Auto news on Youtube Dec 27 2017

[MUSIC PLAYING]

CARLOS LAGO: That's the new Chevy Camaro ZL1,

and in this video we're going to give you an overview about what

makes it special.

And the quick version is, it's more than the 650 horsepower

underneath that hood.

You might be surprised to hear that the coolest parts

about the Camaro ZL1 are actually

the stuff you can't see.

The exterior doesn't look dramatically different

than the standard Camaro SS or RS models.

You can tell the ZL1 is different

because it has big exhaust pipes and a ZL1 badge at the back.

But over on the side, as we get to the profile,

it retains the shape that we know to love the Camaros by.

The wheels are bigger, they're 20 inches front and rear,

but they're a staggered fitment, so the front tires

are a little bit smaller than the rear.

And that gives it a nice purposeful look.

But it's the stuff underneath here

that really makes the car drive as good as it does.

You have magnetic fluid-filled dampers

that react super quick, more so than your traditional motor

controlled dampers when you're making adjustments on the fly.

You have an electronically controlled limited slip

differential that continually biases power left or right,

controls it with a granularity you can't achieve

with a simple mechanical unit.

Up at the front you see the big differences

that come with the ZL1.

Up on the hood here, of course, is the badging and the carbon

fiber dome of the hood.

And there's actually a heat extractor right

through the bottom there.

You can fit your hand in, we'll show

you the vents in just a second.

But when we were talking about making

650 horsepower, what we really had to pay attention to

is cooling.

This is the same engine that's in the Chevy Corvette Z06.

And in here, you can tell the front fascia

is dramatically different, and it's much larger.

And there's all these gigantic air openings.

And that's because this needs a lot of air

to go through it to keep it cool.

You have heat exchangers here, here,

here, here, there's inner coolers

underneath the supercharger, there's another heat exchanger

lying flat.

And all of this is designed to get as much airflow

through the front of the vehicle as possible.

I mean even the Chevy Badge, you can stick your finger right

through it.

These gaping holes right here, I mean,

you can imagine what happens if a small animal flies in there.

It's all made in the name of getting air through this engine

to keep it cool under heavy use when

you're making all that power.

Now, let's take a look at that engine.

Feast your eyes on the glory of a supercharged 6.2 liter

V8 that makes 650 horsepower, and 650 pound feet of torque.

This is, frankly, a hell of an engine.

It doesn't rev that high, 6,500 RPM.

Actually that's pretty decent for a pushrod V8,

but really the story is the breadth of that power.

But also consider it's a fairly compact engine.

And it can be compact because that supercharger, this guy

right here, isn't as big as the last generation supercharged V8

that the previous ZL1 used and the previous Corvette used.

Now and also the nature of a pushrod motor

is, because it doesn't have two overhead cams,

there's not a lot of valvetrain up here, so it can be short.

And that can help with visibility.

But as you'll see when we hop inside this car,

the visibility isn't really quite there.

And we showed you the heat extractors

that come through here.

They're functional, you can stick your hand right up

in there.

And the goal of that is to promote air flow out of here

to keep pulling air through the front end of the vehicle

to cool it down.

Let's take a look inside.

Well the first thing you gotta do

when you slip into the interior of a Camaro ZL1 is fire it up.

So that's how you set things off right.

Now, couple of things you have to accept

with the interior of the Chevy Camaro,

especially this generation.

There is no interior storage.

You have a couple of pockets on the left and right.

There's some space in the armrest.

But there's basically nothing for anything

bigger than a phone.

Even my phone has difficulty fitting in the center armrest.

Also, rear visibility comes up short.

It's like looking out of a cardboard box.

But at least if you don't want to sit low

you can raise the height up.

And that certainly helps your view over the hood and just

at a point, there you go.

If you're concerned about looking forward over the hood,

you can always do that.

OK now we're back to normal height.

ZL1 specific changes are few, but are nice.

These seats are Recaros, they're nice buckets

with good amounts of lateral support

but they don't feel uncomfortable.

The material they're wrapped with,

and especially the stuff on the steering wheel too,

is this microfiber suede-like substance.

It's also on the dash.

It looks and feels nice.

This is, of course, the 10 speed automatic.

And we'll talk about how that works once we take it out

for a drive.

For now though, it just looks and works

like a normal automatic transmission.

Behind it, these controls here are

what get us into sort of the electronic sophistication

you'll find in the ZL1.

You have four different drive modes,

there's tube or track, sport, and snow and ice modes.

Now those adjust a variety of settings,

but within those settings are further adjustments.

For example, when you go into track like we are now,

you can double tap the stability control button

and access the performance traction management function.

Now this is a multi-configurable stability control setting

that has one, two, three, four, five different levels

of adjustment.

And you can also turn everything completely off.

We'll talk about launch control, too, and a line lock.

This has both those tools which are great for drag racers.

And it speaks to the legacy level of intent

that Chevy knows Camaro owners are

going to use these cars for.

The ZL1 doesn't do any one thing particularly.

It's not focused on just doing one job,

it's focused on being able to do everything.

It wants to ride comfortably on your commute.

It wants to be able to tackle a mountain road or a racetrack.

And it wants to be able to get you

through a night at the dragstrip.

And all that stuff comes together nicely

in this package.

Now this display, as we get back into more traditional Camaro

grievances, this display looks funky.

It looks like it's tilted in.

Although when you start using it, you realize

it's super intuitive.

It also supports Apple CarPlay and Android Auto,

and that's really nice.

In front of you, you have two analog gauges

and in the center is a digital display.

That's multi-configurable and shows

you a lot of really nice information.

And above that is a head up display.

As we dive into the dash, we'll explain

how some of the drag racing focused technology works.

I'll put the car in its track setting,

and then I'll turn the advance stability control

system to sport, for example.

And what you can do here is you can

define the amount of traction the surface that you're

driving on has.

So if you're in sport one or sport two,

it assumes you're on a street surface.

But if you go up to race, it assumes

you're on a drag strip that has a prepared surface, that

has the traction of a prepared surface.

So it'll actually account for all that stuff.

When you go into the launch control,

you can set custom parameters.

There's an automatic function, but you can also

set manually your target RPM, your slip target--

and that slip target is how much the rear tires

rotate versus how fast you go.

Tires like to spin a little bit faster than you would think.

They like to have a little bit of slip

to get the best launch out of them.

And you can actually define the percentage of slip

that you want the rear tires to have.

Which is nuts.

And then beneath that you have a line lock.

And now what a line lock does, is it holds the front brakes

but allows the rear tires to spin freely, which

makes a burn out a lot easier.

I'm in the school of thought that if you have 650 pound

feet, a burnout's pretty easy to do,

but it's nice that the feature's there.

And this is a level of granularity

for a drag racing that I haven't seen in a production car

outside of the Dodge Demon.

And it's really cool, because this car, again, is just

sort of an all-arounder.

Now up next we'll show you what that means

when we drive it on the street.

Driving on the congested and Toyota Prius

filled streets of LA may not be the most exciting way

to experience the Camaro ZL1, but it does give us

the opportunity to illustrate just how nice this car is

to drive in general.

Sure the ride's firm, sure you get some road noise,

but it's nothing that would make this car difficult to live

with.

This 10 speed automatic transmission, you might think,

wow that's a lot of gears.

I'm going to constantly see the tack bouncing around

as it shifts.

But you don't.

You barely notice when the shifts happen.

And the way they've tuned this transmission

so it can skip gears when you step on it

makes for a really nice experience.

What's funny is when you really see

a gap, when you nail that gas it's almost as if the car has

night terrors.

Because suddenly it starts growling out of nowhere

and making all these noises and screaming.

And then it gets really silent again.

It gets really quiet.

It just seems to get more aggressive the more you drive

it in an aggressive manner.

But of course LA traffic is the worst.

So we're going to go to a place where we can explore

the abilities of this car.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

There's just so much power.

The performance of this vehicle is just incredible.

But it's the tractability that makes it so dominating.

It just feels so good, feels so much fun.

This is a large, heavy car, with pretty poor visibility.

But it just comes into its own in this environment.

It's so much fun.

Modulating the power and controlling the Camaro,

got to love that sound.

Get a little sideways.

So even though the stability control is on,

it still gives you a bit of freedom

with how much sideways you get when

you dig into that throttle.

And there's so much power on tap here.

We have 650 horsepower.

I'm getting a little bit too close

to the limits of the stability control system.

I'm feeling it grab me a little bit more.

But what that's doing is it's telling me

I'm applying too much throttle.

You can use this system like a driver's tool.

You can lean on it and use it the wrong way,

and have it try to fix your sloppy mistakes.

But you can also pay attention to it,

pay attention to when it's cutting the power

and how much power it's giving you,

and you can dial back your choice accordingly.

Now what's working in conjunction

there is the stability control and electronically controlled

limited slip differential.

Which is biasing power as it deems appropriate,

based on whatever the vehicle sensors are telling it.

That's really nice.

And we haven't even talked about the brakes yet.

These brakes provide very good stopping power

and have a nice long travel.

So you can dig in to it without using too much force,

and get the right amount braking force that you want.

I like this car a lot.

Listen to that.

[ENGINE REVVING]

And that's the amazing Camaro ZL1.

You want to see more videos like this, keep it tuned right here.

And be sure to visit edmunds.com.