Chevrolet Sells You a Camaro Body and Chassis, Lets You Put the Engine In for Drag Racing

Chevrolet will produce a limited number of NHRA-certified Camaro rolling chassis designed for drag racing. The package will include a painted body and chassis ready to be fitted with an engine, transmission and other drivetrain components.

Each car will have an NHRA-approved roll cage and other safety equipment, as well as racing chassis and suspension components, including brakes and solid rear axle – minus the third member. The car also comes with Bogart racing wheels shod in Hoosier race tires.

All cars produced are painted Summit White and feature a production Camaro hood and SS grille, production window glass, headlamps, tail lamps and more. On the inside, the Camaro gets racing seats, production-style instrument panel, steering wheel, racing switch panel, door panels, headliner and black carpeting. There’s also basic body and wiring built into the rolling chassis, but engine harnesses and a battery are not included.

Buyers can add their own powertrain components, many of which, including crate engines, racing engine parts, electronics and more, are available from Chevrolet Performance.

Each serialized chassis is assembled by hand at the same facility that makes Chevrolet’s COPO Camaro production racecars. The price for a Camaro rolling chassis is $55,000 (€42,520), with sales starting on Thursday, March 28.

Chevrolet Performance said that race crate engines compatible with the car are a 5.7-liter V8 developing 325 horsepower, a 6.5-liter unit rated at 375 horsepower and a 7.0-liter engine churning out 425 horsepower. Chevy also offers a 5.3-liter engine with a 2.9L supercharger and a 5.3-liter with a 4.0L blower.

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2013 Shelby GT500 Takes on 2013 Camaro ZL1 on the Dyno

America's two newest and at the same time, most powerful series-production muscle cars are the 2013 Ford Mustang-based Shelby GT500 and the 2013 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1.
On paper, the $54,995 Camaro ZL1's 6.2-liter supercharged V8 produces 580hp at 6,000 rpm and 556 lb.-ft. of torque (754 Nm) at 4,200 rpm, while the $54,200 Shelby GT500's 5.8-liter supercharged V8 delivers 662hp at 6,250 rpm and 631 lb.-ft. (856Nm) of torque at 4,000 rpm.
Naturally, these numbers are at the flywheel so as with most new cars, Edmund's took them both to the dyno meter to see what they delivered at the rear wheels.
The Camaro ZL1 returned 497 horsepower and 497 lb-ft (673Nm) at the wheels, while the GT500 produced 105 lb-ft and 98 horsepower more at 595hp and 602 lb-ft (815Nm).
Edmunds engineering editor found that there is a "larger-than-expected gap in peak power between the two cars", which can be partially blamed to the ZL1's independent rear suspension that has more drivetrain loss than the GT500's live rear axle.
However, Edmunds believes that the true reason is that GM's engineers purposely softened down the ZL1's V8 as they did not want it to outperform the company's flagship model, the $111,600 Corvette ZR1, a problem Ford's engineers did not have to deal with.

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