How does HSV’s all-American muscle-coupe hold up on the same roads that made V8 Commodores great?
Holden country is a bunch of serpentine roads carving through rolling green hills on the western edge of Victoria’s Gippsland.
Some great Holden V8s — Monaros, Toranas and Commodores — have been baptised into the real world here, venturing out clad in ill-fitting bodywork and zebra stripes from behind the barbed wire of Holden’s Lang Lang proving ground, only a few kilometres up the road.
So, what better place to bring the Chevrolet Camaro and see how it copes with the roads that turned so many cars into legends?
Star spangled Aussie?
OK, it’s not a Holden, but with the end of local manufacturing the Camaro is the closest thing red fans can get to a Commodore SS-V Redline or HSV GTS.
Hey, it’s got a small-block Chev V8, it drives the rear wheels and it looks great doing it.
And, of course, the Holden connection is strong. We’re driving one of 550 Camaro SS coupes that Holden Special Vehicles is remanufacturing from left- to right-hand drive and selling through selected Holden/HSV dealers.
The spec is strong. The Gen V LT1 pushrod engine is no old-school axe. It runs direct fuel-injection, variable valve timing and has active fuel management so it can deactivate four cylinders on a light throttle and save 98 RON.
Mind you, with a claimed 11.5L/100km fuel consumption average, it is thirsty. No surprise considering it churns out 339kW and 617Nm, spinning up those massive 20-inch Goodyear Eagle F1 hoops via an eight-speed automatic transmission and limited-slip diff.
No manual? Well, not yet. For the moment HSV is offering a single SS-badged model in ‘2SS’ specification with a lengthy amount of standard gear.
That includes seven airbags, leather trim, dual-zone climate control, nine-speaker Bose audio, a choice of 24 interior lighting colours, wireless phone charging, a 7.0-inch touch-screen and a powered sunroof.
Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are standard and headlights are HID, reworked so they don’t dazzle oncoming drivers. A Driver Mode Control flips through four settings — Tour, Sport, Track, Snow/Ice — and affects parameters such as throttle, auto shift map, engine sound, steering calibration and stability control tune.
The downside is the price. At $85,990 it is thousands more expensive than its logical local, the Ford Mustang GT. And it misses out on some of important gear, like autonomous emergency braking and satellite navigation.
Through all the sorting out, remanufacturing and testing, one thing HSV has not done is retune the drivetrain or suspension — which comprises MacPherson struts and control arms up-front front and five links at rear, all with twin-tube dampers — or fiddled with the standard Brembo brake package (apart from the swap from dot 3 to dot 4 brake fluid). The Camaro is a little slab of Americana dropped onto Aussie roads.
Drive time
And what fabulous roads they are. You can see why so many good cars have been tuned on them. They wind and dip and curl, use weird radiuses, off cambers, on cambers, blind, open, broken edges, big bumps mid-corner and it really is a great test of a car.
In so many ways the Camaro comes up really impressively. For one thing, it’s incredible how flat this thing is when cornering. It’s almost unearthly, there is just so little bodyroll.
That’s a reflection of it being suspended stiffly. There is no adjustment to the suspension — HSV ruled out MRC dampers because they were too expensive — so it’s all orthodox stuff.
On smooth roads the Camaro just flies through a corner and has very little body movement at all. But on bumpy stuff it can get a bit unsettled in the rear and I’d give up a little body control for a little more absorption.
The other obvious chassis trait is the heaviness of the steering. This is real he-man stuff, only really fading to the background when you are really pushing on and focused on the road ahead. Then the steering makes sense, as the car’s nose tracks accurately into yet another challenging bend.
Get into the really tight stuff and it’s probably just too tight for Camaro. It’s not the easiest to adjust mid-corner, which is no surprise considering it’s 4784mm long, 1887mm wide and weighs in at 1710kg.
But once the road opens up just that bit and you’re into flow; third gear, over a crest, down into the next corner; brake, accelerate and go again; it just loves it.
And OMG, it sounds so good. Loud and meaty, it goes epic once the bimodal starts bellowing.
There’s no temperament to the LT1, no hitches, no flat-spots. It just gathers pace like an express train… going downhill… with a tailwind… It doesn’t have a stellar bottom-end or a firecracker top-end, it just never really starts or ends. It just goes.
Not everything about the Camaro is a home-run. The brakes feel at their limit, the ride is darn tough… and you’ll struggle to see out of this thing in any direction except forward.
The eight-speed auto is too conservatively tuned. Even in Track mode it doesn’t shift aggressively enough. Resort to the flappy paddles and you’ll find the rev limit is too conservative. You can pile into a corner looking for some engine braking and you don’t get a gearchange until the apex. That’s a bit late.
These flaws impact on the experience, especially while you first adapt. But familiarity breeds addiction, not rejection. This is a brutally fast, incredibly capable car. The more you understand it, the more you want it.
Inside story
Almost as impressive as the driving experience is the job HSV has done just getting this thing on-sale… There are only a few hints this is a local conversion job
You rest your left elbow in the cup holder because the armrest hasn’t been swapped over and there’s a small Camaro badge on the left-hand door where the seat memory switch used to be… that’s pretty much it.
One thing HSV couldn’t really do a lot about is cabin ambience…. It’s a deep, dark hole in here. It’s a 2+2 supposedly, but good luck to anyone trying to get comfortable back there… and pack light for that trip because there’s only a tiny 260-litre boot.
But the biggest hurdle here — looking at it rationally anyway — is price. But you know what? I doubt many Holden — or Chevy — fans are going to care. This is an emotional not rational purchase.
The payback comes in the driving. Sure, it’s got a few issues, but on these challenging roads so rich in history, the Chevrolet Camaro is an interloper that feels pretty much at home.
Keyword: Driving the Chevrolet Camaro in Holden country