Great Machines: Automobiles - 2003 Chevrolet SSR
June 3, 2003
Nostalgia is not a new trend in automotive design, but the Chevrolet SSR will be the first retro-styled pickup ever offered for sale when it hits dealerships late this summer. According to Ed Welburn, General Motors’ executive director of design for body-on-frame vehicles, GM’s design chief Wayne Cherry was the first to propose a pickup inspired by the past. “We had production in mind from the start,” explains Welburn. “The idea didn’t come from marketing.”
The first challenge for Welburn and his team was determining what nostalgia meant to Chevrolet. “We looked all the way back to the ’30s, and even the ’60s,” he says, “and we decided that it was a street machine influenced by ’50s trucks.” Welburn notes that their initial brainstorming did not consider the possibility of a roadster: “We saw a truck that was slammed, lowered to the ground, with a performance engine.” But after a member of his team started experimenting with designs that featured a canvas drop top, the decision was made to incorporate a retractable hard top. “The idea clicked,” says Welburn. “The end result is a truck that may look as if it were developed by a small team in a small shop.” But nothing could be further from the truth—the SSR’s shape was developed entirely with advanced computers, for instance. “All the way up to the concept vehicle there were no clay models,” he says. And the car’s lines were also strong enough to emerge from the developmental process virtually unaltered. “When we picked this design, we stayed faithful to it from the first sketches to the full vehicle that was shown to corporate leadership.”; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc(); "View of Car from Rear")
Exterior lines clearly draw on historic Chevy trucks, but the twincockpit interior is reminiscent of early Corvettes. Welburn says that some at Chevrolet see the SSR as an unusual pickup while others see it as a roadster with exceptional cargo room. Sharing a platform with GM’s midsize SUVs, the SSR features a 5.3-liter V-8 with an aluminum block that delivers 290 hp to its rear wheels via an automatic 4-speed transmission. It sports 19-inch wheels at the front and 20-inch wheels at the rear. (Click on image to enlarge)
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