1969 Chevrolet Camaro Standard on 2040-cars

Auto blog

2016 Chevrolet Camaro: Notes from the reveal

The 2016 Chevrolet Camaro debuted Saturday evening in Detroit at an enthusiast-oriented event near the city's IndyCar course. While the big news was the Camaro's 200-pound weight loss, tighter chassis, and a snorting new V8, plenty of other morsels of Camaro info came out. Here's some of the more interesting stuff we heard. • The 2.0-liter inline four-cylinder is the first turbocharged engine in a Camaro. • The LT1 borrowed from the Corvette Stingray marks the third time a Camaro has used an engine with that badge. It was previously used in 1970-72 (Z/28), 1993-97 (Z/28), and 1996-97 (SS). • The Camaro was revealed in a tent before nearly 1,000 enthusiasts, General Motors executives (including CEO Mary Barra) and mere feet from the Grand Prix course where IndyCars will run in two weeks. • Chevy hopes to continue to attract new customers with the Camaro and said 63 percent of the fifth-generation buyers were new to the brand. • GM product boss Mark Reuss neatly summed up the Camaro's handling character. "It's wicked fast and extremely nimble." • Reuss on the design goal: make it "look like a car for tomorrow instead of a car from yesterday." • Reuss' first car was a 1967 Camaro, and he's reiterated his passion for the car. "People want to be seen in a Camaro, and that never goes away." • Chevy North America president Alan Batey said he plans to line up a red Camaro as soon as the order bank opens. We assume he'll have early access to that. • Though the appearance is similar, the sixth generation of the Camaro appears a little sleeker and is more aerodynamic thanks to 350 hours in the wind tunnel. Only two parts, the SS badge and the rear bow-tie emblem, are carryover. • Al Oppenheiser, the Camaro's chief engineer, said most of the options (except Magnetic Ride Control, which is SS exclusive), will be offered on the inline four. The engine will be capable of propelling the Camaro to a sprint to 60 miles per hour in well under six seconds. "We don't want to ... make it feel like an excuse car," he said. • Without revealing specifics, Oppenheiser said every Camaro variant will be faster than the model it replaces. •The interior is vastly improved. We got an up-close look in the cabin of one of the cars revealed with a red and white layout, and the materials are much better. The setting is more colorful, and 24 different ambient lighting shades are available. Related Video:

Did the Chevy Corvette Z06 break 7 minutes at the Ring? Not likely

"Just because it's on the internet doesn't make it true." That's rule number one, two and arguably, three, of surfing the world wide web. In today's example of this rule, we have the following. The website HorsepowerKings is claiming that a 2015 Chevrolet Corvette Z06, with the eight-speed automatic and Z07 package, managed to lap the Nurburgring Nordschleife in under seven minutes. To put that in perspective, that super-quick time would put the 650-horsepower, $97,000 (the price of a 2LZ with the Z07/8AT combo) Z06 a mere two seconds slower around the world's most challenging race track than the $929,000, 887-horsepower Porsche 918 Spyder Weissach. It's about eight seconds quicker than Nissan's own test of the GT-R Nismo Track Pack and 13 seconds faster than a Dodge Viper ACR. Unfortunately, Chevy says there isn't anything to it. We reached out to the Bowtie's Monte Doran, who confirmed that HK's claims are "not accurate." "Any one – a manufacturer, a journalist, a guy standing on the fence of the Ring – can claim a lap time. As such, we think the in-car video is essential to proving a time is real and credible, and Chevrolet will not release a lap until we have a video to substantiate the claim," Doran told Autoblog. "Chevrolet accumulated nearly 1,000 miles of testing on the Nurburgring with the Z06. During that time, we only had two opportunities to run a lap on video – and both were rained out. If we get a lap on video, we will post an official time." Doran finished by referencing the "only official lap time" for the Z06 – a 2:41 around the Virginia International Raceway. Frankly, we aren't terribly surprised by Chevy's position. One would imagine if the Z06 were matching million-dollar hypercars around the 'Ring, the company would literally be screaming about it from Renaissance Center's rooftop. As this is quite the opposite of that, though, we're betting that the real Z06 lap time - while still likely very, very fast – won't be quite quick enough to frighten the brightest and best of today's hypercars.

2016 Chevy Volt will have more EV range, bigger battery

Meet the new Volt, not the same as the old Volt. That appears to be the story when General Motors introduces the 2016 Chevy Volt at the Detroit Auto Show in January. Today we're getting some more details on the guts of the new plug-in hybrid, and it turns out they're going to be much improved from the current Volt, which first went on sale at the end of 2010. Sure, the first-gen Volt did get some improvements along the way (a slightly larger battery pack, lane departure warnings) but the new Volt – which will go on sale in the second half of 2015 – marks the first time GM has been able to return to the drawing board and really make the improvements that its customers want. That's how Larry Nitz, GM's executive director of vehicle electrification explained it to AutoblogGreen today when explaining the all-new Voltec extended range electric vehicle (EREV) powertrain. "In the Gen 2 is we gave the engine a little more power, a little more torque, a little more displacement, more capability." – Larry Nitz Nitz said that the new Volt will be better in almost every sense: a bigger battery, longer EV-only range, 20 percent better acceleration in the low speed range and higher overall efficiency. This is due, in part, to the Volt's two motors being able to both act as generators and power the car. As we noted this morning, the 2016 Volt will use a larger, 1.5-liter four-cylinder engine, a version of which is already used in the Chinese-market Cruze. Nitz said that this has a number of benefits, including more power and quieter operation. "Some people would say, why did you make [the first-gen engine] so big. I would say, why did you make it so small?" he said. "It works good, our customers love it, but the reality is that if you go a little bit off and use the car a little harder, you can get the engine to need to operate at a higher speed. In an EV, that's quite noticeable. So, what we did in the Gen 2 is we gave the engine a little more power, a little more torque, a little more displacement, more capability and what it has marginally enabled is not only is it more efficient but it's also quieter." Nitz wouldn't talk about how the new powertrain might affect the two other products that use the Volt's underpinnings – the Cadillac ELR and the Opel Ampera – but if you've got a quieter option, we assume that's something ELR drivers would enjoy. But that's a story for another day.