2012 Camaro

Did you know

• Motor Trend's January 2012 showdown between the ZL1 and Ford's Boss 302 Laguna Seca, run at Inde Motorsports Ranch in Arizona with Randy Pobst driving, went to the Camaro by 2.4 seconds a lap (1:41.3 to 1:43.7) even though the ZL1 weighed 4,051 pounds to the Boss's 3,638. The manual ZL1 ran 0-60 in 3.8 seconds and the quarter in 12.1 at 117.4 mph, and Pobst said the Boss had been his favorite American muscle car until that day.
• Motor Trend's June 2012 face-off between the ZL1 and the 662-hp 2013 Shelby GT500 at Laguna Seca produced an odd result: the Ford's best lap was quicker, 1:38.69 to the ZL1's 1:39.18, but its brakes faded so badly that by the third lap it was down to 1:39.30 while the ZL1 never strayed more than two-tenths. MT still called the Camaro the better all-around car, though the GT500 won the drag race, 0-60 in 3.5 seconds to 3.8 and the quarter in 11.6 at 125.7 mph.
• In May 2012 Chevrolet announced the ZL1 had joined the 11-second club: engineers ran 11.93 seconds at 116 mph in a stock automatic and 11.96 at 117 in a manual. GM said it re-engineered 30 percent of a Camaro 2SS to make the ZL1, with a 9.9-inch rear differential in a cast-iron housing and asymmetric half-shafts (60 mm hollow on the right, 33 mm solid on the left) to fight wheel hop, then ran the driveline through 1,000 hard launches.
• The Camaro won the 2012 sales race by just 1,396 cars, 84,391 to the Mustang's 82,995, its third straight win over the Ford, in a year when Camaro sales slipped 4.4 percent from 2011's 88,249. Dodge sold 43,110 Challengers.

  Original CamaroFacts figure. Sources: 2011 reference table 2012 reference table 2013 reference table

• The 2012 LFX V-6 found its extra power in bigger intake valves (38.3 mm against 36.96 mm) and longer-duration cams, while heads with integrated exhaust manifolds saved about 13 pounds and a composite intake manifold another 5.5, for 20.5 pounds in all. It runs 11.5:1 compression and is good for 7,200 rpm.
• Official UK sales began in February 2012, but the Camaro stayed left-hand drive, with Chevrolet planning just 200 a year at £34,995 for the coupe and £39,995 for the convertible, both with the 426-hp 6.2-liter. That was a step back from a June 2008 report of a right-hand-drive conversion program for the UK, about 600 cars in early 2010.
• Motor Trend's test of a 323-hp 2012 RS 45th Anniversary convertible found a 4,105-pound car that took 6.6 seconds to reach 60 mph, slower than the 6.1 to 6.3 seconds the magazine had recorded for Toyota Camry V-6s. Its wide tires still held 0.90 g and stopped it from 60 in 111 feet, and the testers wished the package had included performance parts, 'maybe for the 50th anniversary.'