Chevrolet Trans Am Camaro
Z/28
After the introductions of
the base sixth-gen Camaros and recently, the high-po ZL1s, what’s missing from
Chevy’s renewed pony car range is the more extreme Z/28 replacement, and we
think this is it.
To be precise, this bad-ass Camaro tester with the huge rear wing that the Carscoops spied lapping
the Nürburgring today is the Trans Am Camaro Z/28 that General Motors product
chief Mark Reuss hinted at last year.
Chevy’s original Trans Am
car from the late 1960s was a special version of the Z/28 with a unique 302
cubic inch (5.0-liters) small-block V8 developed specifically to
homologate the new Camaro for SCCA’s popular Trans-Am road-racing series. Only
602 examples were built in 1967.
Speaking to Autonews last
year, Reuss said that Chevy is studying a rebirth of the car. "We're
looking at the original formulas of the Trans Am homologation of the
Z/28," he said."Why was the 302 engine so special? So, the formula
may change a little, but it still needs to be a wicked fast track car more
capable maybe than the comfort- and driver-oriented models."
Undoubtedly, such a hardcore
model would come with weight saving measures over the already lighter 2016
Camaro – the previous 5th gen Camaro Z/28 was 45 kilograms lighter
than the naturally aspirated Camaro SS and 136 kilograms lighter
than the Camaro ZL1.
What will power the next
Z/28 is a big unknown at this point other than it will be a V8 engine. The
previous Z/28 used a naturally-aspirated 7.0-liter LS7 V8 rated for 505 hp 652 Nm of torque which helped it record a faster Nürburgring lap than
the Lexus LFA and Lamborghini Murcielago at 7:37.47. It’s very likely that
Chevy will keep the Z/28 naturally-aspirated to further differentiate it from
the new ZL1 that borrows the Corvette Z06’s 640 hp and 868 Nm of
torque supercharged 6.2-liter V8 LT4.
