You will get few bigger laughs than looking at the list of lap times on Laguna Seca, Nurburgring, and Virginia International Raceway and seeing a Camaro in the top 30. The Chevrolet Camaro started life as a rowdy misbehaving competitor to the Mustang, rushed out by panicked GM execs. It eventually came into its own as a muscle car – but nobody would have predicted it’d be this good.
The ZL1 nameplate isn’t new; it denoted possibly the greatest performance Camaro untouched by Yenko. Debuting in 1969, it could get an aluminum-block 427 making 500 hp and managing 0-60 in a competitive 5.3 seconds. The new car is also a GM creation with less weight and more power than the typical Camaro, but it takes advantage of everything GM has learned since then. It looks good, too; it was spared the terrible 2021 facelift.
The Camaro ZL1 1LE does what every good American sports car should do; crush the European competition at their own game, with enough money left over to buy them all a dessert of humble pie.
The Blood And The Body: New Look, Same Great Engine
Like the Viper ACR Extreme, the horsepower for this variant was unchanged and the top speed actually decreased (from 195 to 190 mph) thanks to all the aero. It still has the same engine as the regular ZL1 – a 6.2 liter supercharged V8 with 650 horsepower and 650 lb-ft of torque. It uses a six-speed manual, possibly to save the 14 pounds that the regular ZL1’s optional 10-speed automatic would add.
The car was in part honed on the Nurburgring, and the result is what you’d expect – excellent handling with a pelvis-pulverizing ride. It uses extremely stiff suspension with spool valve dampers and no rubber bushings, and Road and Track commented, “at the rear axle, the suspension’s subframe is hard mounted to the unibody.”
The suspension is produced by Multimatic, a Formula 1 manufacturer whose shocks are also used by the Aston Martin Vulcan and the Ford GT. If drivers want, they can adjust the ride height and even induce negative camber for the wheels.
As with any track car, the ZL1 1LE is focused on downforce. On its own, the rear wing produces 300lbs worth of the stuff. All of the visible aero is functional.
Another major similarity with the Viper ACR is the use of extremely sticky bespoke R-compound tires. Nearly an inch wider than those on the regular ZL1, these are specifically intended to compete with Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires, fitted to cars like the 918 Spyder. Unlike many of the more potent race tires, however, these were specifically designed to be functional in the rain. As an added bonus, they don’t wear out rapidly the way performance tires typically do – Motor Trend noted that their fastest lap at Canada’s Area 27 race track was done on their fourth consecutive attempt.
The car does 0-60 in 3.6 seconds and the quarter-mile in 11.8, pulling 1.11G, braking from 60-0 in 91 feet, and managing a top speed of 190 mph. It can also keep doing so for a while. Road and Track noted that the car didn’t suffer heat issues at all in the engine (even the supercharger), the brakes, or the tires. The brake pedal continued to be firm and responsive even after heavy usage.
The Bargain: Less Than 6 Figures To Smoke Supercars
It is in fact the best muscle car around a track, and by quite a margin too. It’s in the top 25 at the Nurburgring, beating out bonafide supercars from almost every manufacturer you care to name. As for other muscle cars – well, even the most circuit-minded efforts from Audi, BMW, Ford, Dodge, and Mercedes flounder in the ZL1 1LE’s wake.
Fully loaded, it’s about $78,000. That’s insanely affordable for a car with more horsepower than a McLaren F1. It’s also less than a fifth of the price of the Aventador, a car the ZL1 1LE beats by nearly a full ten seconds on the Nurburgring. That’s just the official lap time – an unofficial lap ran more than two seconds faster, which makes it less than a second slower around the track than the Porsche 918 Spyder. On the Virginia International Raceway, it’s 5 seconds faster than the regular ZL1: neck and neck with a Ferrari 488 GTB, and the cheapest car in the track’s top 15 entries from Car and Driver.
This does all come at a different price: comfort and utility. Granted, it does have an infotainment system, climate control, wi-fi hotspot, and temperature-controlled adjustable Recaro bucket seats as standard. The ride quality is poor, but that can at least be excused; the car, unfortunately, has other less forgivable faults. The trunk is small and hard to use, the rear seats virtually irrelevant, and the rear visibility is, as it has been for years, terrible.
The Legacy: From Firebird to Phoenix
When it debuted, the Camaro was a hasty job that could just about look good and go fast. The car’s torque yanked it around and the wheel hop was terrifying. It took the cooler heads at Pontiac to work the wild child over, but when they did, they got what might have been the best-handling classic muscle car, the Firebird. The 2021 “Firebird” looks beautiful, but at heart, it’s yet another stupidly overpowered, stupidly expensive drag machine - that is to say, the absolute polar opposite of John DeLorean's original vision.
While Pontiac is unfortunately dead and buried, the Camaro ZL1 1LE might be seen as a spiritual marriage between the best of both divisions, perhaps even what the Firebird could have been if Pontiac weren’t forced to eat Chevy’s scraps. This model has the ferocious power of the highest-level Camaros with the exhaustive attention to agility afforded by the Firebird. Imagine an aluminum-block 427 HO Firebird: this would be its successor.
The Camaro ZL1 1LE is a solid candidate for the greatest muscle car ever built.
Sources: Car and Driver, Chevrolet, Motorbiscuit, Motor Trend, Nurburgringlaptimes.com, Road & Track, The Muscle Car: History of American Performance Cars