UNKNOWN_370

Seeing the camaro in the auto show. I was impressed with the exterior but the interior left a lot to be desired. Leather seats gave the auto show camaros a slight touch of class but what appeared to be very cheap plastics in a camaro that had no running power to turn the interior lights and gauges on just looked awful. Plus I'm just in awe at the camaro's size. Took a test drive of the camaro some months ago but I couldn't get a real feel of the car. All I could really tell was it had a nice steering feel and loads of power. The tester was a cloth seat 1ss and I wasn't very impressed with the interior in that one either.

After months of hooplah in magazines and everyone having totally biased opinions on the camaro, plus my test drive feeling like a sub par experience. I did the best thing I can do. Rent a 2SS camaro from avis. This rental was not cheap. 2 days= $418 to test out the high end camaro for the weekend. I was informed that I was receiving a special rate and was saving $45 a day. So you already know... renting an SS is costly.

1st impressions. I guess the beautiful day and the right lighting made the camaro interior not so bad inside. It wasn't the luxury interior of my G37s coupe but it had all the necessary amenities necessary in todays cars. It even had a park assist chime. (Something the Z can use.) The cheap plastics were detracted by the interior accent package in the camaro. Overall, the quality of the interior at its 40k price point was a 6 out of 10. Its general appearance did suit the cars character so it rated 7 out of 10 in design. The seats were extremely comfortable and great for a long road trip. I drove in the car for 9 hours in 3 hour intervals in one day and never felt fatigued by the seats. The leather quality is a 7 and seat design a 10. So the overall interior quality is a 7.2 out of 10 in a 2SS. When the camaro gets there $5,000+ year end rebates pricing it under 35k. I will go as far as to raise its overall quality to 8.5. But at $40k 7.2 might sound too generous. Certain things allowed me to rate it this high...
Driving the camaro at night with the interior accent lighting turned this interior from fool to cool. And I gotta admit. I'm a sucker for the bottom gauges. I read in magazines that they are poorly placed and hard to read. I found it to be the complete opposite. I found that I can see all 4 temp n volt readings at the fastest glance. In manual mode I saw my gears change clearly as well as the digital speedp readout.
The boston acoustics stereo was not as good as my infinite but had good quality and clarity of sound. Better than the Z bose stereo. Stereo gets a 7 out of 10.

Ride and handling.
The question everyone wants to know... is the chunkiness of the SS a problem in the Camaros handling? My answer would be NO! The L99 has 400hp and 400lbs tq. Its gonna take more than 3800lbs to hold it back. What did hold performance back? The width and visibiltity. I didn't find the blind spot to be as bad as in my test drive. It took about 2 hours of driving to get comfortable with the car. But what was a constant issue for me was the right front of the hood. This this is so big that you don't knowi if you are gauging your turns as tight as you can. So when you take the turn, they are either too tight or too wide. I made more too tight turns than too wide. Occasionally bunny hopping the rear passenger wheel. Ooops. Oh well this car is freakin big.
But one thing I gotta say. It handles like a dream. Its suspension is dialed in right in between the middle of a corvette and a CTS. Highway lane changes are taken with grace and I can ride in the twisties almost as fast as in my G. There is slightly more body roll than my G but it holds up nice. Power is second to none. It makes my G feel like a family sedan in power. This car does 0-60 in 4.6 seconds and the quarter in 12.9. These are from my stopwatch... not a magazine. My only gripe is a serious delay in throttle response. But that gripe is also a sh1tload of fun. Here's why... I'm on the I-30west headed toward arlington. I'm doing 60 past a cop. 1/2 mile ahead of him I floor it. For 1 whole second the acceleration was nearly nill... then KABOOM! You take off like a rocket. I prefer immediate throttle response but it was just fun.
Same thing with the button shift but that wasn't fun. I'm trying to pop off shifts and sometimes I would wonder if it ever shifted? I hated the performance of the button shift sometimes. When it did work right it worked great but when it didn't... it sucked. I couldn't get over buttons instead of paddles either.
I hit this car hard. Got it up to 140mph. From 0-100mph, the car is so solid it felt like I only took it to 50mph. So this car begs to go fast. I did burnouts and half donuts and just had a blast. I cruised it soft and drove it hard. It did both well. The camaro is unpretentious and doesn't try to be something its not yet it plays the middle road of sporty and comfortable while being a drag king all rolled into one.
I have to say. After 2 days with the camaro. I became a fan. Would I buy it at 40k? Hell no!
At year end. Would I drop 33k-34k for a loaded 2SS with rebate programs? In a heartbeat. I'm gonna stop writing now but I drove this car a total of 12 hours in 2 days and drove well over 400 miles getting 18mpg combined. If u have further questions on my experiences. Just ask