2002 ZL1 Camaro's

[matt murphy]

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

Thanks for your efforts Matt. If you would have not been involved, we would only have a 35th anniversary camaro to choose from. Can you explain the stage 2 package. Does it include headers or line-lock? What is the stage 2 actual dyno test? When will delivery of cars start. Thanks Matt. Dave Belk

[COPO PETE]

Thanks for stopping by Matt! I applaud your intentions and I think what your doing is great. I'm glad someone is going out of the way to try and keep the Camaro legend alive, that's what were all doing here! Some may not agree but I think the name LS-6 Camaro is more fitting, especially since one was never built, and many thought it should have in 1970. Reguardless of the name, the car will stand on it's own if it's a good as you say it is, and it does sound great. Interested in a 69 ZL-1 vs 2002 LS-6/ZL-1 shootout for advertising????
Peter
PS. Now when you bring out the 69 look alike in a few years like Ford did with the T-bird, then you can drop in that aluminum ZL-1 block and have a party!!!! And actually call it ZL-1 Camaro!!!!!

[Edited by COPO PETE (04-16-2002 at 09:18 AM).]

[JoeC]

Welcome to the site Matt. It is good that you are building the LS6 Camaro. I don't mean to sound too negative, but you should have called it a LS6 Camaro. A modern ZL1 Camaro should have at least 500hp. This is not unreasonable with today's technology. The Viper has 450hp, Ferrari has 508hp, the new Ford GT40 has 500hp. Chevy has the engine to compete - It is the LS1 427 C5-R motor. It should be able to be built with 500hp and be fully emission legal. Katech already sells a 585 hp LS1 street motor. Now call Chevy and demand a 500hp 427 LS1 for your ZL1 Camaro. While you have them on the phone tell them they need a ZL1 Corvette to. All they have to do is write a check to a vendor like Katech and they can get the motors built. It just takes somebody at Chevy with big enough round things to do it. The last F-Body deserves a good send off.

[Chevy454]

First off, GREAT TO HAVE YOU ABOARD, MATT! I'm a little split on who has my dream job: you or Jon Moss ! I had to go over to LS-1.com to find answers to some questions I inquired about earlier...I thought the '01-2 LS-1's shared more than just the block with the LS-6 (I was thinking head and intake for some reason), but they got me headed in the right direction. [For those interested, the LS-6, the powerplant of choice in the ZO6, features different heads, cam, intake, & injectors. Chime in here, Matt, if this is wrong!] Oh, a quick question: I think I read somewhere that since the F-bodies are leaving for a while, that SLP is going to move over into the Corvettes, and even into sport utes and possibly some other models. Is GMMG gonna try doing anything on any other platforms?

Pete:

I hate to even post this, but I was thinking the EXACT same thing, with one exception: the part where you mention about the '69 look alike car. T-bird? I probably would have went with GT-40, which is going to look AWESOME, but I'm not all that impressed with the T-bird. But, I did agree with the name thing...it's got an LS-6 in it, and the Camaro has deserved the LS-6 since '70, so why not call it an LS-6? Then, convince GM to build that monster ZL-1 that Moss built (with the aluminum Donnavan!), and there's your ZL-1.

Oh, let me know when/where this '69 vs. '02 ZL-1 shootout is gonna take place! Let's see...when I last left Pete (at the Pure Stock Drags in Michigan) his ZL-1 had just finished up his "Certified Stock" inspection and was running 12.30s on Polyglass tires...the new ZL-1 is running 12.50s...ought to be close!!!!

[Edited by Chevy454 (04-16-2002 at 10:31 AM).]

[DjD]

Matt, Thank you for the insite. Some are missing the most important point you made... Do I understand correctly? Snuff the Vette and it's over, GM shuts down your project...

...Dennis
Team Camaro

[matt murphy]

Thanks again for your kind responses. One thing about recertifying emissions federally is that you have to send a base car to one of two Federal Emission labs in the country and baseline the car as stock with 3000 miles on it, then make the engine mods and other stuff we do to the car and then send it back and it must stay within a certain percent of the baseline. A good example is in '97 SLP built 100 LT4 Corvette motors in a 30th anniversary Camaro. They were $45,000.00 MSRP cars in '97 and had 330HP. The stock LT4 Corvette motor failed the test because it was not within the allotted percent of difference. They had to change the cam, computer and injectors to make it pass. This LS6 motor is cleaner and much to our surprise it passed using the stock 2002 motor with no changes. Just because some tuner says that a motor is a street motor and or emission legal motor, that is no were near emission certified legal and in this case would never fly from the dealer level today.
GM Performance Parts is building 69 special LS6 Camaro Motors for these cars, since the Corvette version has a different oil pan and had to be changed out. Jon Moss at Chevy agreed to personally sign the dash (like Dale Earnhardt did on the Intimidator SS, see our web page and click on the Intimidator SS to see location of Dale's signature www.gmmginc.net). In place of the RPM x1000, which we deleted, he signs in that spot with a sharpie marker. His black ZL1 pro-street Camaro is where we got the stripe scheme for this car. Please, stop dreaming about this car, if you have $350,000.00 Jon will tell you he could make you one just like it, but this car is a one off pro-street, not factory, car. Jon is a great guy and ironically one of the engineers that created the chambered exhaust in '67 & '68.
I will post again if you don't mind this 4th gen stuff. Our intentions were not to create a car that would be compared to the original ZL1 or the current Z06 Corvette. That would be like conparing Dale Earnhardt JR to his dad. A lot of similarities but ready to create his own legend. And as far as "LS6 Camaro" for the name, well that was the original project name, "LS6 Project Camaro;" but, all along, I wanted to use ZL1 because if you get a chance to see or drive one of the production versions, you will be amazed as to how cool this car is. Terry Cole at Super Chevy Magazine said it best when he said, "This car is the perfect mix of raw performance and hot rodding ingenuity." He also said, "I never Misjudged anything as much as I did here by jumping to the wrong conclusion about this car. To sum it up: this potential-production Supercar is a throw-back to the big-block-powered machines of the late 60's -- only better in every way!" I say bring on the 2001 Mustang Cobra R and have Ford bring their new 390hp supercharged 2003 Cobra. I promise you, they will go crying back to their SVT stable like Mustangs have always done. We are planning on a shootout with Bill Porterfields '69 #1 ZL1 and his new 2002 ZL1, stay tuned, a national magazine has the approval to cover it. By the way, the tires on this new ZL1 car have raised black letters that say "Goodyear Eagle F-1 SUPERCAR" on them. A fitting name for this car.