Pure Speculation: Camaro Being Readied to do Battle with Hot-Selling Mustang

Obviously this is what GM's recently "promoted" Vice Chairman Bob Lutz was referring to earlier this week during the Society

Bob Lutz has been quoted as saying, "We're going to take another look at high performance rear-wheel drive." (Photo: Artist's Rendering)

of Automotive Engineers' 2005 World Congress when he said, "We're going to take another look at high performance rear-wheel drive."

This bit of news, mind you, wouldn't be anything revelatory if you hadn't heard in March that the General suspended plans to continue development of its Zeta architecture for a new generation of rear-drive vehicles especially designed for the North American market. Like most cancellations at GM, it's a dollars and cents thing. The cars that would inevitably ride on the Zeta chassis would include the Camaro, Pontiac Firebird, and possibly something similar to the stunning Buick Velite that wowed auto show goers

General Motors suspended plans to continue development of its Zeta architecture for a new generation of rear-drive vehicles especially designed for the North American market. (Photo: Artist's Rendering)

in Detroit in 2003. No doubt, GM would optimize the architecture with yet more spin-offs, but such speculation is now moot.

There's also an argument as to whether anything Bob Lutz says in a media scrum can be trusted. Not that the product-czar is making up stories, as he's most likely being as forthright as he's always been, unveiling highly guarded corporate secrets as usual; such as any discussions that did, or did not actually take place with regard to the potential of dropping any one of GM's "damaged" brands (see automotive news section for Mar 27, 2005: Industry Report: GM's Bob Lutz Considers Dumping One Brand to Curb Losses).