Chevrolet Race Concept
According to its makers, the WTCC Ultra concept car at this year's Paris Show "takes Chevrolet styling language to the extreme". They're not kidding. The Ultra is Chevrolet's idea of how Touring Car racers might look in the future, and it also serves as a useful reminder of the company's current involvement in the World Touring Car Championship, of which Chevrolet driver Rob Huff won a round in the Czech Republic earlier this month.
Externally, the concept is as aggressive as get out thanks to as many motorsport-inspired styling cues as could be packed in to the design. The story is the same inside, where the WTCC Ultra looks ready to take to the tracks as soon as it can get off the Paris Show stand.
Design Chief David Lyon says that, with this project, "we wanted to explore the concept of a Chevrolet muscle car reinvented for Europe." This overlooks - no doubt deliberately - the fact that Chevrolet muscle cars have nothing to do with the Chevrolets that are on sale in the UK these days, which owe pretty much all of their heritage to the cars formerly known as Daewoos.
There's certainly nothing all-American about the WTCC Ultra. In fact, it's a truly international piece of work. The initial concept and early design work come from the GM DAT Advanced Design Studio in South Korea, and the finalised exterior is the work of Ewan Kingsbury, a graduate of Coventry University now working for GM's Australian design department.
Kingsbury's colleague Breony Crittenden was responsible for the colour and materials, the design was co-ordinated by engineers in the US and Switzerland, and construction took place in Japan with help from British company Ray Mallock Ltd, which runs the World Touring Car team.
The result of this planetwide collaboration doesn't just look dramatic - it also actually goes. Power comes from a turbo diesel engine which will soon be launched in the Captiva SUV, though the Captiva won't share the Ultra WTCC's maximum power output of 187bhp.
Externally, the concept is as aggressive as get out thanks to as many motorsport-inspired styling cues as could be packed in to the design. The story is the same inside, where the WTCC Ultra looks ready to take to the tracks as soon as it can get off the Paris Show stand.
Design Chief David Lyon says that, with this project, "we wanted to explore the concept of a Chevrolet muscle car reinvented for Europe." This overlooks - no doubt deliberately - the fact that Chevrolet muscle cars have nothing to do with the Chevrolets that are on sale in the UK these days, which owe pretty much all of their heritage to the cars formerly known as Daewoos.
There's certainly nothing all-American about the WTCC Ultra. In fact, it's a truly international piece of work. The initial concept and early design work come from the GM DAT Advanced Design Studio in South Korea, and the finalised exterior is the work of Ewan Kingsbury, a graduate of Coventry University now working for GM's Australian design department.
Kingsbury's colleague Breony Crittenden was responsible for the colour and materials, the design was co-ordinated by engineers in the US and Switzerland, and construction took place in Japan with help from British company Ray Mallock Ltd, which runs the World Touring Car team.
The result of this planetwide collaboration doesn't just look dramatic - it also actually goes. Power comes from a turbo diesel engine which will soon be launched in the Captiva SUV, though the Captiva won't share the Ultra WTCC's maximum power output of 187bhp.
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