Turning A Corner

American cars have often been knocked in the past due to their inability to handle, but the Camaro ZL1 and Corvette ZR1 dispel this notion, and how...

- Tim Ansell

It would be fair to say there’s an engrained opinion within motoring journalist circles, at least, those outside of the USA, that American cars simply don’t go terribly well around the sort of corners which make up motoring journalist circles. In fact the word ‘sportscar’ rarely appear in reviews of American vehicles, they are routinely substituted for the expression ‘muscle car’ in a knowing manner, understood by the reader to mean; “Yes folks, we know it’s American, has two seats, lots of power and looks as sharp as the TransAmerica building in San Francisco, but if we call it a sportscar you’ll laugh at us, so let’s all just agree it’s a big ol’ muscle car and is only good for drag racing”.

Sadly American interstate highway and grid system driving didn’t call for high speed handling as a feature of US muscle, so their designers continued to bolt in bigger and bigger V8s, while the rest of the world went out and bought European and Japanese sportscars instead because, after all, our twisty roads meant we understood corners, right? I too am guilty as charged. Yes I held the same opinion, and yes I carried it around with me as a prejudice, having never really experienced what I would truly call sportscar tendencies embodied in a US built vehicle… until now.