GTO A GO; Plans for Pontiac muscle car, Chevy Camaro, at full tilt.(News)

Byline: GREG KABLE

The Pontiac GTO lives! It will be replaced in late 2008 by a new model underpinned by General Motors' latest rear-wheel-drive Zeta platform, with a strong likelihood of it being built on the same production line as the Chevrolet Camaro in North America.

That's the message we heard loud and clear from Bob Lutz, General Motors vice president for global product development, at the recent Geneva motor show.

The replacement for today's slowish-selling GTO was canceled last year when General Motors announced it was reorganizing its North American operations and focusing its efforts on rushing the development of sport/utility vehicles, pickups and crossovers.

But Lutz told AutoWeek that reports of the rear-wheel-drive coupe's death were premature. Lutz said the next-generation GTO's development program was only really placed on hold and-after some internal reorganization to ensure profitability targets can be met-it is now back on track.

"The reason we said it was canceled is because that way our people would put their pencils down,'' Lutz said. "In GM if you say something is deferred, then people keep working on it. We really needed to get that message [to stop] through to everybody.'' GM's 74-year-old product guru said the program into which the GTO is incorporated was "getting out of control'' and running up costs that would have made it unworkable.

"It was my fault that it got out of control in the first place,'' Lutz added. "It was going to be the world's greatest car and apparently cost nothing to make. So we've started over now. The program is back on and it is going full tilt.''