When we saw our friends at Dusold Designs post up a picture of a new Gen6 2016 Camaro SS next door at their neighbor ADM Performance’s shop, we hopped into Truck Norris and zipped across town to get some weight pics and see it dyno tested first hand. The 2016 Camaro is made from an all-new Alpha platform, shared with the latest Cadillac ATS. This new platform has more aluminum in the chassis than any other pony car ever built, which promised a 200-300 pound reduction in weight from the 2010-15 Gen5 Camaro.
As with the 2015 Shelby GT350 weighed yesterday, this 2016 Camaro was also placed on 4 corner digital scales (thanks to the guys at Dusold) and the numbers were actually pretty promising. With nearly a full tank (7/8th full from a 19 gallon capacity – over 100 pounds of fuel) this smaller Gen6 Camaro SS weighed just 3668 pounds. This is works out to be 3568 pounds with the fuel weight removed, and the guys at Dusold removed the typical “trunk junk” for a more “track worthy” weight accuracy.
This Gen6 example was part of their “Find New Roads” cross country press tour. It had the 1SS option interior, which makes it pretty base model car. This is still an SS, so it has the 455 hp “LT1” aluminum V8 and the big beefy Tremec TR6060 6-speed manual transmission.
Compared to the GT350 we looked at the day before, the wheels on this base 1SS car were fairly small at 20×8.5″ front and 20×9.5″ rear (see above and below).
Tires on this car were 245/40/R20 Eagle F1s up front and 275/35/R20 rear, so it has the “bigs and littles” that GM likes to slap on their base model sports cars. This is a common trick – fitting much narrower front section width tires compared to the rear – to ensure understeer, which is safer for “regular folk” on powerful Rear Wheel Drive cars like this 455 hp V8 equipped Camaro. As a gear head this also means the OEM wheels and tires are the FIRST thing you will want to upgrade.
There’s room for more, of course, as shown by the 2016 Camaro (above) GM showed off at SEMA last week. This car had 285mm front and 305mm rear tires. Now that might be the limit up front without fender modifications, but we will try to push wider tires under these cars when we get our hands on one here at Vorshlag. With our Gen5 camber plates going into production now, our Gen6 camber plate is next on our list, and adding more camber up front not only adds grip on track but allows for more tire room under the stock fenders. As with most late model pony cars we’re always trying to stuff at least 315mm tires under each corner – stay tuned to see if we can do that on the Gen6.
Compared to the 2015 Camaro Z/28 (above) that we weighed in our shop at 3835 pounds (with 3/4 of a tank of fuel) the Gen6 car is about 185 pounds lighter (with equal fuel loads), and that Z28 had Carbon Ceramic rotors (great video showing how these are made here). The Gen6 is also smaller in every dimension, but it looks somewhat similar in styling. Love it or hate it, the Gen6 is a big improvement over the Gen5 Camaro and is THE lightest pony car made today. With the improved IRS and all new chassis and suspension we have a strong feeling that the 2016-up Camaro V8s will be a track terror with only a handful of mods.
One of the unusual updates GM added to the new LT1 engine was the “sound tube” – which ports noise from the air intake into the cabin. This was a trick Ford did about 6 years ago on the S197 Mustang with the new 5.0L Coyote V8, and one gear heads will chuck into a box when they replace the corrugated intake tube and air filter box with a smoother Cold Air Intake. The exhaust manifolds looked pretty terrible so expect bigger than normal gains if you update your LT1 Camaro to aftermarket long tube headers and freer flowing exhausts.
Speaking of horsepower, we got to see this car strapped to a chassis dyno at ADM and make a pull. Click the image above (or here) to see the video of the single chassis dyno pull this car made.
As shown in the chart above, this bone stock Camaro made 399 wheel horsepower and 406 wheel torque at their respective peaks. The flat shape of the torque curve is what is remarkable, with over 375 ft-lbs measured from 3500to nearly 5500 rpms. This thing just makes power everywhere. Now the LT1 engines in the C7 Corvette and Gen6 Camaros are direct injected gasoline engines, which makes them a tick harder to tune – for now. Given a little more time I’m sure the folks at ADM Performance will wrestle more ponies out of these engines, especially with their Cold Air Kits and long tube headers.
The interior was pretty nice on this 1SS base model car, and the base price of ___ for a car equipped like this one is pretty impressive. There is also an optional 335 hp V6 and a 275 hp turbo 4 cylinder, mimcking the S550 Mustang’s 3 engine line-up. It looks like GM has squared off against Ford (both of which are ignoring the bloated and heavy Chrysler pony cars) for a renewal of the Pony Car Wars. Look for the Gen6 Camaro on a road course near you soon….
Special thanks to Aaron at Dusold Designs for some of these pictures (the non-watermarked ones) and Adam at ADM Performance (shown above) for letting us crash the party!
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