Has Chevrolet Just Confirmed a Civilian Caprice PPV for 2013?

Chevrolet announced late Tuesday that it will replace its Impala NASCAR Sprint Cup Series racecar with an all-new model. Both the Cup car and a street version are scheduled to make their debuts in 2013. A Chevy spokesman says the announcement is designed to confirm that the brand would move its NASCAR Cup racer to a new design and nameplate, and that it would not be named for anything in the current lineup. Therefore, Impala, the current Cup car name, is off the table.

“Taking advantage of new NASCAR rules, which allow manufacturers to display more of their brand identity in their racecars,” the automaker says in its press release, “the new Chevrolet racecar will closely resemble the production version. Both cars will be unveiled in the coming year.”

It won’t be named for the new-for-’13 Malibu, either. That car competes in the marketplace with the Ford Fusion and Toyota Camry, both the bases for their brands’ Sprint Cup entries. Chrysler’s Cup car is a NASCAR Dodge Charger, the only rear-wheel-drive car among current competitors.

Next year is too early for a production version of the RWD, Alpha-platform Chevy 130R. A new, FWD Impala goes on sale next year, and a Cadillac, Chevrolet, and possibly a Buick are expected in the 2016-17 model years off the next-generation Zeta RWD platform. It’s hard to believe this car would be a clean-sheet design, especially considering it needs to be ready for next year’s NASCAR season.

Then-General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson thwarted Bob Lutz’s efforts to sell a RWD Zeta-platform Chevrolet Caprice in North America after the automaker pulled the plug on Pontiac. Late last year, Chevy introduced its Caprice PPV, the rear-drive model on the longer wheelbase version of the Pontiac G8.

GM Australia engineered the current Zeta platform to underpin the current Holden Caprice (basis for the Canadian-built PPV) and Commodore. Holden-built Chevy Caprices are sold in parts of the Middle East and as the Buick Park Avenue in China. The North American Caprice PPV is available to cop shops with the 6.0-liter small block V-8 and the 3.6-liter V-6. Any new car, if it were to be based on the Caprice PPV, would likely have to be updated over the present-gen cop car in the styling department.

What about the name? Caprice doesn’t sound very sporting, and the version of that car fondly remembered post-1980 is known as the Impala Super Sport. Our money is on this name: Chevrolet Super Sport.

SOURCE: motortrend.com