A little background philosophy behind the intentions and thinking of this design. I'm deliberately avoiding the Japanese anime, comic book, "extreme" movie car look. If you look at the concept cars from EVERY other company they're ALL doing that kind of look in their concept vehicles. The problem with that is, if EVERYBODY is trying to look extreme, nothing winds up looking extreme... too much "me too" going on so it quickly loses its impact and looks common, gets boring and is stamped all over with the word "trendy".
My intention is to consciously, deliberately avoid all that and design a car that #1, looks like an American design; not something from a foreign design studio, and #2, I want it to look like a Camaro... period. I want it to instantly have that identity recognition that when you see it on the road there's absolutely no mistake what you're looking at.
In order to do that there has to be some design/style elements carried over from the heritage styling. This means no exotic batman movie car gimmicks with ridiculously over-designed bulges, cutouts, fake scoops, etc. that have absolutely no real function.
The Camaro was always a clean design. Yes it had some "fake" elements like the gills on the side that weren't real and on the 5th gen, the mail slot in the front, but overall it was a clean design. My goal is to take that further and eliminate any fake vents, scoops, etc. so that if it's there, it's real and has a real function; so the side scoops are real and the hood vents are real and work. I'm deliberately going for that "clean" look which I feel is part of the Camaro heritage/identity. That's why I'm trying to keep the shapes and styling simple, pure and elegant. I want this design to still be beautiful 40 years from now; just like the heritage Camaros are today.
That's the reasoning behind this design and why I'm doing it. I criticized the Camaro design team for what they did on the refresh (which I still don't like) but I also wanted to put something on the table as a contribution to what I see as more or less a team effort. As far as I know the Camaro is about the only car/project that has such a great team that cares about it's customer base to the extent that they actually seek input/feedback and incorporate it into the Camaro; making it essentially a team effort between them and all of us. I think that's great and I don't want to just criticize without offering something positive and constructive to do my "part" of being on the team. Maybe that's being presumptuous on my part but that's my take on all of it.
