Zeta back on track

GENERAL Motors has revived the Holden-engineered Zeta rear-wheel drive architecture for use in the United States, albeit in a revised format.

GM’s vice-president of global engineering, Jim Queen, told Automotive News last week that a revised version of Zeta – which was expected to form the basis of the next-generation Pontiac GTO and Grand Prix, the Chevrolet Impala, Monte Carlo and Camaro, among other cars – was back on track.

He would not confirm which vehicles would now be built on the Zeta platform, but said initial plans stretched the architecture beyond its limits for some US vehicles.

"We needed to reassess and reconfigure the program," he said. "As we started counting who was in and who was out of Zeta, we realized too late (that Zeta would not work in North America)." The article quoted a GM spokesman who said the revised Zeta program was being developed at Holden but that no product plans had been approved.

He said GM was still studying design themes, performance characteristics and variants for Zeta vehicles.