Brute Squad Goals

Raising Hell, Killing Tires, And Chasing Big Numbers.

- Jonny Lieberman

The Bugatti Veyron quite famously came complete with 10 heat exchangers. That 1,001-horsepower projection of Ferdinand Piëch’s ego made so much heat it needed 10 coolers to keep it from boiling. The 650-hp 2017 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 has 11.

Such is the extreme nature of the latest, probably greatest, and without question most powerful street-legal Camaro the Bow Tie has ever sold to the public. Unlike the obvious competition (looking at you, Hellcat), the ZL1 isn’t simply extreme for extreme’s sake. The Camaro team gave the sixth-generation Camaro all flavors of performance enhancers for a reason. Three reasons, actually: Camaro boss Al Oppenheiser wanted the ZL1 to be the best ponycar on the drag strip, on a canyon road, and on the racetrack.

Chevy is marketing these three objectives in the parlance of our times as #ZL1triplethreat. That’s no small task. But luckily for Oppenheiser, he had the right platform, the right team of engineers, and the right parts bin to make an attempt at glory. For instance, even though horsepower is up by 70 ponies compared to the last-generation ZL1, weight is down by 169 pounds, driven in large part by the Alpha platform, which also underpins the Caddy ATS and CTS families. The front fenders on the ZL1 are flared more than on other Camaros in order to accommodate the 285-width Goodyear Eagle F1 Supercar 3 tires, which are shared with the SS 1LE.

Of course, there’s also the matter of the miniature atomic device of an engine. It’s called the LT4, and its most familiar iteration is the 650-hp, 650 lb-ft dry sump version found in the Corvette Z06. A slightly detuned 640-hp, 630 lb-ft wet-sump version sits under the hood of the Cadillac CTS-V. All three versions are 6.2-liter direct-injected V-8s with a top-mounted 1.7-liter intercooled supercharger.