Spy shot Chevrolet Camaro

After more than a year of hints and rumours, the right-hand drive reality of the Camaro project has finally been revealed.

This pair of right-hand drive Camaro coupes was caught at Melbourne airport by a carsGuide reader, though it is unclear if they were heading out to the US or returning to their home in Australia.

GM Holden has been responsible for design and development of the Camaro, which is built up from the same rear-wheel drive mechanical package used for the VE Commodore. It has created dozens of test “mules” which spend most of their time at Holden's Lang Lang proving ground on the road from Melbourne to Phillip Island, though some have been caught doing real-world testing on roads around the Victorian capital.

The test cars could have been heading to the US, as Chevrolet is running its own test program at a number of sites including GM's giant proving ground at Milford near Detroit.

But those have always been coupes. And left-hand drive.

This time, for the first time, the steering is obviously on the right and this firms the betting on a Camaro for Australia following the American introduction next year. The timing is likely to be in the first half of 2010.

No-one at GM Holden has confirmed an official plan, with company spokesman John Lindsay again refusing any comment this week.

But Brett Vivian, the vehicle line director for the Camaro, is on the record on the possibility for a right-drive version.

“We've engineered the car to be right-hand drive and we can turn it on if we need to,” Vivian said in July.

The right-drive test cars are identical to the left-hand drive cars which have been seen on the road near Melbourne, and also spotted up-close by carsGuide team members inside Lang Lang.

But they still have the military-style body camouflage which has been applied to test cars from the start, despite an edict from GM's global product boss Bob Lutz that it should be stripped away.

The undisguised Camaro was revealed several months ago in an official picture taken on the high-speed bowl at Lang Lang.

But that was a left-drive car and not the right-side steering model caught at the airport, so perhaps GM Holden is still hoping to keep details of the local program secret until closer to an on-sale date.