GM Holden designers will be part of a global team taking centre stage at the Paris Motor Show with the world premiere of the Chevrolet World Touring Car Championship (WTCC) Ultra Concept Car.

The ready-to-drive concept car will be the highlight of the Chevrolet Europe stand at the Paris Motor Show from 30th September to 15th October, 2006.

The exciting race-car was developed by a global GM team including members of the GM Holden design team. Ewan Kingsbury and Breony Crittenden from GM Holden were the Lead Exterior and Interior Designers respectively.

Peter Bramberger, Design Manager at GM Holden said the WTCC Ultra is the most global concept vehicle GM has ever produced.

“The way which the WTCC Ultra took shape is indicative of Chevrolet's international alignment and intentions as a brand,” Bramberger said.

The initial concept and early design work was developed in South Korea by Max Wolff and Steve Eum from the GM DAT Advanced Design Studio (Daewoo).

The dynamic look of the car stems from "down under", as the Australian GM design department in Port Melbourne came up with the exciting contours and the no less striking interior.

It was in Port Melbourne that the scale and full size c lay models were constructed and where the interior was built completely virtually, by a Digital Sculpting team utilising the latest in CAD software. The packaging development was also led digitally in Australia, to ensure an optimum result not compromising any of the advanced styling elements.

The same software was also used by GM India Digital Sculptors to produce 3D math data for the outer skin of the vehicle. The Swiss company, Protoscar produced and rendered the animation to a storyboard provided by GM Holden.

The WTCC Ultra prototype was constructed by the Japanese company, YDS which had already built the Chevrolet concepts, T2X and S3X.

European input was provided by GM Europe Engineering and also by the British motorsport specialists, Ray Mallock Limited (RML). The technical partner for the Chevrolet team in the WTCC helped with race components and the chassis.

The whole project was coordinated and approved by Ed Welburn, Vice President of Global Design and David Lyon, Executive Director Design GM Asia-Pacific. GM Vice President Bob Lutz was also involved in the project from the very beginning and enthusiastically supported it from North America.

The concept’s bold and aggressive design takes the Chevrolet body language to the extreme. It is the vision of a new generation of touring car - a design icon that bends the present WTCC regulations.

Ewan Kingsbury, Senior Designer at GM Holden and Lead Designer of the WTCC Ultra, said: "As the chosen theme of the car was a concept race-car, this immediately gave me license to push the passion and aggression of the styling to the extreme.

"A car's proportions are the biggest factor in its appearance, so all the early work concentrated on this area. Correct proportions are vital, they can make a car look fast even when it's standing still."

“We opted for raw dark surfaces by using unpolished metal or matte carbon fibre inserts. By doing this, we kept a little secretive about the material and called this design principle the "stealth theme," Breony said.

The love of detail is everywhere and even evident by the embossed Chevrolet insignia on the harness belt. Nowhere on the car are there any printed logos or letters – everything is embossed, milled or cast.