[ZPirate]

Originally Posted by Camfab

You mean like a real enthusiasts car company, run by engineers and a CEO that is a hard core racer. Hmmm who would that be?
2015 destroys Detroit with the 707hp Hellcat, next comes the 840hp Demon, then the 797hp Red Eye, then the 807 Super Stock. Game over, oh wait, not until we crush everyone again with the 1025hp Demon 170. Lady’s and Gentlemen a car company that actually understands its audience, just saying.
No disrespect to those folks here who bought or are excited about GM’s final Camaro offerings.
There is so much Irony in the Garage 56 car, I just don’t know where to start. First off the Real car is a straight up NASCAR with ZERO and I mean zero connection to a ZL1 production vehicle. Having said this, the car made such an impression with the fans, and isn’t that what racing is, a business venture that excites potential customers.
After Oppenheiser created the greatest Camaro to ever grace the road course ( that’s a fact), GM banished him somewhere to be never heard from again. That’s what you do, when a Camaro ZLE destroys the world with a front engined, no where near 50-50 balanced anchor of a car suddenly takes away from your new mission of changing your Halo car to a euro envisioned mid engined soon to be powered by a 100% admittedly copied outdated Ferrari powerplant. I have to give credit to GM that they admitted that they had to copy Ferrari, apparently even though the old Vette dominated LeMans we can’t design an engine like the Europeans. Ok I got out my anger toward the C8.
Finally, sorry for all that, Hendick enters a good old boy overweight pig of a NASCAR (In the minds of any foreign race fan and many Americans) as an exhibition car. Again this is all about exposure for NASCAR but wouldn’t you know it, that lowly American brute got something going in all those race fans minds. Give me some of that pushrod American V8. Now mind you Chevrolet has, as we know, let the Camaro rot for the last 6 years. Suddenly, and I’ll bet the farm on this one, someone in marketing went, oh shit, people loved this car, ah wait, that right there is a Camaro, Chevrolet’s favorite car. Let’s print those stickers, cause that’s a ZL1 guys who hoo.
So what’s the last great real American Chevrolet, in my mind it’s the front engined supercharged pushrod V8 in the Camaro. Garage 56 or not. Get’m while you can because Chevrolet is now a copier rather than an innovator. No more manuals, supercharged pushrod V-8’s. It makes me want to throw up, but Ford is the last man standing.

Great points Camfab. Obviously, Dodge gets the enthusiast market, having dominated that market in recent years by continuing to upgrade its offerings. As arpad_m stated Chevy disbanded the Camaro team in 2018 and left the Camaro rot on the vine, with very little effort to enhance the car, except mainly with price hikes. In the end all the remaining Camaro team could do is offer cars with special decals, different paint colors and variations of existing oem parts. Instead GM threw all of its performance eggs in the C8 basket. Likely because it's not only the halo car, but also more profitable.

What's a damn shame is that the Camaro platform is still today the best muscle car platform of the three American car companies. Its truly the sports car of the bunch. The Dodge Charger/Challenger platform is ancient and a porker and Ford's S650 platform is basically just a refresh of the S550. Had Chevy taken Dodge's approach it could have continued to improve the car during the remainder of its life cycle and sold a lot more Camaros. The irony is that the popularity of the Garage 56 project proves that.

Unfortunately, it's all water under the bridge at this point. I'm just glad I was able to buy a ZL1 before it all comes to an end.