10BEST CARS
Proving grounds are the ultimate automotive amusement parks, with circles and ovals for high-speed testing and vast black lakes—huge parking lots without light poles or concrete logs—for testing at-the-limit and way-beyond-the-limit roadholding. Proving grounds also contain less-exciting stuff such as salt baths, heat-soak sheds, and miles of intentionally crappy pavement for tuning suspensions and exposing weaknesses. This is where automakers hone their wares and, more important, find their voices and define their identities.
As General Motors has recently emerged as the unlikeliest of hit factories, the explanation for why and how snakes through the wooded hills of its proving grounds in Milford, Michigan. Within this vast expanse is GM’s crucible, its very own racetrack, laid out over 200 rolling acres. The Milford Road Course (MRC) is composed of 18 turns over 2.9 miles, its corners including approximations of turns from the Nürburgring and Virginia International Raceway, among others, although all are tweaked for maximum deviousness.
“There’s not a straight braking zone on this track,” says Camaro lead development engineer Aaron Link as he brakes hard—and not in a straight line—into a quick right-left transition. “So, by the time you turn in, a lot has already happened.”
In the new, sixth-generation Camaro, it means that a lot is happening down below, where the front struts and rear links keep the tires’ contact patches firmly and evenly glued to the pavement and the car pointed precisely where the driver intends. Some competitors seem tuned to beat up their occupants in a way that places a theatrical “sportiness” above actually controlling wheel and body motions. The Camaro seems to be doing everything it can to prevent abusing the driver.
“A Corvette with a back seat.” –J. Gall
Link clips his apex and tracks out so wide that we’d swear he’s about to smear red side-mirror paint along the Armco. The straight climbs nearly 135 feet from MRC’s lowest point to its highest. “In the fastest cars,” he says, “the straightaway never gets completely straight.” A Corvette Z06 will clear 160 mph here; the Camaro SS surpasses 150. Its LT1 V-8 makes 455 horsepower and 455 pound-feet of torque, and it impresses with the same punchy startup bark and pissed-off snort at full throttle as in the Corvette.
For the first time, the V-8 has a worthy understudy. General Motors, purveyor of so many lackluster six-cylinders in so many models for so many years, has never made such an outstanding V-6 as the 3.6-liter that is new in the Camaro. We found ourselves comparing it to the original 1991 Acura NSX’s mill.
The Chevy engine’s redline is lower and the torque base much broader and beefier than the 3.0-liter Honda V-6, but the sound, the rip to redline, and the way it overflows with character make it like few others. The standard six-speed slides easily from gear to gear, and the eight-speed automatic pops off shifts with a quickness that rivals the best dual-clutch transmissions.
MRC’s straightaway dives over a crest and barrels into one of the tightest corners on the track, a decreasing-radius, double-apex right. A 2005 SAE paper written by some of the engineers who designed the track explains in dry engineering understatement what Link’s brain is processing as the car turns 110 mph into brake heat and darts toward the first apex: “While braking for Turn 1 the vehicle must initiate a turn. This is a potentially difficult Vehicle Dynamics mode termed Steering while Braking. Suspension geometry and compliances, tire construction, shock valving, and brake proportioning are developed here.”
But the countless development laps logged in mules ensure that today all four tires strain predictably, the car pivots and glides through the corner, and we bawl up a steep hill into a series of undulating esses.
Even if most Camaros will never see a racetrack, the lessons learned here are vital. “This track covers a lot of scenarios the car can be put into,” says Link. “There’s a bit of magic to it, a human element, not just science, that says, ‘Well, this is the number, so that’s it.’ There’s a feel that you have to strive for.” Getting that last little bit just right, delivering a car that responds organically to what the driver demands, is what separates a 10Best car from the rest.
How We’d Build It
As much as we like the new Camaro V-6, we’d still opt for the base-level V-8 car, the 1SS with the manual transmission. We’d add: Magnetic Ride Control ($1695), dual-mode exhaust ($895), 20-inch aluminum wheels ($800), Heavy-Duty Cooling and Brake package ($485). Total: $41,170.
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