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Archive for 2015
2014 Chevrolet Impala 2.5 LT
Psst! Hey, you. Over there in accounting. Yeah, you, in the short-sleeve
shirt and tie. There’s a rumor that corporate is going to upgrade the
company cars for all the junior execs. If it’s true, put me down for a
2014 Chevrolet Impala LT.
Wait! Before you laugh me out of your office, I mean cubicle, um, area, hear me out. The 2014 Impala is a far cry from that generic, fleet-filling lame duck from the 2013 model year. It’s new in almost every respect, including powertrain, sheetmetal, and interior appointments. Chevy has pinched and pulled the formerly androgynous exterior into a chiseled physique. Squint hard enough and you can make out a familial resemblance to the latest Camaro. Inside, the dash features an adventurous bi-level treatment accented with contrast stitching. A motorized eight-inch MyLink touch screen (standard on the LT and LTZ) rises from the center of the dash, revealing a storage cubby.
A bit porky at 3700 pounds, the LT carries its weight capably if not hurriedly with the standard 196-hp, naturally aspirated 2.5-liter inline-four. (You can step up to the 3.6-liter V-6 in 2LT trim.) Testing reveals a leisurely 8.7-second zero-to-60-mph time and a quarter-mile run in 16.8 seconds. You can do better for a getaway car, but the engine commits early and hangs on tenaciously until an upshift from the six-speed automatic arrives, either automatically or when prompted by a shifter button. The 2.5 is a hard-working four, but, thanks largely to a rubber-isolated front subframe, the coarser aspects of its personality stay out of the passenger compartment.
Based on the same GM Epsilon II platform that underlies the Cadillac XTS and Buick LaCrosse,
the Impala makes the most of its front-strut and rear-multilink
suspension. It supplies a stable, well-damped ride, dispatching all but
the most weathered pavement without losing composure. The
variable-rate, electrically assisted rack-and-pinion steering is
surprisingly accurate and quick, but it’s no ticker tape of road-texture
information. This full-size sedan earned a lateral-acceleration number
of 0.84 g on the 300-foot skidpad with mild understeer. What that figure
can’t tell you is how composed the Impala remains right until its
all-season Goodyears begin to howl.
The Impala stops well, but pedal feel is akin to kicking a waterlogged phone book. Thankfully, the ABS and electronic brake-force distribution sort out the details with a minimum of drama, and the lack of dive or squirm under hard braking is a welcome surprise. Stops from 70 mph consumed 168 feet with no fade in repeated attempts.
In fact, it’s such a complete package that I’d even shell out my own money for one. Sure, the mid-trim Impala LT will likely continue in its role as a go-to choice for you fellas in fleet management. But for the first time in years, the Impala isn’t a sedan of last resort. Now, where are we going for lunch, guys—Fuddruckers or T.G.I. Fridays?
Wait! Before you laugh me out of your office, I mean cubicle, um, area, hear me out. The 2014 Impala is a far cry from that generic, fleet-filling lame duck from the 2013 model year. It’s new in almost every respect, including powertrain, sheetmetal, and interior appointments. Chevy has pinched and pulled the formerly androgynous exterior into a chiseled physique. Squint hard enough and you can make out a familial resemblance to the latest Camaro. Inside, the dash features an adventurous bi-level treatment accented with contrast stitching. A motorized eight-inch MyLink touch screen (standard on the LT and LTZ) rises from the center of the dash, revealing a storage cubby.
A bit porky at 3700 pounds, the LT carries its weight capably if not hurriedly with the standard 196-hp, naturally aspirated 2.5-liter inline-four. (You can step up to the 3.6-liter V-6 in 2LT trim.) Testing reveals a leisurely 8.7-second zero-to-60-mph time and a quarter-mile run in 16.8 seconds. You can do better for a getaway car, but the engine commits early and hangs on tenaciously until an upshift from the six-speed automatic arrives, either automatically or when prompted by a shifter button. The 2.5 is a hard-working four, but, thanks largely to a rubber-isolated front subframe, the coarser aspects of its personality stay out of the passenger compartment.
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The Impala’s interior has class-leading swoopiness. A cubby hides
behind the nav screen, which uses icons that try too hard.
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The Impala stops well, but pedal feel is akin to kicking a waterlogged phone book. Thankfully, the ABS and electronic brake-force distribution sort out the details with a minimum of drama, and the lack of dive or squirm under hard braking is a welcome surprise. Stops from 70 mph consumed 168 feet with no fade in repeated attempts.
In fact, it’s such a complete package that I’d even shell out my own money for one. Sure, the mid-trim Impala LT will likely continue in its role as a go-to choice for you fellas in fleet management. But for the first time in years, the Impala isn’t a sedan of last resort. Now, where are we going for lunch, guys—Fuddruckers or T.G.I. Fridays?
Chevrolet Corvette Z06 Convertible Manual 2015
What else can we say about the latest Chevrolet Corvette Z06 that we haven’t said before? From our first test: “The Z06 must be ranked among the world’s best.” From the Z06 coupe’s comparison-test win
against the Nissan GT-R NISMO and Porsche 911 Turbo S: “Drink your Red
Bull and splash some water on your face, because unless your last name
is Vettel or Gordon, the Z06 is more than you can handle, even on your
best day.” And from our test of the automatic convertible:
“To keep from getting arrested, we settled for short blasts of
acceleration [on public roads].” To this, all we can add is “Yup.”
The Z06 is a formidable beast no matter which form it takes, as there’s essentially no fall-off in performance from coupe to convertible. Chopping the roof from the Z06 results in no palpable difference in rigidity—there’s next to no shake in the cowl or the windshield header—and the weight penalty is less than 90 pounds. Yet perhaps the biggest benefit to the convertible is that it allows pure, unfiltered access to an exhaust note that sounds like a Napalm Death concert being held inside a howitzer.
Punch the throttle and your first thought is something like, “Great holy [CENSORED] balls of [CENSORED], this thing is brutal.”
The 650-hp, 650-lb-ft supercharged V-8 slingshots the Z06 to 60 mph
from a rest in 3.3 seconds. The car reaches 150 mph in 17.7 seconds. It
scorches a quarter-mile run in 11.4 seconds at 127 mph. These figures
are essentially identical to those we’ve gathered from
manual-transmission Z06 coupes. To beat those numbers with something
else topless, you’re going to either get an automatic Z06 or spend great
gobs of cash on a McLaren 650S Spider or a Porsche 911 Turbo S cabriolet.
And neither of those cars can claw the road with the 1.14-g
tenaciousness of the Chevy, nor come close to its stupendous 138-foot
stop from 70 mph.
The magnetorheological shock absorbers enable the Z06 to deliver a ride that’s livable every day, and the steering is accurate, quick, and sends the car toward apexes in a way best described as predatory. The ridiculous grip levels translate to cornering speeds on back roads that would be illegal on a freeway, and what acceleration you give up with the seven-speed manual transmission—0.2 second to 60 versus the eight-speed automatic—is more than made up for by the euphoric rush of redline upshifts executed via a progressive, user-friendly clutch and a positive shifter. If there’s any complaint to be made about the convertible, it’s that it looks a bit goofy with the top up. If you live someplace that dictates you’ll drive with the roof raised for a considerable amount of time, get the coupe and take advantage of its removable targa panel on nice days.
Once again, this car represents a tremendous value. The base price is
$83,995, a fraction of anything else that can touch it in terms of
performance. The money saved can, of course, be plowed back into the
options list, and our car had another 10 grand or so in extras. These
included the $3270 2LZ Preferred Equipment Group (basically a bunch of
convenience features), the $2995 carbon-fiber package (painted carbon
splitter, rockers, and rear spoiler), the $1795 Performance Data Recorder
(a very worthy add-on that also brings navigation), a carbon
interior-trim package for $995, $495 black wheels, and $100 painted
carbon-fiber mirror caps.
If you want to go whole hog, you can order the Z07 package to make the car even more ludicrously capable, and other available options include a customized VIN, exterior stripes, special paint colors, and competition seats. You can go well past $100,000, but outside of the Z07 kit and maybe the seats, everything that you really need is baked into the basic car, although there’s nothing basic about the Z06 or its talents.
As you can see, the numbers—price, performance, and nearly anything else you can think of—speak for themselves. Yet we can’t wait for another opportunity to say this stuff all over again.
The Z06 is a formidable beast no matter which form it takes, as there’s essentially no fall-off in performance from coupe to convertible. Chopping the roof from the Z06 results in no palpable difference in rigidity—there’s next to no shake in the cowl or the windshield header—and the weight penalty is less than 90 pounds. Yet perhaps the biggest benefit to the convertible is that it allows pure, unfiltered access to an exhaust note that sounds like a Napalm Death concert being held inside a howitzer.
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The magnetorheological shock absorbers enable the Z06 to deliver a ride that’s livable every day, and the steering is accurate, quick, and sends the car toward apexes in a way best described as predatory. The ridiculous grip levels translate to cornering speeds on back roads that would be illegal on a freeway, and what acceleration you give up with the seven-speed manual transmission—0.2 second to 60 versus the eight-speed automatic—is more than made up for by the euphoric rush of redline upshifts executed via a progressive, user-friendly clutch and a positive shifter. If there’s any complaint to be made about the convertible, it’s that it looks a bit goofy with the top up. If you live someplace that dictates you’ll drive with the roof raised for a considerable amount of time, get the coupe and take advantage of its removable targa panel on nice days.
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If you want to go whole hog, you can order the Z07 package to make the car even more ludicrously capable, and other available options include a customized VIN, exterior stripes, special paint colors, and competition seats. You can go well past $100,000, but outside of the Z07 kit and maybe the seats, everything that you really need is baked into the basic car, although there’s nothing basic about the Z06 or its talents.
As you can see, the numbers—price, performance, and nearly anything else you can think of—speak for themselves. Yet we can’t wait for another opportunity to say this stuff all over again.
Chevrolet Corvette Stingray Convertible Eight-Speed Automatic 2015
No sports car should have chrome wheels. The 2015 Chevrolet Corvette
Stingray convertible you see here does. It also has an automatic
transmission, GM’s new in-house designed and -built eight-speed unit,
which replaces last year’s six-cog piece carried over from the C6
Corvette. The new transmission has two things going for it: First, it
has more speeds in an era where more is more, and second, ordering it
doesn’t require those shiny rollers.
We already drove a gaggle of Corvettes equipped with the new eight-speed, dubbed 8L90, and came away impressed. Well, we were mostly impressed; the cheap-feeling plastic steering-wheel shift paddles threaten to drag down the experience. The shift lever doesn’t offer a manual-shift gate, so choosing your own gears requires use of these flimsy actuators. Chevy needs to upgrade the pieces yesterday, lest people dismiss the new eight-speed outright on its regrettable visual and tactile deficiencies.
Fortunately, everything else about the $1725 transmission is better
executed. We recorded the same 3.7-second 0-to-60-mph time in this
convertible as we did in a 2014 model with the six-speed automatic;
by 80 mph, the newer Vette begins to pull away, and by 150 mph, it
edges out a 0.7-second lead thanks at least partly to quicker shift
times. The transmission’s logic and broad ratio spread elevate the
self-shifting Corvette experience toward Porsche PDK
dual-clutch-automatic levels of satisfaction. Weather, Eco, Tour
(default), Sport, and Track modes offer drivers a spectrum of behaviors.
In Track, the 460-hp V-8’s lightning-quick throttle response and the
electrically boosted steering’s heightened alertness blend wonderfully
with the transmission’s rev-matched downshifts and redline upshifts.
Clear the red mist by switching to Tour or Eco, and the 8L90 works with a
preponderance of civility.
The EPA says that while the 2015 Vette with the eight-speed nets the same 16-mpg rating in the city cycle as the 2014 model, the highway number rises by 1 mpg to 29. This test car’s participation in our brutal 10Best testing stifled fuel economy to a dismal 12 mpg, but we’re confident that with normal use, it could better the 18 mpg we recorded with the old transmission.
Transmission aside, the quintessential Corvette experience remains the
same. We’d banish our test car’s Floridian retiree–grade interior and
exterior color combo to the same purgatory Chevy sent the old automatic.
The Laguna Blue paint isn’t bad, but the gray top is, and the
slate-gray leathers and plastics manage to cheapen the look of the
latest Stingray’s massively improved interior. It undermines the appeal
of our test car’s $9450 3LT package with its attendant power seats with
memory, navigation, sueded upper-cabin trim, leather-wrapped dash and
door panels, heated and ventilated seats, a head-up display, and Chevy’s cool Performance Data Recorder.
Our 8L90 muse also came with the $5000 high-performance Z51 package
(performance brakes and suspension, dry-sump engine lubrication, 19-inch
front and 20-inch rear tires, an electronic limited-slip differential,
and differential and transmission coolers), which now includes the Vette’s available sports exhaust.
Toss in a $995 interior carbon-fiber dress-up package and the chrome-finished wheels ($1995), as well as necessary options such as the $2495 Competition seats (if you can fit in them), the $1795 Magnetic Ride Control adaptive suspension dampers, the $995 blue paint, and the $1725 automatic trans, and our Stingray’s sticker came to $84,840. That loaded price (bizarre color choices and all) still adds up to $16,435 less than what Porsche charges for a base 2015 911 Carrera cabriolet with the PDK dual-clutch automatic and zero options. The new 8L90 might not equal Porsche’s stellar PDK, but it lives up to the rest of the Corvette’s excellence in a way the old six-speed didn’t.
We already drove a gaggle of Corvettes equipped with the new eight-speed, dubbed 8L90, and came away impressed. Well, we were mostly impressed; the cheap-feeling plastic steering-wheel shift paddles threaten to drag down the experience. The shift lever doesn’t offer a manual-shift gate, so choosing your own gears requires use of these flimsy actuators. Chevy needs to upgrade the pieces yesterday, lest people dismiss the new eight-speed outright on its regrettable visual and tactile deficiencies.
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The EPA says that while the 2015 Vette with the eight-speed nets the same 16-mpg rating in the city cycle as the 2014 model, the highway number rises by 1 mpg to 29. This test car’s participation in our brutal 10Best testing stifled fuel economy to a dismal 12 mpg, but we’re confident that with normal use, it could better the 18 mpg we recorded with the old transmission.
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Toss in a $995 interior carbon-fiber dress-up package and the chrome-finished wheels ($1995), as well as necessary options such as the $2495 Competition seats (if you can fit in them), the $1795 Magnetic Ride Control adaptive suspension dampers, the $995 blue paint, and the $1725 automatic trans, and our Stingray’s sticker came to $84,840. That loaded price (bizarre color choices and all) still adds up to $16,435 less than what Porsche charges for a base 2015 911 Carrera cabriolet with the PDK dual-clutch automatic and zero options. The new 8L90 might not equal Porsche’s stellar PDK, but it lives up to the rest of the Corvette’s excellence in a way the old six-speed didn’t.
Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 2015
Things have changed since the Camaro ZL1 bullied its way back on the
scene for the 2012 model year. A 580-hp 6.2-liter LSA V-8 and a sense of
tactile refinement that veiled the beast within led many people to
believe that the ZL1 stretched the pony-car blueprint to its limits.
They were wrong.
Within months of the ZL1’s arrival, Ford unleashed the Mustang Shelby GT500, a 662-hp schoolyard taunt hurled in the Chevy’s direction. While those two were busy duking it out—here they are in our comparison test—Chrysler was laying the groundwork for the completely bonkers, 707-hp 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat, a car that trumps them both in terms of raw muscle.
But while the ZL1 received many of the updates made to the rest of the Camaro lineup for the 2014 model year—excepting
the new front fascia, as it didn’t allow the ZL1 to breathe as well—it
was completely overshadowed by the slightly less powerful but more
track-focused and iconically badged Camaro Z/28.
To see how our impressions of the ZL1 have held up since our last test,
we strapped on a 2015 model for one last go-round before the Camaro
shifts to GM’s Alpha platform next year.
The objective of the ZL1-specific exterior aesthetic elements remains the same as before: maximize cooling and minimize lift. A unique fascia and hood are designed to increase engine and brake cooling and to help create downforce. The rear spoiler adds roughly 150 pounds of downforce to the package. The rockers are also shaped for optimal airflow and downforce. Hidden from view are the two turbulence-quelling panels attached underneath the car.
With output of 580 horsepower and 556 lb-ft of twist at 4200 rpm, the ZL1 is no longer the most potent pony in the herd, but it remains capable of humbling plenty of steeds. The 6.2-liter supercharged V-8 still delivers the smooth, linear accelerative rush we found so addictive when the car debuted. Unsurprisingly, the performance numbers we extracted from our 2015 ZL1 test car fell in line with those posted three years ago by a 2012 version: Both cars clocked an impressive 4.1 seconds in the 0-to-60 run, the newer car taking one tenth longer to trip the quarter-mile lights with a 12.4-second run. Rowing the Tremec six-speed manual’s husky shifter is a bit cumbersome in traffic, but it feels oh-so-right when it comes time to hustle, and anything lighter in action would be an affront to the ZL1’s personality. Just the same, a six-speed automatic is available.
Braking capability—a ZL1 strongpoint from day one—hasn’t moved far from
the mark, either. The pedal is firm and modulation is easy. Posting a
157-foot figure in our 70-to-0-mph measure, the 2015 ZL1 is in league
with its contemporaries; the heavy 2015 Dodge Challenger R/T Scat Pack did the deed in a surprisingly economical 151 feet, while the no-compromises 2014 Camaro Z/28 required 155 feet to come to a halt.
Aided by GM’s third-generation Magnetic Ride Control adaptive shocks, our 4118-pound ZL1 danced far better than it had a right to. A few circles around our 300-foot skidpad revealed 0.99 g of grip, the beefy 20-inch Goodyear Eagle F1 Supercar G:2 radials (285/35 front, 305/35 rear) hanging tight. Considering the amount of physics-defying grip on tap, it’s surprising how true the ZL1 tracks on uneven broken pavement. Living with this superpony on a day-to-day basis is definitely an option.
Although the switch to the Alpha platform will result in a lighter, leaner Camaro with a smaller footprint, Chevy hasn’t let slip if or when a ZL1 version of the next-gen Camaro might materialize. So if the ZL1 is the Camaro of your dreams, you better act fast. After all, it took Chevrolet more than 40 years to resurrect it the last time.
They were wrong.
Within months of the ZL1’s arrival, Ford unleashed the Mustang Shelby GT500, a 662-hp schoolyard taunt hurled in the Chevy’s direction. While those two were busy duking it out—here they are in our comparison test—Chrysler was laying the groundwork for the completely bonkers, 707-hp 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat, a car that trumps them both in terms of raw muscle.
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The objective of the ZL1-specific exterior aesthetic elements remains the same as before: maximize cooling and minimize lift. A unique fascia and hood are designed to increase engine and brake cooling and to help create downforce. The rear spoiler adds roughly 150 pounds of downforce to the package. The rockers are also shaped for optimal airflow and downforce. Hidden from view are the two turbulence-quelling panels attached underneath the car.
With output of 580 horsepower and 556 lb-ft of twist at 4200 rpm, the ZL1 is no longer the most potent pony in the herd, but it remains capable of humbling plenty of steeds. The 6.2-liter supercharged V-8 still delivers the smooth, linear accelerative rush we found so addictive when the car debuted. Unsurprisingly, the performance numbers we extracted from our 2015 ZL1 test car fell in line with those posted three years ago by a 2012 version: Both cars clocked an impressive 4.1 seconds in the 0-to-60 run, the newer car taking one tenth longer to trip the quarter-mile lights with a 12.4-second run. Rowing the Tremec six-speed manual’s husky shifter is a bit cumbersome in traffic, but it feels oh-so-right when it comes time to hustle, and anything lighter in action would be an affront to the ZL1’s personality. Just the same, a six-speed automatic is available.
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Aided by GM’s third-generation Magnetic Ride Control adaptive shocks, our 4118-pound ZL1 danced far better than it had a right to. A few circles around our 300-foot skidpad revealed 0.99 g of grip, the beefy 20-inch Goodyear Eagle F1 Supercar G:2 radials (285/35 front, 305/35 rear) hanging tight. Considering the amount of physics-defying grip on tap, it’s surprising how true the ZL1 tracks on uneven broken pavement. Living with this superpony on a day-to-day basis is definitely an option.
Although the switch to the Alpha platform will result in a lighter, leaner Camaro with a smaller footprint, Chevy hasn’t let slip if or when a ZL1 version of the next-gen Camaro might materialize. So if the ZL1 is the Camaro of your dreams, you better act fast. After all, it took Chevrolet more than 40 years to resurrect it the last time.
2014 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28
“I told ’em on the radio that I was pulling over a Z/28,
and they said they don’t make them no more,” the cop says with a drawl
straight off the pages of Faulkner. “I told ’em, ‘Whatever it is, this
is a bad-ass car.’ ”
This member of Alabama’s finest claims that Dick Knoll, Camaro lead integration engineer and driver of the Z/28 I’m riding in, put a wheel over the yellow line a mile back on Interstate 20. Knoll doesn’t dispute it because it’s already evident that no tickets will be written today. This is a fan-boy shakedown. The officer barely glances at Knoll’s driver’s license before collecting his take. Cell phone already in hand, his question is rhetorical: “Do you mind if I take a few pictures?”
Officer Instagram can’t be faulted. There’s been enough hype around the Camaro Z/28 revival to launch a dozen blogs. It is retro done right: the return of a storied name applied to a modern car crafted in the same spirit as the 1967 original. Like that first Z/28 that homologated Chevy’s Trans-Am racer, this new incarnation’s mission is to lay down fast laps on a road course. It was developed on the Nürburgring, Road Atlanta, Road America, and Virginia International Raceway, as well as at GM’s own Milford road course. Fittingly, our road test covered more distance on the 2.4-mile track at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama, than on public streets.
The Z/28 is not the quickest, the fastest, or the most powerful Camaro, but it is the most expensive at $75,000, or more than three times the price of a six-cylinder model. Its only clear-cut competitor is the $49,990 Mustang Boss 302 Laguna Seca that Ford stopped building last year. And even then, the parallels exist in concept, not execution. With a 7.0-liter V-8, carbon-ceramic brakes, damper technology borrowed from Formula 1, and the widest front tires on a production car, Chevy’s Camaro Z/28 is a Boss 302 fighter raised on growth hormones and testosterone.
Plucked from GM’s last track-day special, the 2013 Corvette Z06,
the Z/28's port-injected LS7 V-8 is fortified with new pistons and
titanium connecting rods whose bearing inserts are now spray-coated for
improved durability. There are also a cold-air intake, revised exhaust
headers, and a repackaged dry-sump oiling system, but there’s more
hardware that’s carry-over than new under the hood. At 505 horsepower
and 481 pound-feet of torque, the Z/28’s LS7 makes just six more
pound-feet than when this engine made its debut eight years ago.
Just as it did back then, the LS7 oozes power whether the Z/28 is standing still or at speed. The car quakes under a loping idle as heat radiates from the carbon-fiber extractor and blurs the view through the windshield. Racing toward a 7000-rpm redline, the Z/28 smears Barber’s manicured landscaping as if it were a still-wet watercolor, while the exhaust’s raucous bawl rattles the cabin. Zero to 60 mph passes in 4.4 seconds, and the quarter-mile clears in 12.7, by which time you’re doing 116 mph. True, the Z/28 isn’t as quick as the ZL1 in a straight line, but that’s not the point.
The six-speed manual transmission shared with the Camaro SS 1LE is geared for road-course duty, with closer ratios passed through a shorter 3.91:1 final drive. Shifts are heavy and stiff, and the pedals are spaced a toe’s-width too far apart for easy heel-and-toe action. The substantial displacement of the naturally aspirated V-8 compensates with a low end that’s nearly as forceful as its top end is intense. We work over Barber using third and fourth gears and every rev between 3000 and 7000 rpm.
The Pirelli P Zero Trofeo Rs are essentially street-legal racing tires so tacky that, during development testing, they occasionally stuck to the pavement better than to the wheels they were mounted on. To keep the Pirellis from slipping around the rim, the wheels on production Z/28s are media-blasted to increase friction at the mating surface, a common practice in racing.
The massive front tires are the same size as the rears, a remedy first used on the 1LE to address the Camaro SS’s penchant for understeer. Here, though, the rubber is sized up to 305/30 and mounted on smaller, lighter 19-inch forged aluminum wheels. When warm, the tires stick to the pavement like four wads of melted Wrigley’s. In Barber’s long, mid-speed corners we saw as much as 1.06 g of lateral stick, despite a damp track and temperatures struggling to top 40 degrees. The Z/28 is neutral and responsive at the limits, and the Torsen-type limited-slip differential prudently doles out power on corner exit. The flat-bottom steering wheel has the same heft and on-center sharpness as the Camaro ZL1’s. Unfortunately, it lacks the stimulating feedback experienced in the best sports cars.
The cross-drilled carbon-ceramic brake discs are clamped by six-piston front and four-piston rear calipers that bite just as hard after 50 minutes of lapping as they do on the first laps. From 70 mph, they haul the Z/28 to a stop in 155 feet.
There are, of course, stiffer springs and bushings, and the downsized wheels allowed engineers to drop the center of gravity by 1.3 inches and use smaller and lighter anti-roll bars. The cornerstones of the suspension are four spool-valve dampers, a technology used by Red Bull Racing as it claimed four Formula 1 championships between 2010 and 2013. Until now, the closest these shocks have come to a production car is Aston Martin’s $1.8-million One-77.
Spool-valve dampers don’t use electronic components or magnetic fluid, and they are neither driver-adjustable nor adaptable to road conditions. Instead, the spool valve’s merit lies in tailor-shaped internal ports that improve the precision and effective range available to engineers as they tune the shocks. They work magnificently. The Z/28 transitions from left to right to braking and acceleration with nearly imperceptible load transfer. It is stoic and stable as it bounds over the curbing and hunkers into hard braking through the tight corkscrew of Barber’s eighth and ninth turns. On the road, firm doesn’t mean harsh, either. As we bomb over a bridge deck that is set two inches above the road that abuts it, I tense in anticipation of a jarring impact—it never materializes.
Even without the ZL1’s magnetic dampers, the Z/28 retains ride-height
sensors at each wheel to feed data to the five-mode
performance-traction-management system that determines when to
straighten the car with the brakes, reduce torque via engine management,
or feed power to the rear wheels. The sensors also enable a “fly mode,”
in which the engine controller holds torque constant when the car goes
airborne, rather than cut fuel as a typical Chevy does. Why doesn’t
every car have a fly mode?
And yet Chevy made great efforts to keep the Z/28’s tires firmly in contact with the ground. The front splitter, the wheel-arch extensions, and the rear spoiler are all part of a functional—if not beautiful—aero kit that makes 150 pounds of downforce at 150 mph when an accessory Gurney flap is screwed onto the back of the spoiler. Chevrolet stripped its gold bow tie off the front grille. In its place is a hollowed-out emblem, cheekily called the “flow tie,” allowing extra air into the engine bay at the rate of 88 cubic feet per minute.
Camaro chief engineer Al Oppenheiser claims the Z/28 team “took out everything that didn’t make it go faster or wasn’t required by law.” So the car comes without air conditioning and only a single speaker to sound the seatbelt-reminder chime. Floor mats aren’t included, and the emergency tire-inflation kit is left out unless you buy in Rhode Island or New Hampshire, where it’s mandatory equipment. The engineers even replaced the rear glass with a pane 0.01 inch thinner to nix 0.9 pound.
We won’t be talking about a true lightweight Camaro until at least 2016,
though, when the car is redesigned on the Alpha platform. The Z/28 we
tested was equipped with the sole option package—five extra speakers and
air conditioning—and weighed 3862 pounds. It’s not light, but that is
35 pounds shy of a 1LE and more than 300 pounds slimmer than a ZL1.
Even without looking at the scales, we feel it’s a stretch to say Chevrolet stripped the Z/28 of everything that didn’t make it faster. The car still has carpeting, a headliner, full interior trim, and (lighter) rear seats. The wide Recaros are all-day comfortable rather than track-day snug. Other than the flat-bottom steering wheel and rescaled speedo and tachometer, from the driver’s seat the Z/28 could easily be confused for a six-cylinder Camaro. If you want to convince someone how serious this car is, you’ll have to pop the trunk, where there isn’t a single piece of plastic trim or carpet.
Or drive the Z/28 on the track. Because that’s really the only way to show off cornering this flat, grip this abundant, power this visceral, and a car this bad-ass.
This member of Alabama’s finest claims that Dick Knoll, Camaro lead integration engineer and driver of the Z/28 I’m riding in, put a wheel over the yellow line a mile back on Interstate 20. Knoll doesn’t dispute it because it’s already evident that no tickets will be written today. This is a fan-boy shakedown. The officer barely glances at Knoll’s driver’s license before collecting his take. Cell phone already in hand, his question is rhetorical: “Do you mind if I take a few pictures?”
Officer Instagram can’t be faulted. There’s been enough hype around the Camaro Z/28 revival to launch a dozen blogs. It is retro done right: the return of a storied name applied to a modern car crafted in the same spirit as the 1967 original. Like that first Z/28 that homologated Chevy’s Trans-Am racer, this new incarnation’s mission is to lay down fast laps on a road course. It was developed on the Nürburgring, Road Atlanta, Road America, and Virginia International Raceway, as well as at GM’s own Milford road course. Fittingly, our road test covered more distance on the 2.4-mile track at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama, than on public streets.
The Z/28 is not the quickest, the fastest, or the most powerful Camaro, but it is the most expensive at $75,000, or more than three times the price of a six-cylinder model. Its only clear-cut competitor is the $49,990 Mustang Boss 302 Laguna Seca that Ford stopped building last year. And even then, the parallels exist in concept, not execution. With a 7.0-liter V-8, carbon-ceramic brakes, damper technology borrowed from Formula 1, and the widest front tires on a production car, Chevy’s Camaro Z/28 is a Boss 302 fighter raised on growth hormones and testosterone.
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How
to make a 7.0-liter V-8 look small? Put it in a Camaro. The cold-air
intake is one of the few changes GM made in transplanting the LS7
engine from the outgoing Corvette Z06.
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Just as it did back then, the LS7 oozes power whether the Z/28 is standing still or at speed. The car quakes under a loping idle as heat radiates from the carbon-fiber extractor and blurs the view through the windshield. Racing toward a 7000-rpm redline, the Z/28 smears Barber’s manicured landscaping as if it were a still-wet watercolor, while the exhaust’s raucous bawl rattles the cabin. Zero to 60 mph passes in 4.4 seconds, and the quarter-mile clears in 12.7, by which time you’re doing 116 mph. True, the Z/28 isn’t as quick as the ZL1 in a straight line, but that’s not the point.
The six-speed manual transmission shared with the Camaro SS 1LE is geared for road-course duty, with closer ratios passed through a shorter 3.91:1 final drive. Shifts are heavy and stiff, and the pedals are spaced a toe’s-width too far apart for easy heel-and-toe action. The substantial displacement of the naturally aspirated V-8 compensates with a low end that’s nearly as forceful as its top end is intense. We work over Barber using third and fourth gears and every rev between 3000 and 7000 rpm.
The Pirelli P Zero Trofeo Rs are essentially street-legal racing tires so tacky that, during development testing, they occasionally stuck to the pavement better than to the wheels they were mounted on. To keep the Pirellis from slipping around the rim, the wheels on production Z/28s are media-blasted to increase friction at the mating surface, a common practice in racing.
The massive front tires are the same size as the rears, a remedy first used on the 1LE to address the Camaro SS’s penchant for understeer. Here, though, the rubber is sized up to 305/30 and mounted on smaller, lighter 19-inch forged aluminum wheels. When warm, the tires stick to the pavement like four wads of melted Wrigley’s. In Barber’s long, mid-speed corners we saw as much as 1.06 g of lateral stick, despite a damp track and temperatures struggling to top 40 degrees. The Z/28 is neutral and responsive at the limits, and the Torsen-type limited-slip differential prudently doles out power on corner exit. The flat-bottom steering wheel has the same heft and on-center sharpness as the Camaro ZL1’s. Unfortunately, it lacks the stimulating feedback experienced in the best sports cars.
The cross-drilled carbon-ceramic brake discs are clamped by six-piston front and four-piston rear calipers that bite just as hard after 50 minutes of lapping as they do on the first laps. From 70 mph, they haul the Z/28 to a stop in 155 feet.
There are, of course, stiffer springs and bushings, and the downsized wheels allowed engineers to drop the center of gravity by 1.3 inches and use smaller and lighter anti-roll bars. The cornerstones of the suspension are four spool-valve dampers, a technology used by Red Bull Racing as it claimed four Formula 1 championships between 2010 and 2013. Until now, the closest these shocks have come to a production car is Aston Martin’s $1.8-million One-77.
Spool-valve dampers don’t use electronic components or magnetic fluid, and they are neither driver-adjustable nor adaptable to road conditions. Instead, the spool valve’s merit lies in tailor-shaped internal ports that improve the precision and effective range available to engineers as they tune the shocks. They work magnificently. The Z/28 transitions from left to right to braking and acceleration with nearly imperceptible load transfer. It is stoic and stable as it bounds over the curbing and hunkers into hard braking through the tight corkscrew of Barber’s eighth and ninth turns. On the road, firm doesn’t mean harsh, either. As we bomb over a bridge deck that is set two inches above the road that abuts it, I tense in anticipation of a jarring impact—it never materializes.
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Left: What Recaro seats look like when scaled to Z/28 proportions.
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And yet Chevy made great efforts to keep the Z/28’s tires firmly in contact with the ground. The front splitter, the wheel-arch extensions, and the rear spoiler are all part of a functional—if not beautiful—aero kit that makes 150 pounds of downforce at 150 mph when an accessory Gurney flap is screwed onto the back of the spoiler. Chevrolet stripped its gold bow tie off the front grille. In its place is a hollowed-out emblem, cheekily called the “flow tie,” allowing extra air into the engine bay at the rate of 88 cubic feet per minute.
Camaro chief engineer Al Oppenheiser claims the Z/28 team “took out everything that didn’t make it go faster or wasn’t required by law.” So the car comes without air conditioning and only a single speaker to sound the seatbelt-reminder chime. Floor mats aren’t included, and the emergency tire-inflation kit is left out unless you buy in Rhode Island or New Hampshire, where it’s mandatory equipment. The engineers even replaced the rear glass with a pane 0.01 inch thinner to nix 0.9 pound.
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How to identify a Z/28: badges, lots and lots of badges.
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Even without looking at the scales, we feel it’s a stretch to say Chevrolet stripped the Z/28 of everything that didn’t make it faster. The car still has carpeting, a headliner, full interior trim, and (lighter) rear seats. The wide Recaros are all-day comfortable rather than track-day snug. Other than the flat-bottom steering wheel and rescaled speedo and tachometer, from the driver’s seat the Z/28 could easily be confused for a six-cylinder Camaro. If you want to convince someone how serious this car is, you’ll have to pop the trunk, where there isn’t a single piece of plastic trim or carpet.
Or drive the Z/28 on the track. Because that’s really the only way to show off cornering this flat, grip this abundant, power this visceral, and a car this bad-ass.
2016 Chevrolet Camaro SS Automatic
We’ll admit that when Chevrolet gave us a sneak peek at the 2016 Camaro
a few months before the car’s unveiling, we were . . . well, we were
disappointed. Oh, it’s a handsome enough thing, in a cartoonish, Transformers
sort of way. But sitting there in a windowless room deep within the
company’s Warren, Michigan, campus, the new Camaro’s stocky proportions,
low roof, and squinting eyes made it look like a simple refresh of the
then-current fifth-generation car that was parked next to it. It was the
modernized 1969 Camaro again. Only this time a different anime artist
drew the thing.
We asked a designer: What have you done to improve the outward visibility of this new car over the last one? He replied something along the lines of “Camaro owners haven’t told us that that was something they felt needed to be improved and they liked the styling of the car.”
Oh, dear. That did not bode well.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. That styling—with its narrow slits
for side windows, fat C-pillar, and short rear glass—has, indeed, done
nothing to improve the outward visibility in this new car. It is
abysmal. We adjusted to it, partly by accelerating hard before
performing lane changes just to clear some room. Adjust your mirrors
carefully. The interior of the Ford Mustang feels ballroom-spacious by comparison.
The tanklike construction also prevents much light from entering the cabin, which, even with our test car’s bright-red upholstery accents, makes every drive in the Camaro feel like an adventure in spelunking. It’s not all bad news inside, though. The seats in our SS test car are simply fantastic—supportive and firm with just the right amount of bolstering. The steering wheel is perfectly contoured, as if our hands had formed it out of warm clay. The mix of interior materials, while not exactly Mercedes-level, are nonetheless a marked improvement on those of the old car. The infotainment screen’s surround and the instrument-binnacle trim are hard and chintzy, but who ever taps on those things, other than us?
Other ergonomic misfires include center HVAC vents mounted so low in the center stack that they dispense air directly onto your shifting hand, the world’s most useless door pockets, and an infotainment screen canted curiously down toward the floor, where it reflects the bright, faux-metal shifter surround. Thankfully, Chevy’s infotainment system is easy to navigate through the eight-inch touch screen. And our car came with interior accent lighting that can be changed to any of 24 different colors, six of which are some variety of pink. The rear seats? It’s best to not think of them as seats. As in the Porsche 911, they are simply upholstered shelves.
Our loaded, $47,480 test car came with an optional dual-mode exhaust
($895), which does nothing at all to increase horsepower but makes the
Camaro SS sound like it’s absolutely furious—spitting and barking mad.
This is a welcome bit of antisocial behavior compared to the Mustang
GT’s relatively demure-sounding engine. The Camaro’s engine is tuned to
let out a brief bawl on full-throttle upshifts, which, it must be said,
are exactly as firm as we’d like. The eight-speed automatic is a pretty
spectacular piece of work, and that’s coming from the Save the Manuals
people. It even responds quickly to paddle-activated manual shifts.
A drive-mode selector tailors steering effort, damper stiffness, stability-control leniency, and transmission mapping to one of four settings: Touring, Sport, Track, and Weather. That we were perfectly happy to leave the thing set in Touring, even through demanding, twisty roads, speaks to the high level of designed-in performance. In fact, we liked the relatively light steering effort in Touring better than the heavier settings offered in the sportier modes.
Perhaps more remarkable: The Camaro’s impressive dynamic fidelity
doesn’t render its ride uncomfortable. Even wearing low-profile run-flat
tires (245/40ZR-20s in front and 275/35ZR-20s at the rear), the Camaro
manages to chamfer off the edges of sharp road irregularities. Surely,
our car’s optional, $1695 magnetorheological dampers aided in this feat.
Those tires, Goodyear Eagle F1s, helped the car deliver an impressive
0.98 g of lateral grip on the skidpad. And allied with four-piston
Brembo calipers front and rear, they also help deliver stops from 70 mph
in a stunning 147 feet. That’s a shorter stop than we’ve recorded for
at least a couple iterations of the current Porsche 911.
It all goes to prove that there is no shame in shopping in the corporate parts bin when that bin contains excellent parts. Thanks to those parts, especially the reworked Alpha platform, the sixth-generation Camaro is not only newer than it looks on the outside, it has attained a new level of driving precision for its genre. It turns out that the robo-1969 styling is there just to remind you that the Camaro is still in the pony-car class.
We asked a designer: What have you done to improve the outward visibility of this new car over the last one? He replied something along the lines of “Camaro owners haven’t told us that that was something they felt needed to be improved and they liked the styling of the car.”
Oh, dear. That did not bode well.
Perfect Synthesis
We knew that the new Camaro would be lighter than the old one, in part because it would ride on a version of the Alpha platform that serves Cadillac so well in the ATS and the CTS. And, of course, we knew that it would carry the Corvette Stingray’s brawny 6.2-liter LT1 small-block V-8 in SS versions. What we didn’t know during our early peep at the final design was how beautifully all of this componentry would work together to form such a kick-ass sports coupe. A sports coupe so ass-kickingly good, in fact, that the company could have bolted the body of the old Malibu Maxx to it and we’d still fight over the keys.
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The tanklike construction also prevents much light from entering the cabin, which, even with our test car’s bright-red upholstery accents, makes every drive in the Camaro feel like an adventure in spelunking. It’s not all bad news inside, though. The seats in our SS test car are simply fantastic—supportive and firm with just the right amount of bolstering. The steering wheel is perfectly contoured, as if our hands had formed it out of warm clay. The mix of interior materials, while not exactly Mercedes-level, are nonetheless a marked improvement on those of the old car. The infotainment screen’s surround and the instrument-binnacle trim are hard and chintzy, but who ever taps on those things, other than us?
Other ergonomic misfires include center HVAC vents mounted so low in the center stack that they dispense air directly onto your shifting hand, the world’s most useless door pockets, and an infotainment screen canted curiously down toward the floor, where it reflects the bright, faux-metal shifter surround. Thankfully, Chevy’s infotainment system is easy to navigate through the eight-inch touch screen. And our car came with interior accent lighting that can be changed to any of 24 different colors, six of which are some variety of pink. The rear seats? It’s best to not think of them as seats. As in the Porsche 911, they are simply upholstered shelves.
Moving On—and Out
But enough of that. This isn’t a family sedan. This is a performance car and, hoo boy, what a performer it is. Our test car, an SS with the General’s new eight-speed automatic (a $1495 option), rocketed to 60 mph in 3.9 seconds, a noticeable half-second quicker than any current Mustang GT we’ve tested. It makes it through the quarter-mile in 12.3 seconds, close to a second quicker than the Mustang GT. At 455 horsepower and 455 lb-ft of torque, the Camaro SS’s 6.2-liter small-block produces 20 more horses and 55 lb-ft more thrust than does the GT’s 5.0-liter. The Chevy’s pushrod V-8 also makes great wads more grunt down low than the Ford’s overhead-cam engine.
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Chassis? Classy!
There have been plenty of quick and bawdy Camaros over the years, though. What’s a bit more unexpected this time around is the level of precision with which this Camaro moves. It helps that, at 3760 pounds, this new car is about 100 pounds more trim than a similarly equipped fifth-generation car. It’s a tidier package overall, losing a couple of inches of wheelbase and length and an inch of width compared with the outgoing car. The new Camaro also uses aluminum front-suspension links, and while the rear links are steel, they’re shot through with lightening holes. The Camaro’s structure doesn’t feel light, though; it feels as tank-solid as the tanklike visibility suggests it is. But the car moves in a way that belies that impression. Quick electric-assist steering and excellent front-end grip mean that you fire the Camaro into corners. There is no extraneous steering input necessary as the Camaro exhibits excellent path control. Body motions—roll, pitch, and squat—are all tightly controlled. What little body motion that is allowed is meted out in a perfectly progressive fashion. A trustier back-road companion is hard to come by. It’s not the muscle-bound brute some might be expecting and that its body might suggest—it’s a fully modern sports coupe.A drive-mode selector tailors steering effort, damper stiffness, stability-control leniency, and transmission mapping to one of four settings: Touring, Sport, Track, and Weather. That we were perfectly happy to leave the thing set in Touring, even through demanding, twisty roads, speaks to the high level of designed-in performance. In fact, we liked the relatively light steering effort in Touring better than the heavier settings offered in the sportier modes.
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It all goes to prove that there is no shame in shopping in the corporate parts bin when that bin contains excellent parts. Thanks to those parts, especially the reworked Alpha platform, the sixth-generation Camaro is not only newer than it looks on the outside, it has attained a new level of driving precision for its genre. It turns out that the robo-1969 styling is there just to remind you that the Camaro is still in the pony-car class.
2018 Chevrolet Bolt: Running on E(lectricity)
