Chevrolet Camaro: Driven

It looks the same as its predecessor, but the sixth-generation Camaro is vastly better to drive

It's probably not often you find yourself feeling sorry for sports car designers. From the outside it looks like a very cushy way to make a good living: a few months of waving pencils around, a couple of arguments with the philistines in engineering about why it can't have standard 23-inch wheels, then you just need to don a black polo neck for the press conference. Where you talk about dynamic tension of the swage lines, how you've taken inspiration from nature and - of course - you point out that the car looks like its moving even when it's standing still. Then bask in the applause before heading home for tea and medals.

And you thought Audi was bad...

Unless, of course, you've designed the all-new sixth-generation Camaro, in which case nobody will believe you did anything beyond putting the blueprints for the previous one through the photocopier. We've had cars that look like their predecessors before: the R56 BMW Mini, second-gen modern Beetle and pretty much everything Audi has done for the last three years. But here's one that doesn't so much take the biscuit as mount a hostile takeover bid for McVities. From 10 feet away even the owner of a year-old Camaro would struggle to spot this is the new one.

Not that there are many Camaro owners on this side of the Atlantic, of course. But after our first drive we hope that GM will try to copy Ford's decision to Europeanize the Mustang and bring us this one, preferably with the steering wheel on the right-and-proper side.

Alpha Male
Okay, let's start with the oily stuff. The new Camaro sits on GM's Alpha platform, the same one that underpins the Cadillac ATS-V, which allows the new car to be both stronger and lighter than the old one. The weight savings are impressive, the V6 manual is claimed to be 130kg trimmer. The exterior styling remains either muscular, cartoonish or somewhere in between depending on your personal take, with a window area smaller than that of many concrete gun emplacements. But the interior is very different, and that's a good thing.

Great to look at, not to look out of

We often get criticised for lambasting the trim quality of US cars, but the last Camaro's cockpit really did seem to be finished with materials that had been rejected as flimsy by the Burger King packaging department. The new 'Ro feels vastly better from the moment you get inside it; indeed the cabin makes a far bigger leap than the new Mustang did over its own cheapest-bidder predecessor.

The Camaro's dashboard is designed around a large central touchscreen, which is angled downwards (presumably to cut down on glare) but works reasonably well. The central air vents are positioned below this, meaning that they operate pretty much at crotch height, and with temperature controlled by rotating bezels around them, as in the new TT. Trim fetishists will still be able to find some oily-feeling plastics and moulding pips, but compared to the polystyrene crypt of the last car it's vastly better.

Predictably the narrow glassline, and the width of the pillars, make it feel like you're trying to pilot a bottle bank. You get used to it fairly quickly, although the rear three-quarter visibility is terrible. Driving in the U.S. I quickly learned to accelerate into lane changes as the blind spot is big enough to hide an 18-wheel truck. The rear seats are compact enough to make the back of a 911 feel limo spacious, in the unlikely event that that's a deal breaker.

You want the V8, obviously

Four, six, eight
In the States Chevrolet has taken the probably sensible decision to put the four-cylinder turbocharged engine at the bottom of the range, a 2.0-litre with 275hp - rather than trying to extract a premium for it as Ford has done with the Mustang Ecoboost. I didn't get to drive one of those, but I did spend time with both the 3.6-litre 335hp V6 and the 455hp V8 in sporty 'SS' trim. Even faster versions are a nailed on certainty for later.

Against expectations, the V6 doesn't feel like the poor relation; previously six-cylinder Camaros have been more rental than mental, but despite only gaining 12hp over the last generation the weight saving and new chassis give this one markedly more vigour, both in straight lines and corners. The engine revs the enthusiasm born of natural aspiration, peak power comes at a highish 6,800rpm and there's good response throughout the range.

The chassis is pretty decent as well. As is usual these days the car I drove came with various dynamic modes, but it seemed happiest when left to deal with real roads in the default 'Touring' setting. Even then the electric power steering has more weight than actual sensation, but behind that the rack is fast geared and front-end responses are keen. Springs and dampers did a good job at dealing with the sort of rougher surfaces that used to turn Pony cars into water beds; there's lots of vertical movement over bumps, but this doesn't throw you off a chosen line.

Eyes on the Mustang!

What it doesn't feel is particularly playful. The combination of high grip, don't-sue-us chassis settings and the engine's top-endy delivery means there's not much natural slippage or even the ability to adjust a cornering line through the throttle. That's what the V8 is for.

Bumblebee with brains
Because the extra power of the SS unlocks a different side to the Camaro, even with the optional eight-speed autobox fitted to the test car. The chassis can handle considerably more power without breaking sweat, but the bigger engine's extra torque also turns it into something more like the bar fighter you probably expect American muscle cars to be.

Despite the certainty of more muscular Camaros to follow the naturally aspirated 6.2-litre pushrod V8 in the SS already boasts an M4-beating 455hp. It sounds great, from the moment you fire it up into its bass-heavy idle through to the very angry noises it makes as it closes in on its redline. GM claims a four-second 0-60mph time that U.S magazines have already beaten. The V8 doesn't rev as high as the V6, but its extra grunt makes it far more throttle steerable, even with the stability control switched on you can feel the effect of the extra torque pushing against the rear tyres.

Lighter, faster, better - it's good!

The extra mass of the V8 up front definitely takes something off the V6's agility - this SS is a car that likes to be turned in and pointed in the chosen direction before you feed in the power. Get too optimistic with corner entry speed and it does understeer. But compared to the utter dynamic incompetence that marked Camaros not that long ago it feels like a proper revelation.

Over here?
We'll leave the question of whether we will see this Camaro on this side of the Atlantic to GM's bean counters. But the fact that, in the US, the base pricing exactly matches that of the Ford Mustang means that any Euro-Camaro could presumably be priced hard against its most natural rival. It's not a match for the GT350 Mustang yet, but the basic V6 and V8 feel sharper and more focused than their Ford equivalents. It's just a shame its styling doesn't shout more about just how different it is.

Watch the video here.

2016 CHEVROLET CAMARO V6
Engine: 3,640cc V6
Transmission: 6-speed manual, rear-wheel drive
Power (hp): 335@6,800rpm
Torque (lb ft): 284@5,300rpm
0-60mph: 5.2sec
Top speed: 150mph+
Weight: 1,560kg (auto)
MPG: N/A
CO2: N/A
Price: $24,700 MRSP (£16,100 as of 26/10/2015)

2016 CHEVROLET CAMARO V8 SS
Engine: 6,162cc V8
Transmission: 8-speed auto, rear-wheel drive
Power (hp): 455@6,000rpm
Torque (lb ft): 455@4,400rpm
0-60mph: 4.0sec
Top speed: 150mph+
Weight: 1,700kg (auto)
MPG: N/A
CO2: N/A
Price: $34,745 MRSP (£22,650 as of 26/10/2015)