GM looks for most powerful Camaro to overtake Mustang

New York

THERE'S nothing like a good old Detroit bragging contest. General Motors Co's (GM) bread-and-butter Chevrolet brand took the wraps off its new Camaro, revealing a performance version that tops the Ford Mustang's by 20 horsepower.

GM is boasting that the high-performance SS version of the sixth-generation Camaro, revealed on Saturday at Belle Isle on the Detroit River, is the most powerful pony car it has ever built, with a 455-horsepower V-8, compared with 435 for the Mustang GT. And with regular unleaded petrol averaging less than US$2.70 a gallon - almost a dollar less than a year earlier - muscle cars seem back in vogue.

The automaker reworked the car in an attempt to outsell Ford Motor Co's Mustang, as it did from 2010 through 2014. Chevy, which first introduced the Camaro for the 1967 model year, is going after sports car enthusiasts with big, powerful engines and some better technology to improve the Camaro's handling.

"Every inch of it has been has been improved," chief executive officer Mary Barra said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. As far as whether the car will outsell the Mustang, "I think we will, and that is our goal," she added.

GM said 63 per cent of Camaro buyers are new to Chevrolet and come from a variety of other brands.

To leapfrog Ford, Chevy also is offering a 335-horsepower V-6 engine and a 275-horsepower, turbo four-cylinder motor. The latter can get more than 30 miles per gallon on the highway, GM said. Ford's other two engine options deliver 310 or 300 horsepower.

GM's engineers carved 90 kilogrammes out of the car, which will make it faster and handle better. Improved aerodynamics should help fuel economy and give the car more stability.

"We're out to win," said Dave Leone, chief engineer at Cadillac, who also helped develop the Camaro. "The customer benefits from the rivalry that goes on."

The new Camaro reaches dealerships in the fourth quarter of this year. It was engineered using the same underpinnings as the Cadillac ATS luxury compact car.

Since the ATS was designed to compete with BMW's nimble 3-series sedan, the new Camaro is engineered to be a truly sporty car, said Karl Brauer, senior analyst with Irvine, California-based Kelley Blue Book, which tracks auto pricing and sales trends.

Even with some Cadillac hardware, 70 per cent of the parts are unique to the Camaro, Chevy said in a statement.

"It shares a lot with the ATS, and that's one of the best driving cars out there," Mr Brauer added. BLOOMBERG