The Great Camaro: Designers at Work
Word had come down in early August, 1964, that there would be a Chevrolet sporty car for 1967 to challenge the Mustang directly. General Motors now realized that the 1965 Corvair couldn’t match the Mustang’s engine and option versatility.
The news pleased Chevy general manager Bunkie Knudsen mightily, and GM’s Design Staff, as mentioned, had been hoping for just such an opportunity and wasn’t caught at all unprepared.
The man with overall charge of the F-Car’s styling was GM Design Vice President William L. Mitchell. Mr. Mitchell also oversaw the second-generation Camaro’s styling — the 1970½’s — and he makes no bones about which version he likes best. “The 1970½ Camaro,” he says, “is a designer’s design; but that first series was designed by committee.”
What Mitchell means is that certain specifications for the 1967 Camaro were laid down early by Chevrolet engineers and management to accommodate the practicality of the 1968 Chevy II. While the Camaro came first and did get the major styling and engineering emphasis, everyone realized that the Camaro had to be the specialty car, and the Chevy II had to be the volume seller. Thus the new 1968 Chevy II could and did dictate certain terms and conditions to the Camaro design team.
Two of the compromised dimensions that left the Camaro’s designers less than ecstatic were: 1) the tallness of the cowl, and 2) the
