Celebrating 50 Years of the Camaro - Jim Campbell

Well, it's great to be here with you. I love your energy. You always love this show. We do too. 50th anniversary for SEMA and for Camaro it's our 50th anniversary as well, so it's really a celebration of both, and a lot of other news at Chevy as well. For Camaro, we have our 2017 Anniversary Edition in the display. We also have the very first Camaro prototype, owned by Corey Lawson and his team; they brought it here. Awesome to come in as the first prototype; we were built in 1966 as the '67 model. It's right here in our display. On top of that, we have the COPO Camaros, 2017 edition, with that anodized blue, hyper blue metallic. Looks great. We also have that prototype drag race car, fantastic, with all those parts the drag racers can do to their own 6th gen to make it go faster down the strip. Plus a lot of other news. It's just been a great show. You know what really blew me away is just the diversity you guys go with your cars every year. I was over there looking at everything from the crate engines.

Oh well, you obviously have fun at your job. We do as well. One of the other vehicles we have: we have two vehicles called the Slammers. One's a '69 Chevelle, another one is a current model 6th gen Camaro. We got them slammed. I love the Chevelle because my first car was a '69 Chevelle, so I love that one. Under the hood is an LT4 376, it's our newest crate engine. It's basically a 6.2 liter V8 with a hot cam and had 535 horsepower, loads of torque. That's what's under the hood of that Chevelle. Then the Slam Camaro is really kind of a designer's vision of a hot-rodded Camaro with 22s in the front, 24s in the back, plenty of performance parts. Boy, they made both interiors beautiful, this deep red interior. Beautiful. Yeah, and I like the fact you guys really did a great job of that trickle-down. We have the new LT1 e-ROD system on the new for the [L75]? Actually, the new transmission that's set up for that. So you guys are really making it so you can integrate between what you already own. If you own a Chevrolet, which you're supposed to already own a Chevrolet, I know I got too many of them, but we'll get it. But you know, it makes it available. I remember last year I was talking about the LS, and they're like 'Well, we're not doing that anymore.' I'm like 'Wait, what?' And now I understand why you do it. So it's great to see all these great products coming out because it really does prove that the old adage of 'Race on Sunday, sell on Monday' is always alive at Chevrolet. There's no question. And just on those crate engines, we do have the connected cruise packages. Really it's just to simplify: how do you get the whole powertrain together for your project vehicle? So we try to simplify that: engine, transmissions, controllers programmed to work together. Connected cruise is what we call it. We also have many e-ROD versions where we add to that all of the required equipment to meet emissions requirements. So if you're in California, if you have a 1996 or older vehicle, we have the solution to give you all the power you want and meet all the emissions requirements in those states and many others or other countries. We try to make it easy. That's really fun. And then on the racing side, it's been a really good year for Chevy. IndyCar: Simon Pagenaud with Chevy power, working with Team Penske, brought the championship home, and our fifth manufacturers championship. On top of his drivers championship, Chevy drivers finished 1-2-3-4. The yellow Corvettes, the C7.R, won the IMSA GTLM drivers championship. That was fantastic. It's such a competitive group of cars we compete with in that class. Also in the prototype class, the Whelen Corvette DP with Curran and the guys won the drivers championship. That was fantastic. NASCAR has yet to finish. We've got Jimmie Johnson locked in for Homestead Miami. Two more races to go: one in Texas, one in Phoenix, then we go to Miami. So we want to see a few more Chevy drivers in there.

Thank you for leaving it intact. That is actual vehicle, our test vehicle. We took it to the Nürburgring, and we have an amazing road course at our proving grounds in Michigan, our Milford Road Course, which has some of the most famous turns from around the world in one spot. So we test there, but we also go to the Nürburgring. That 2017 ZL1 ran a 7:29.60, it beat the gen-5 ZL1 time by almost 12 seconds. That track is unbelievable. It's about 14 miles, 132 turns, changes of elevation. And you can make it there combined with our Milford Road Course. We think that's the ultimate test, and we love the result. One other thing we had in our display yesterday: it's really a new twist on advanced propulsion. That was our Colorado ZH2 hydrogen fuel-cell propelled electric Colorado. Amazing and very futuristic looking to go with the motivation. It's one of those things that we were talking about just a second ago. As our mutual friend John Warren II said, my 10-year-old daughter will see by the time she's 25 maybe even a 50/50 split between alternative fuel vehicles on the road. What's really neat about our generation is we're going to see this great mix of all these different propulsion types in vehicles. It's going to open it up to everybody. You said it's going to be a mix. There's not one solution for our future. It's going to be making advancements on internal combustion engines; we continue to find ways to get more power while still delivering durability and great efficiency with lower emissions. You're going to see different stages of hybrids all the way to pure electrics, and then here we are in our display a hydrogen fuel cell generating electricity to drive an all-wheel-drive, four-wheel-drive Colorado that can handle off-road terrain. It's fantastic. The only thing you emit from the tailpipe is water. In that vehicle, about every hour, it will emit a couple gallons of water. That's it. It's pretty amazing. So we're excited about the future. We love SEMA. Chevy loves everything around performance, accessorization, of course we love racing. So great to be here with you.