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.

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 ATSand 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Specifications

VEHICLE TYPE:front-engine, rear-wheel-drive, 4-passenger, 2-door coupe

PRICE AS TESTED:$47,480 (base price: $37,295)

ENGINE TYPE:pushrod 16-valve V-8, aluminum block and heads, direct fuel injection

DISPLACEMENT:376 cu in, 6162 cc
Power: 455 hp @ 6000 rpm
Torque: 455 lb-ft @ 4400 rpm

TRANSMISSION:8-speed automatic with manual shifting mode

DIMENSIONS:
Wheelbase: 110.7 in
Length: 188.3 in
Width: 74.7 in Height:53.1 in
Curb weight: 3760 lb

C/D TEST RESULTS:
Zero to 60 mph: 3.9 sec
Zero to 100 mph: 8.9 sec
Zero to 120 mph: 13.1 sec
Zero to 150 mph: 25.1 sec
Rolling start, 5-60 mph: 4.0 sec
Top gear, 30-50 mph: 2.3 sec
Top gear, 50-70 mph: 2.7 sec
Standing ¼-mile: 12.3 sec @ 116 mph
Top speed (governor limited, C/D est): 165 mph
Braking, 70-0 mph: 147 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft-dia skidpad: 0.98 g

FUEL ECONOMY:
EPA city/highway driving (C/D est): 16/26 mpg
C/D observed: 18 mpg

2017 Chevrolet Camaro 1LE: Now Available with a V-6 or a V-8!

Muscle- and pony-car fans will always opt for the V-8, no matter the other choices available to them. Internet commenters and hacks will scoff at the idea that a V-6—or, worse, a turbocharged four-cylinder—could even be considered fun. Whatever. We think that the more sporting, rear-drive coupes that exist in this world, the better, no matter what they have under the hood. And outside of objective measurements like zero-to-60 times or quarter-mile sprints, the fun gap between (increasingly better) smaller engines and the still-stonking bigger engines in cars like the Ford Mustang and the Chevrolet Camaro is shrinking. Consider that gap even tighter with the introduction of Chevrolet’s latest 1LE track package for the Camaro.
Reintroduced on the previous-generation (fifth-generation) Camaro after more than a decade away, the 1LE package incorporates a track-ready suspension setup, wider wheels and sticky summer tires, mild aerodynamic add-ons, and extra cooling for the engine and driveline. Previously, it was offered only on the V-8–powered SS model. The new 1LE package has been democratized, for it will be an option on V-6 Camaros, too. (Will the upcoming turbo-four-powered Camaro also be let into the Hall of 1LE? We’re told Chevy is considering the idea.) While this technically means there are two 1LE kits, one for the V-8 and one for the V-6, both are similarly tuned to deliver serious on-track performance for not a lot of money.

For the V-6 . . .

The 1LE packages are specific to each engine, owing to those engines’ distinctly different weights. For six-cylinder 1LEs, the package is essentially the FE3 suspension from a stock, V-8 Camaro SS with a few tuning tweaks. This includes the dampers, rear subframe mounts, ball-jointed toe links, and anti-roll bars.

The tighter suspension works in concert with staggered-width 20-inch forged-aluminum wheels and 245/40 front and 275/35 rear Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 3 run-flat summer tires to deliver a claimed 0.97 g of lateral grip. (Quick note: This figure is subject to the testing methods and the diameter of the skidpad used to measure it; we evaluate lateral grip on a 300-foot skidpad, where a stock V-6 Camaro recorded an impressive 0.91 g.) Other mechanical enhancements for the V-6 1LE include enhanced cooling (engine, transmission, and differential oils), Brembo four-piston front brake calipers, a limited-slip diff, the dual-mode exhaust that’s optional on regular Camaros, and the SS model’s fuel-delivery system that better handles higher cornering forces. A satin-black vinyl wrap for the hood and the side mirrors, a chin splitter and rear lip spoiler, and a suede-wrapped steering wheel and shift knob round out the modifications.

And for the V-8 . . .

With no Camaro model above the SS to borrow suspension components from—at least presently—the SS 1LE introduces the all-new FE4 suspension to the latest Camaro family. (We suspect that, as on the previous-generation Camaro, there will be some overlap between the SS 1LE’s chassis and that of the supercharged Camaro ZL1; expect to see FE4 components on that model when it debuts.) Chevrolet cites “specific tuning” for the SS 1LE’s standard magnetorheological dampers, as well as for the springs and anti-roll bars. The V-8’s setup is augmented by even more aggressive tires, in this case Goodyear rubber with Corvette-like section widths of 285/30 up front and 305/20 in back.

Brembo front brakes incorporate larger aluminum-hat rotors and six-piston monoblock calipers, while the rear end is beefed up by an electronically controlled limited-slip differential similar to that used in the Corvette. Standard Camaro SS models already ship with engine, differential, and transmission oil coolers, so those items aren’t specific to the 1LE package but are useful nonetheless. The SS 1LE also comes standard with a dual-mode exhaust, a satin-black hood and side mirrors, a front splitter and rear lip spoiler, and a microsuede-wrapped steering wheel and shift knob. Also included are a pair of deeply bolstered Recaro bucket seats—which are optional on the V-6 1LE—covered in a grippy cloth with microsuede inserts. The nifty Performance Data Recorder feature, essentially a dash cam with lap-time analysis software that first debuted on the Corvette, is optional on both 1LEs.

Power Corrupts, or Does It?

Astute readers may have noticed that we’ve not mentioned a single horsepower or torque figure for either 1LE. That’s no accident. As before, the 1LE package is strictly a chassis upgrade, and ordering it changes nothing about the Camaro’s six- and eight-cylinder engines. As such, the V-6 1LE packs the same 335-hp 3.6-liter V-6 as other six-cylinder Camaros, while the SS 1LE uses the familiar fire-breathing 455-hp 6.2-liter V-8 as its eight-cylinder Camaro brethren. The 1LE package does, however, restrict buyers to the six-speed manual transmission—correctly, in our estimation. In our testing, the stick-shift Camaro V-6 streaks to 60 mph in 5.4 seconds, and the Camaro V-8 (with the quicker automatic) does the deed in 3.9 ticks.

Adding the 1LE’s extra helping of grip and track-readiness to that sort of acceleration capability sounds great to us, although determining a favorite between the two 1LEs may prove exceptionally difficult. Already, the lithe V-6 Camaro strikes us as the sports car of the family, with the brutal V-8 model doing its best impression of a Corvette with a virtually useless back seat. Both are phenomenal to drive, and we suspect the 1LE packages will amplify each version’s personality.

The packages, which are available on the 1LT or 2LT six-cylinder cars and the 1SS V-8, are expected to be fairly inexpensive. The last Camaro’s kit cost just $3500 and transformed the Camaro SS into a laser-guided track missile. Now, with the package available on the 1LT V-6 (which starts at $26,695), it might be possible to snag a 1LE for about $30,000. If that’s not reason enough to drop the “V-8 or die!” line, we suggest you go test-drive a six-cylinder Camaro right now. We’ll try not to say we told you so.

2016 Chevrolet Cruze: The Second-Gen Car Arrives Lighter, Stronger, and Tech-ier

No vehicle in Chevrolet’s lineup is more apple-pie-and-baseball American than the Silverado pickup truck, and it fits that it’s the brand’s bestselling model in the U.S. Leave our borders, however, and a rather different Chevrolet model carries the bow-tie standard: the Cruze. Indeed, the small car has attained top sales status for the Chevy brand globally. And stateside? Last year, the Cruze placed second, moving 273,060 units to the Silverado’s 529,755. So the second-generation, 2016 Cruze needs to hit the mark if Chevy wants to continue cruising its compact-car wave.

Cutting Carbs, Trimming Fat

Chevrolet binned the outgoing Cruze’s unassuming look for a more expressive, sleeker design this time around. Thanks to its all-new D2 front-drive architecture, the Cruze gains 0.6 inch of wheelbase and 2.7 inches of overall length, a move that does as much for the sedan’s back-seat accommodations as it does for its styling. Word is a five-door hatchback will be offered to Americans this time around, too. The sleek, tadpole-shaped body (not unlike that of the Hyundai Elantra or the Honda Civic) replaces the old car’s more upright, traditional three-box silhouette to good effect. There’s more detailing front and rear, and the car’s face, at least, makes a solid connection to the upcoming new 2016 Malibu.

The Malibu association runs more than skin deep; much like Chevrolet’s mid-size sedan, the newest Cruze not only has a massively improved interior, but it has undergone a dramatic weight loss, too. The curb weight has been lowered by a claimed 250 pounds, a remarkable figure given the Cruze’s utter lack of exotic materials. The predominantly steel body structure loses 53 pounds itself. The standard 1.4-liter Ecotec turbocharged four-cylinder engine is 44 pounds lighter than the old Cruze’s optional iron-block 1.4 turbo thanks to its aluminum block, and it’s also lighter than the discontinued naturally aspirated 1.8-liter four. Engineers pulled another 24 pounds out of the Cruze’s available six-speed automatic transmission—a six-speed manual is standard—and despite using a similar mix of aluminum and steel componentry, the suspension bits are also slightly lighter, we’re told.

The car’s interior gets a fresh design and nicer materials. The center stack houses an all-new, quick-responding seven-inch MyLink touch-screen display compatible with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto phone-mirroring solutions, and an eight-inch version is optional. An extra two inches of rear-seat knee room opens up the Cruze’s tight rear quarters. In fact, the back seat is now roomy enough that cracking a laptop back there and putting the Cruze’s standard 4G LTE data connection and built-in Wi-Fi hotspot to use is something we’d actually consider trying.

Cruise Missile, Slightly Depowered

In this age of relatively cheap gasoline, we’ll report that the new Cruze should be slightly speedier before discussing efficiency improvements. Thank the diet as well as the turbo engine from General Motors’ latest Ecotec small-engine family. The 1.4-liter’s 153 horsepower and 177 lb-ft of torque is claimed to move the Cruze to 60 mph in eight seconds flat. Seeing how first-generation Cruzes we’ve tested were capable of such zip, we expect the new model to be slightly quicker in our testing. Reduced mass enhances handling and agility, which hopefully also benefit from the new suspension tuning (the Cruze’s strut front and twist-beam rear suspension designs and the rack-mounted electric-power-steering system are similar to before).

Gas might be cheap, but you can’t debut a new car today without boasting about some kind of fuel-economy improvement. The Cruze is no exception, and Chevy elevated the car’s mpg in a straightforward, engineering-focused way. The car’s aerodynamics are one example; unlike the previous Cruze, they aren’t enhanced by active grille shutters or extensive underbody paneling. Instead, the body’s sloping roofline, chamfered corners, and subtle design elements do the work. Combined with the new turbo engine and automatic transmission—again, a six-speed stick is standard—Chevrolet thinks the Cruze will crack the 40-mpg-highway barrier, no special option package required. The only gas-fed previous-generation Cruze capable of more than 40 mpg on the highway was the Eco model; the diesel version, which will return in 2017 with a new 1.6-liter engine, also crested the mark.

The 2016 Cruze does everything expected of a new-generation car—gain power, gain efficiency, gain features—but it does so while also reducing complexity and, ostensibly, weight. The Cruze may never be as patriotic a choice as something like the Silverado, but wherever it’s driven, the newest iteration will seemingly fly the flag of smart engineering. We look forward to sliding behind the wheel on American soil soon.