Chevy amps up MUSCLE WARS
Camaro ZL1 puts pricier performers to shame
Nothing frightens autojournalists more than the nondescript. Awful is better than mediocre. We can work with terrible or excellent in equal measure, and neither the sublime nor the ridiculous scare us. Just don’t give us bland.
Chevrolet’s new Camaro ZL1 has exactly the opposite problem — a vast plethora of attention grabbers, each worthy of frontpage coverage.
Should I lead off with its purported 580 horsepower? Should I tease with its seven-minute 41.27-second time around the world-famous Nurburgring, the circuit in Germany that is now the benchmark for fast cars?
Or do I lead with the equally exciting fact that a Canadian ZL1 will cost only $58,000, a seeming pittance of a markup from the $37,735 SS version and barely seven per cent above the $54,095 US sticker price?
Despite those noteworthy numbers, the most surprising aspect of the new Camaro is its sophistication. And despite its relatively lowly Camaro lineage, miserly price tag and cartoonish movie roles, the ZL1 is a bona fide supercar.
Upon perusing the ZL1’S spec sheet (particularly its 1,900-kg curb weight), I expected a car that was simply an SS with a bit more power.
Instead, the ZL1 turns out to be a veritable track weapon. Besides the obvious 580 h.p., the real reason for the ZL1’S exemplary performance is the latest Gen III Magnetic Ride suspension system and the all-new Performance Traction Management (PTM) traction control system.
The ZL1’S Gen III system uses a unique magnetorheological fluid that alters its viscosity in response to an electrical signal. Essentially, if you feed the fluid some electricity, it gets thicker in the blink of an eye.
This allows Chevy’s engineers to almost instantly alter the suspension performance by computer.
The new two-coil, two-wire dampers react so quickly, says Alex Macdonald, Chevrolet’s chassis control development engineer, that it’s possible to tailor the car’s tendency to under- or oversteer just by sending current to the dampers. MacDonald says the system is so powerful that, in its design phase, the ZL1 could be transformed from an understeering pig to an oversteering hooligan with just a few keystrokes from a laptop.
Throw in what is possibly the automotive world’s most sophisticated traction-control system and you have one of the most easily controlled high-performance cars on the planet. PTM offers five positions of digital intervention, all the way from a “wet” setting for the pouring rain to the full-zoot Track mode that race driver Aaron Link used to set that scalding Nurburgring time.
Macdonald also says the PTM differs from other traction control systems by being predictive; it can actually reduce power before the wheels lose traction rather than after as is more common for electronic stability control systems. The system works brilliantly.
Indeed, the ZL1 has few faults, the Magnetic Ride keeping the car flat even under the high-lateral G-force turns at the end of Bob Bondurant’s Firebird Raceway.
The ZL1 turns out to be a veritable track weapon
The sticky 20-inch Goodyear Supercar F1s offered plenty of traction and the PTM system kept understeer in check. Even roiling through the track’s high-speed S-turns failed to upset the plot, the big Camaro feeling more like a lithe Lotus when flipflopping between apexes. Indeed, only in the slowest of first-gear switchbacks does the car’s 1,900 kg overwhelm the Goodyears and push the front end a little wide. The ZL1 is formidable.
How formidable? That 7:41.27 Nurburgring test time sees the ZL1 ahead of Porsche’s mighty 911 GT3 piloted by none other than ’Ring legend Walter Rohrl, and less than a second behind Lamborghini’s mighty Gallardo LP570-4 Superleggera.
Part of the reason for the ZL1’S incredible speed is its monster supercharged 6.2-litre V-8. Based on the same basic block and Eaton blower as in the Corvette ZR1 and Cadillac CTS-V, the Camaro’s 580 horses neatly splits the difference between the two, being 58 fewer than the over-the-top Vette but 24 more than the M5-trouncing rapid Caddy.
It all adds up to one of the biggest surprises in recent years: a mid-priced Canadian-built sports car that is as trackworthy as the best from Europe or Japan.