2014 Chevrolet SS, an Aussie built for NASCAR, races into America

It's been 17 years since Chevrolet has built a proper rear-wheel-drive sports sedan, and even that car — the Impala SS — was mostly a corporate accident. This year, that drought ends with the 2014 Chevrolet SS, a 415-hp Australian import designed to race on NASCAR tracks Sunday, sell on Monday and convince skeptical Americans to give Chevy another look.

The SS badge has a long, if somewhat spotty, history at Chevrolet, which built its first Super Sports model in 1961. Outside of its use in the Camaro and Corvette, the SS has been most well-known for its use on the Impala SS built from the bulbous Chevy Caprice models through 1996. GM sold a bevy of SS-labeled models over the last decade, from the Silverado to the Malibu Maxx to the HHR — all of which offered more horsepower and a few special interior bits, but little else.

With the Chevy SS, GM wants to reset the expectations of its fans; according to Mark Reuss, the head of GM North America, "Chevy's never built a car like this." Fashioned from the Holden Commodore sold by General Motors' Australian division, the SS wouldn't have been possible without Reuss, who spent a few years running the business down under. It was also his decision to grant the Holden a U.S. passport only if NASCAR changed its rule book so that the cars on the speedways closely resembled the cars in dealerships.