chevrolet go through the process of achieving European compliance for Camaro.

Which means HSV’s homologation task in Australia just got a whole lot more complicated, as the MY19 has a 10-speed auto (it’s the same ’box as the latest Mustang) and may well require local emissions testing. And that spells dollars.

“This [MY18] spec goes away so we have to take another spec, and that adds a lot of extra work that needs to happen in addition to the work we have just done on this car,” explains HSV managing director Tim Jackson.

“The assumption we just roll into a MY19 is not the right assumption.”

All these challenges mean we shouldn’t expect a rapid expansion of the local Camaro line-up from a solitary coupe to a convertible or the spectacular supercharged 485kW ZL1.

“If we do a convertible there is a completely different crash program required, so I don’t think that is necessarily justi ed by the volume,” says Jackson.

“The ZL1? Obviously, we think it’s a pretty interesting vehicle, but there are a lot of challenges to make that thing happen.

“People shouldn’t be holding their breath.”