Camaro ZL1 a powerful challenge
The Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 has a huge amount of power, but that’s not much good to you in the rain, as Damien O’Carroll keeps experiencing.
Post-Britpop whiners Travis once droned ‘‘Why does it always rain on me?’’ into the dismally bland void that followed the colourful chaos of the Oasis/Blur era in the British music landscape.
And as much as I hate that song, I recently found myself asking that same question.
Not in an irritating Coldplay-lite sort of way, mind you, more in an unnecessarily over-powered, conspicuous consumption of diminishing resources sort of way.
You see, I have an extended version of that question to ponder: ‘‘why does it always rain on me when I get my clammy hands on the keys to a 600+ horsepower supercharged V8 RWD muscle car?’’
‘‘Because life’s not fair’’ might be the easy and obvious answer, but let’s face it – life has been pretty fair to you if you even get the opportunity in the first place. It just likes reminding you who’s actually in charge. And so it was when I got
my hands on the keys to an HSV ‘‘reengineered’’ Chevrolet Camaro ZL1, all 477kW and 881Nm of it.
It rained. Blatantly and consistently. The entire week I had it.
This means at no stage did I get the opportunity to use the full travel of the accelerator pedal – given that fractionally more than about 15 per cent or so lights the tyres up and wrenches the rear sideways in the wet – and quickly I grew to love it and hate it in almost equal measures for that.
The ZL1’s prodigious power has something of a light switch-style delivery – on or off – with instant, savage power that demands patience and willpower to get it all down cleanly and effectively, even in the dry with traction control firmly on.
It is startling, it is awesomely impressive and it is brilliant fun. But it is also challenging and massively frustrating in the wet.
Whether it be struggling for grip to get up my steep concrete driveway or not being able to go for a gap because I knew if I accelerated hard enough to get in, the tail would be wagging more than a labrador at diner time (again; yes, the traction control remained on the whole time), the ZL1 constantly haunted me with the nagging, horrifying thought that maybe – just maybe – there is such a thing as ‘‘too much power’’.
An awful thought, I know, but this wasn’t exactly a new experience to me; several years ago I had a few days to spare in California after a Jeep launch, so was kindly offered the keys to a Dodge Challenger Hellcat to get me from San Jose to San Francisco for my flight home.