Guys,
I have enjoyed your comments and appreciate your thoughts. My first comment is this car is not a '69 Camaro playing with 1969 emission standards. Today Federal Emissions will make or brake a vehicle. In order for Chevy to consider this car it had to pass all Federal Emission Recertification tests. This car was a concept that I came up with in the summer of 2000 and it wasn't until Chevy got a call from Ford, asking them what they had to compete with their new Mustang Cobra R (385hp 2001 Mustang $56,000.00). Chevy answered, "Well we are working on a Camaro with 400hp", the other line I was told was very quiet. That was around 10:30pm on a Sunday night. At 10:40pm that night I got a call from the Camaro Assistant Brand Manager telling me to get up here to Detroit, we are going to build that Camaro you were talking about. I picked up the car and a 2002 preproduction LS6 Corvette motor from the GM Proving Grounds. We put them together and added the rest of the items we use on our other cars (see them at
www.gmmginc.net), like our Chambered Exhaust among 50 other things and came up with a 400HP package. Remember, at Chevy the Corvette is King and if you want to kill a project Camaro, just give it more HP, but if you want to keep it alive, rate it 5hp less. The base 2001 Camaro SS on the chassis dyno made 298hp at the rear wheels, that is roughly 345hp at the flywheel (although factory rated 325hp). With the 2002 LS6 motor we got from GM and our 50 or so parts, it brought the hp at the rear wheels to 372hp and 360tq, that is 431hp at the flywheel and 417tq. Remember, this is all with a Federal Emission Legal Recertified Motor and Package. Not a Lingenfelter or vintage big block that would both fail the test miserably. Also, you are speaking about a modified big block and ZL1 motor. Remember what they did stock. GM got our Pilot (internal GM name for a production type prototype) Garnet Red ZL1 last April and took it to the GM Proving Grounds and ran a weeks worth of tests and called me and told me that they would print 0-60 in 4.06 sec. and 1/4 mile in 12.5 @ 114mph. That was with stock tires, exh manifolds and cats, etc. Lastly, I am a huge Camaro enthusiast and collector and would do nothing to deface the ZL1 legend; but, those numbers and 430hp are very reminiscent of only one Factory Camaro in the past 35 years and that is how
we came up with the name for this project Camaro. To be fair, please do not compare this car to a modified big block or we will have to modify ours and you do not want to go there, just kidding or maybe not. Take it from here Charlie and Kevin. I will be back later