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Carsales Staff23 Jun 2014
NEWS

Chevy transforms Camaro

Aussie-engineered Camaro coupe reinvented for latest Transformers movie

A redesigned version of Chevrolet's Australian-engineered Camaro will appear in the latest Transformers movie this week.

The new-look Camaro, which could provide a glimpse at the iconic muscle car's future design direction, was created for the new Transformers: Age of Extinction film, which hits Australia cinemas this Wednesday (June 25) – two days before its US release.

The latest Transformers Camaro represents the greatest departure yet from the model's distinctive front-end design, featuring a narrow grille flanked by super-slim triangular headlights.

Once again the Camaro, an 'Autobot' good-guy named Bumblebee, is painted yellow with black stripes, and also features bonnet vents, rear side air intakes and a black rear wing.

GM says the Camaro's association with Michael Bay’s Transformers film franchise – which is now up to its fourth release, known as TF4 – has been instrumental in the model's sales leadership over the Ford Mustang for the past four years.

"In all the Transformers films, Chevrolet vehicles get to play the heroes," said Tim Mahoney, Chief Marketing Officer of Global Chevrolet. "These movies have helped us get our vehicles in front of a younger audience around the world."

Apart from the Camaro concept, other Chevrolet vehicles to appear in the new Transformers movie include the latest Corvette Stingray, a Sonic rally car and the Trax, which is sold in Australia by Holden but won't be released in the US until early next year.

GM said the updated Camaro, which was designed at General Motors' North Hollywood Design Center, which is just down the road from Paramount Pictures, was designed to be more aggressive and muscular after director Bay asked it to give Bumblebee a fresh look.

This year's Transformers movie makes extensive use of GM facilities in Michigan, with scenes filmed at the Milford proving ground, the Delta Township Assembly Plant in Lansing, the GM Design Center in Warren and the Warren Technical Center, where 200 staff and 50 semi-trailers were brought in for production duties.

Scenes were also shot in the office of Welburn, who worked on the previous three Tranformers films and will even act alongside the Camaro as the director of the CIA in TF4.

"Being a part of the Transformers franchise is an incredible way to showcase the design work of which GM is capable," said Welburn.

"The global series gets our cutting-edge designs in front of more potential customers than we could through traditional methods."

Chevy's fifth-generation Camaro, which is based on the same Holden-designed Zeta chassis architecture as the Holden Commodore, appeared in the first Transformers film in 2007 – two years before its release in the US.

Chevrolet built a one-off running concept for the movie, starting with the chassis of a Holden Monaro, which was wrapped in body panels made from the same moulds that were used for the 2006 Camaro concept.

Its starring role in the first Transformers movie made the born-again 2010 Camaro a smash hit among American buyers in their late 20s and early 30s, a trend that has continued ever since.

To further leverage its Transformers involvement, GM last week launched a new US TV advertisement that attempts to market the 2014 Camaro to an even younger audience.

The new TVC depicts a young boy watching TF4 on his tablet. He then spots a Camaro in his driveway, before leaning towards the car and whispering: "Bumblebee, is that you?"

Bumblebee started life as a decidedly second-hand, second-generation 1977 Camaro, before morphing into a Mk5 model in the original movie simply called Transformers.

Subsequent appearances came in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), which was released just a few months after the current Camaro, which later spawned the 2010 Camaro Transformers Special Edition.

In Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), Bumblebee was upgraded to an SS model featuring a more amber hue than the previous model’s pure yellow, plus darker wheels, wider rally stripes and black wing mirrors.

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Written byCarsales Staff
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