Page 11 - AAA Schuylkill County – AAA Now! – November/December 2017

By John Scanlon
While other teens in the early 1990s likely weren’t thinking too hard about their future, Adam Barry, so absorbed by sketching flashy sports cars, had already settled on his.
He wanted to work for General Motors, designing cars. Chevy Camaros in particular. It was an ambition encouraged by his father Sonny, a car buff who loved restoring vintage vehicles at the family’s Marlton home, and young Adam envisioned a life in cars and never looked in the rearview mirror.
He graduated from Cherokee High School in 1994, headed to Michigan and art school at the College for Creative Studies, and promptly landed his dream job upon graduation – joining the GM design team in 1998.
He is 41 now, a family man with four children, and 2017 is Adam Barry’s dream year. It’s the 50th anniversary of the Chevy Camaro, a milestone that is being celebrated with production of a special anniversary edition of the revered sports car – and he’s the guy who designed its appearance.
Talk about pressure.
“I grew up wanting to work on Camaros,”
says Barry, the Camaro senior creative designer since 2012, “so any pressure from designing the anniversary edition would have been self-inflicted. I knew the lineage of the car. I was the guy who always wanted to design Chevy Camaros. So, I felt pretty comfortable about it.”
With its deep gray exterior and tasteful orange hood accents, the special-edition Camaro is alternately classy and nasty, its brash look exuding style and power, and popular car magazines have largely hailed it as a worthy tribute to a sports car that turned heads when it roared onto the scene in 1967.
For Barry, the design challenge was clear. Honor the Camaro’s legacy and its muscle-car fans but steer it toward a future of ongoing evolution and renewed appeal.
The 50th-anniversary edition – it’s available through this year, and about 2,400 had been sold by late February – coincided with another high-profile Camaro event that showcased Barry’s design skills. He had a big hand in the Camaro’s sixth-generation makeover, a 2016 update that infused the full model line with upscale styling, increased power and road performance, and broader technology.
The new design certainly impressed Motor Trend. The magazine anointed the Camaro as its 2016 Car of the Year.
These achievements represent the quest of Barry and other design-team members to stay attuned to progressive touches that woo younger drivers
apt to dismiss the Camaro as their daddy’s
muscle car.
More than 5 million Camaros have been sold during its half-century existence – the 282,571 moved from Chevy dealerships in 1979 still rank as the most robust sales year in Camaro history, according to the carmaker.
car’s fifth-generation redesign and rejoiced as more than 81,000 cars were sold in 2010.
Jerome Hickman bought one. He still has it. The LS coupe was a midlife possession he had to have, a contemporary Camaro whose racy look joyfully reminded him of the ’69 Sport Coupe he’d driven decades earlier – and wishes he still had.
“There’s a lot of nostalgia in the Camaro, simply because it has stood the test of time for generations of drivers,” said the Winslow Township resident. “You know a Camaro when you see one. So many cars today are boring. This car is not boring.”
That’s precisely what Adam Barry strives to avoid. The creative aspects of his design process
are far-reaching, from analyzing past Camaro generations, soliciting input – even relying
on inspirations that strike him as a science-fiction buff.
“We always look at what makes the cars good. But you also can’t stay in a rut;
you have to progress,” he says. “It can be good that someone new to the design team may not know a lot about Camaros and will challenge the norm. In my case,
I like to look at sci-fi movies or “Avatar” or “Transformers” stuff – things that aren’t
car-related – to get a feel for colors and style and the essence of what you want the car to
AUTOMOTIVE SERVICES
The Camaro at 50
Marlton Resident Heads Design Team for Anniversary Vehicle
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017
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The Camaro remained a pleasant
memory for seven years – until
its 2009 revival. And the Mustang,
ironically, played a role in that, having undergone a major redesign several
years earlier that invoked its ‘60s heyday
and reignited a love affair with drivers.
GM execs, optimistic of a new day for the Camaro as well, turned to nostalgia during the
be – predatory, or mean-looking, or upscale, whatever the case may be. At the end of the day,
the car will be a percentage of all of it.”
There’s a
lot of nostalgia in the Camaro, simply because it has stood the test of time for generations of drivers...
Chevy Camaro SS 1968