My friend claims he owned a Camero of a certain year. He boasts the car was ranked the 2nd fastest car in that year next to a Mozzeratti. This is hard to accept. Does anyone know if there was one year in which a Camero ranked so high? Faster than Porsche, and such? Hard to believe. I believe he was specifically referring to the acceleration 0-60mph. (Also, I imagine he did not do anything fancy to modify this car which would otherwise skew the results.)
My WAG: When sports cars are ranked by speed, are there different classes, perhaps?
It would be easier to answer your question if you would take the time to tell us the year of the Camaro. You say it is “of a certain year”, so you should recognize that if we a pick a year and look it up, the answer may not apply to you.
Get more information from your friend about what ranking he is talking about. If he is any sort of sports car fan, he will have a copy of the article showing the ranking.
Extreme 0-60 times try,
Mclaren F1 3.2s
Caterham 220 3.9s-but not too good thereafter with the aerodynamic characteristics of a brick.
Lotus JP Special, sub 4s I think
Porkers and other Euro sports metal are pretty quick off the mark but they are really about high cornering speeds and handling more than anything else.
BTW almost any sportsbike would make those 0-60 times look sick.Bikes are often quoted in standing 1/4 mile times anything below 10s is wicked the terminal speed is usually over 140mph
It is important to note that, like computer products, the “fastest” automobiles generally cite only one or two of a battery of tests to make their assertion. A comprehensive review of an automobile will execute a number of speed related tests: 0-60, standing quarter mile, slalom course, and sometimes rolling starts, top speed, and closed track scores as well. Few cars will score the fastest in all of these categories.
It should also be noted that these tests are performed by professional drivers under varying road conditions. A car tested in the Fall in Michigan is going to perform notably less good than a car tested at the same time on 110 degree pavement somewhere just east of Los Angeles.
A notable example of the liberal use of the term “fastest” was the Audi 5000 wagon of the late 1980s, which was one of the “fastest” cars around because it was designed to do over 120 mph on the autobahn, whereas the cetacean American police cars of the time topped out somewhat below that speed. The fact that it would take a couple of minutes to actually reach 120+ was of course not addressed.
I had a friend with a Buick GS who claimed he could grab sub-six-second 0-60 times. That’s pretty fast. But my Volkswagen Rabbit could beat him in an inaccurate quarter mile, and anywhere on the open road. Why? Because he had dropped in a drag-racing rear end that would force the car to its red line in top gear at about seventy miles an hour.
So was my two liter Rabbit faster than a 454 cubic inch musclecar? I don’t think so, but it’s all how you play the numbers.
Scientific research has found that Camaro owners tell less than the average amount of truth about their cars, but one thing definitely above average for Camaros is insurance costs. It seems that not only do they expect others to believe their bullshit, but often they actually believe it, too. If yer friend’s claim was ever true, that was likely many years ago. Camaros haven’t been the most powerful cars produced for a long time, and we have modern sports cars with 4wd, which the Camaro still lacks.
“fastest” isn’t anything that can be checked. Car magazines commonly test for top speed, 0-60 MPH time and 1/4 mile times. - MC
‘Fastest?’ that don’t say much. Shucks, any one of them pushed off a plane at 5 miles high, reach the same extreme speed on the way down. But how about this:
FASTEST CARS : Land speed
Description:
The official one-mile land-speed record is 1019.467 km/h 633.468 mph, set by Richard Noble (b. 1946) on 4
October 1983 over the Black Rock Desert, NV in his 17,000 lb thrust Rolls-Royce Avon, Great Britain 302
jet-powered Thrust 2, designed by John Ackroyd (see also table). The highest reputed land speed is
1190.377 km/h 739.666 mph or Mach 1.0106 by Stan Barrett (USA) in the Budweiser Rocket, a
rocket-engined three-wheeled car, at Edwards Air Force Base, CA on 17 December 1979 (see also table).
The highest land speed recorded by a woman is 843.323 km/h 524.016 mph by Mrs. Kitty Hambleton, nee
O’Neil (USA) in the 48,000-hp rocket-powered three-wheeled SM1 Motivator over the Alvard Desert, OR
on 6 December 1976. Her official two-way record was 825.126 km/h 512.710 mph and she probably
touched 965 km/h 600 mph momentarily.
The ‘Muscle Cars’ of the late 1960’s had more HP on tap than just about any of the ‘Supercars’ of that time or any other time.
Specificaly, there were a handful of Camaros made with truly humongous big-block engines. The 427 L-88 was rated at 425HP, but most auto analysts feel that this number is laughably low, and advertised that way for insurance purposes. Some claim that dyno tests on these engines showed them capable of about 600 HP at high RPM. There was also the 454 ZL-1, which was similarly under-rated at 450 HP. Chevy even made an aluminum-block racing engine available for production Camaros that cost as much as the entire car.
These Camaros had the potential to be as fast as any car ever built, except that the suspension and tire technology wasn’t really up to it at the time. The reason the Camaro could only run 0-60 in 5.2 seconds was because it couldn’t get enough traction. Take a stock L-88 Camaro, put a set of drag slicks on it and uncork the exhaust manifold, and you’d be running 4 second 0-60 times and quarter miles in 11 seconds or better. BTW, the Corvette had almost exactly the same engine options available for it.
So yeah, I’d say your friend is correct. The 1969 Camaro Z-28 with L88 option was probably faster than any production vehicle built that year.
Dodge might be in the running as well for cars with its 426 Hemi engine, but I don’t know as much about the details of the various Hemi options. I do believe they were rated in the 400 HP range.
I owned a 1967 Camaro with a 327 small-block that was factory stock at 375 HP (fuel-injected, taken from a wrecked Corvette). After the race shop prepped the engine (higher domed pistons, balanced, ported valves, water injection) it was putting out around 425 HP. I discovered quickly that a stock Camaro isn’t built to handle the power - I blew the transmission, rear-end gears, and rear leaf springs out of the car within two months. But man, what a ride.
If you look at the list over at http://www.corvettegold.com you’ll see what I mean about tires and suspension. There are a ton of cars that managed a 5-6 second 0-60 time, even though there was a difference of hundreds of horsepower between them. The stock 290 HP Camaro could do 0-60 in 5.7 seconds, but the 450HP Camaro still comes in around 5.3. This tells you that the power was pretty much wasted.
Nowadays, with wide tires, computer-designed tread patterns and suspensions, and sticky rubber formulations the situation is much better. More horsepower translates directly into faster acceleration. Back then, more horsepower often just meant you could create bigger clouds of white smoke.
