Please do not turn this thread into another trash pile.

 

*Zeta and Sigma are different architectures, but have many components in common.

*Zeta isn't unraveling. GM's finding ways to trim costs without cutting product. You'll probally hear a ton of conflicting stories between now and the time the final RWD vehicle is unveiled. To us on the outside getting information from usual sources, it's going to seem like one big clusterf**k. That's because the right hand isn't going to know what the left hand does, while only the brain knows the whole story, and it isn't talking to anyone.
DON'T LET CONFLICTING STORIES RATTLE YOU!!
Just ask is everything still on target for the re-emergence of RWD full sized and performance cars. The answer is yes.

*A car's chasis can be chosen late in the process, as long as the chassis development is done. It's simply a matter of redoing a design to fit on a different set of hardpoints.

*The Velite WILL NOT be based on Kappa.

*The 3rd Kappa roadster is going to Opel. It's essentially a rebadged Saturn Sky.

*Don't worry about what chassis Buick's next RWD car is based on. As long as the project is on schedule, we'll know soon enough.

*Remember, GM's decision making process probally adds more time to a car's development than actually engineering the car.

 

If not Kappa, and not Zeta.... then it must be Sigma? Or is there this mysterious new platform?

 

My guess.

 

*Waves hand* "These aren't the chassis you're looking for."

 

Here's an excerpt from a GM press release dated 4/6/04:

This is what Anne Asensio said in TCC:

Put these two together, search my posts for the past couple of months...and you'll get a better picture of what's happening.

 

The Velite was the original name of Zeta-Lite. Then, GM pulled a switch and called the Buick roadster the "Velite" and attatched the Zeta name to the new RWD Architecture.

 

i believe it was the sigma lite chassis and that was renamed to be Zeta

 

Actualy, Velite is French (like all of the new Buicks) for a class of French soldiers in Napolians army that acted as a fast attack division, or something like that, or is the fast attack part about the name Corvette? I know its soemthing to do with the French and part of there infantry.
It has nothing to do with the name of the chassis or VE-Lite or Simga-Lite or anything like that. I think what happend was the name "Velite" was leaked, and it was turned into all these variations.

 

I'm so lost.....

 

Historically, velite refers to a class of Roman light infantry, armed at most with a shield and spear, but more often with just a spear... Not some lousy Napoleonic unit.

 

That's what I was trying to get at... this is the first real thing that points to something happening along the lines of what you've been saying, but getting info out of you is sometimes like trying ot get water froma rock!!

I'm still somewhat confused though... is this all back on Sigma, or is it something new to the RWD pallette besides Sigma, Zeta and Kappa?

 

I guess, suffice to say, that some big changes are being considered. Asensio's comments are the first "official/public" evidence of what I've been hearing for months.

Put it like this.....having Holden design "Zeta" for North America looks like it's not gonna happen anymore. We may still get some Zetas eventually, (that is, a North Americanized V-car)......that is, if they're even called Zeta anymore, but maybe those would be engineered here, and perhaps be strictly W-car replacements....or maybe not, those decisions are still being discussed. Of course, Holden can export some cars to the US also.

Sigma however, fits our NA manufacturing process like a glove. It's a proven, paid for, commodity. We can build them here - no problem. If I were going to guess - this week - I'd say that there is a 50-50 chance that much of what we thought would be Zeta, may actually convert to Sigma or a Sigma variant......but again maybe not.

At any rate, GM is still serious about having a global RWD architecture, it just won't be primarily engineered by Holden. That's not to say that the upcoming VE won't happen.....just that it won't be globally integrated at this time.

Beta/Kappa. I can tell you first hand that many people at GM....even at the VERY TOP of GM would like to see it happen. Money of course is an issue. As is politics. Without naming names , there are also influential people within GM who don't want Beta. Maybe call them turf wars.
I wish that I could say that Beta was already greenlighted, but at this point, I see no evidence of that.

Which brings us all back to Sigma.

 

I always had doubt that Holden had the engineering capacity for a global product. With all of the talk of timescales that have slipped from the 2007 model year to the 2008 and 2009 model years (or is that calender years?) I figurer there were major issues.

We can easily suppose that Australian engineers are about as effective and decisive as their British counterparts.


Sigma-based architecture has been very inflexible so far. That's why the CTS is embarrassingly close in size to the new STS. Sigma is also very expensive, expensive to the point where the Sigma-based cars have absolutely no real price advantage over German assembled BMWs. Perhaps that's why STS is wrongly pitched against the 7-series and the CTS against the 5-series.

Of course, maybe the success of Chrysler's 300 has lead GM management to conclude that Sigma's high cowl/high beltline architecture is a selling point rather than a liability? That might have eroded the guiding design principal behind Zeta.


Holden can do well in "second-world" (one step up from third-world) export markets like South Africa, Brazil and the Middle East, but so far their product have been laughable in a European or Japanese context.


It would have been easier and cheaper to have started with a Beta-sized platform and derived a Kappa-sized roadster from the Beta than the other way around. You really have to wonder if Lutz destroyed the short term propects of a Beta-based 3-series competitor by pushing so hard for his own "pet project" roadsters?

In any case, the Beta-platform is a project GM should have conceived 5 years ago, not 18 months ago. GM is running so late that even a production car based on the very decent Torana concept might end up being dated and uncompetitive in design and packaging by the time that it actually goes on sale.

 

Hmpf. And if that means our new Camaro will also resemble the philosophy behind Dodge's awkward, doofy-looking new "Charger" I'll be very enraged.