The previous Chevrolet Lumina SS Sedan was never a hot-bed for revolutionary design or a test-bed for cutting edge automotive technology. In fact, many may have even called it a little crude and country bumpkin-ish. Nevertheless, the Chevrolet Lumina SS Sedan was still cheap, powerful and it made all the right sounds thanks to its gurgling 6.0-litre V8.
The latest Chevrolet SS has been unveiled at the Daytona International Speedway, where its racing equivalent debuted at the Daytona 500 NASCAR event. Known simply as the Pontiac G8 in America, as the Holden SS V in Australia and as the Lumina SS (and later SS V) in South Africa, it’s been a long time coming for us to see this car’s fully-fledged SS replacement wearing the Chevy bow tie emblem.
The Chevrolet SS, as we will call it for the moment, is built on GM’s global Zeta platform that also underpins the big Chevrolet Camaro (and the Aussie Holden as mentioned, as well as the American-market Pontiac G8 SS) and this marks the closing of a rather ironic 17-year gap since GM sold a rear-wheel drive four-door sedan in the United States. GM’s global Zeta platform is thought to be only a couple years away from phase-out, so understandably, questions arise about the long-term course for this program.
The suspension includes MacPherson struts up front and a trapezoidal multi-link arrangement at the rear, the steering is electronically power assisted and we sincerely hope it manages to provide more feel and feedback than the previous generation did. 19-inch alloy wheels house 335 mm Brembo discs with two-piece, four-piston calipers at the front.
Much as before, the SS’s engine bay will be home to the LS3 family of GM V8 engines, meaning it will now be a 6.2-litre V8, as it is with the new Camaro, which shunts out 310 kW and 562 Nm of torque. This will drive the rear wheels via a standard 6-speed automatic transmission and should accelerate the SS to 100 km/h in 5.0 seconds flat, according to GM. There’s no mention of a manual gearbox option like we had the pleasure of in the previous generation SS Sedan.
Standard equipment items include eight-way power adjustable front bucket seats, leather upholstery, a centre-console mounted touch screen, a Bose nine-speaker audio system, a colour head-up display (HUD) and push-button start. The new SS should also feature a host of new safety systems, like Forward Collision Alert, Lane Departure Warning, Side Blind Zone Alert, a rear-vision camera with cross traffic alert and Automatic Parking Assist.
We certainly look forward to it here in South Africa, however, in a rather bizarre story from Israel, it will not be imported into Israel because of its Nazi-related ‘SS’ name. Yes, the SS moniker, used by Chevy to shorten its ‘Super Sport’ name, is being interpreted by some as a reminder of the World War 2 German paramilitary unit Schutzstaffel (also known as “The SS”).
