General Motors engineers recently took the new 2012 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 to the drag strip to see how fast it could run the quarter mile (~400m).A showroom-stock Camaro ZL1 with the six-speed automatic and the factory-issued Goodyear Eagle F1 Supercar G:2 tires completed the run in 11.93 seconds with an exit speed of 116 mph (187 km/h), while the six-speed manual model ran an 11.96-second ET at 117 mph (188 km/h). “The ZL1 is great at everything and we’re very proud of that. You can take it to the drag strip and run 11-second quarter-miles all day long,” commented Tony Roma, Camaro ZL1 program engineering manager. “You can also take it to a road course, where it’s balanced, handles well, and does exactly what you want – including lapping Virginia International Raceway’s Grand Course in under three minutes – and yet the ZL1 is sophisticated enough to use as a daily driver. It’s a supercar you can drive every day,” he added. The ZL1 is powered by a 6.2-liter supercharged V8 rated at 580HP (432 kW) and 556 lb.-ft. of torque (754 Nm), with prices in the U.S. starting from $54,995.
While it's true that the Ford Mustang is the vehicle that reheated the pony car segment, forcing both GM and Chrysler to resuscitate two of their historic nameplates, it's the Chevrolet Camaro that has taken the sales lead grabbing 42 percent of the rear-wheel drive performance coupe market in 2011 with 88,249 deliveries. The Ford Mustang comes in second with 70,438 units and the Dodge Challenger third with 39,534 deliveries. This year, the Camaro has about 40 percent of the market with Ford trying to catch up with approximately 35 percent. This makes planning its successor all the more difficult as Al Oppenheiser, Camaro's chief engineer, admitted to Automotive News Product Editor, Rick Kanz. The fifth generation of the Camaro was launched into the market in 2010 and a replacement is due in the fall of 2015. According to Oppenheiser, the team involved in the development and the design of the sixth generation Camaro, has many issued to solve, one of which is weight reduction. "We always get hammered for mass, and that's not going to be getting easier going forward with the upcoming CAFE regulations", said Oppenheiser. "Displacement, number of cylinders, all of these things you need to think about." The issue of styling may be even more perplex. "This is a very successful car. In some ways it is actually going to be tougher to create the redesigned car, which will be the Camaro's sixth generation," said Oppenheiser. "Do you make it look like a first-gen or do you make it look like the second gen?" said the GM engineer referring to the 1967-1969 and 1970-1981 Camaro models respectively. Not surprisingly, Oppenheiser didn’t answer that question, but it's clear that GM has its work cut, even more so since Ford will be introducing the next Mustang in the same year, coinciding with its 50th anniversary. "We always have to stay fresh and ahead. [But] we do not want to lose the fact that we have nearly 40 percent of the market," said Oppenheiser. Which brings us to our latest poll: Should GM's designers take their inspiration from a previous generation Camaro, and if so, which one?
