The 2016 Camaro Does More With Less – A Lot Less

Today Chevrolet dropped a new 2016 Camaro teaser on us, and it’s quite a significant bit of information.

The Camaro’s engineering team was challenged to improve the handling, acceleration, and fuel economy. The Camaro is a sporty car, and Chevrolet didn’t want to take away from that, so they did what any automaker would do: improve on an already good thing. In order to achieve the three goals the team set for itself, they first had to figure out how to reduce the mass of the vehicle, which resulted in doing more with less.

According to Camaro chief engineer, Al Oppenheiser, “We kept the cornering confidence and control that make the Gen 5 Camaro 1LE so fun to drive, and added a greater sense of agility. The new Camaro brakes harder, flicks into corners more quickly, and drives out of the corner faster. We expect it will set the benchmark in the segment and give many sports cars a challenge.”

The 2015 Camaro will use lightweight, high strength aluminum for the instrument panel support in place of steel.

Some of the new camaro’s suspension components, like anti-rollbar links, are made from composites rather than metal.

The Camaro’s new architecture is one of the most mass-efficient that GM has ever produce, and it shows. The new bits we were teased with today are some of the contributing factors to the sixth gen’s lightness. A new aluminum support beam for the instrument panel replaces the steel support beam that the fifth gen possessed with a weight savings of 9.7 pounds. Chevrolet also announced that the front and rear suspension components will find their way onto the sixth gen Camaro, and some models will even links made of composite that is more rigid than aluminum, resulting in a 21-percent lighter suspension assembly compared to the steel-intensive units in the current Camaros.

Overall, Chevy says the new Camaro is more than 200 pounds lighter than the outgoing model. While we don’t know whether that is an apples-to-apples comparison based on the V8-powered SS model, we can look to another car built on the same platform as the upcoming Camaro, the Cadillac ATS, for hints.

The ATS coupe “3.6 Performance” trim level is listed with a curb weight of 3,461 pounds, while the 2015 1LS Camaro, also with the 3.6, is shown at 3,719 pounds – a difference of close to 260 pounds. That’s definitely good news, though Chevrolet Communications’ Monte Doran cautions that the Camaro is its own animal.

“70 percent of the components are unique to Camaro,” Doran points out. “This includes parts that may be similar configurations with other Alpha vehicles, but are tailored to fit Camaro. For example, both the Camaro and ATS have aluminum instrument panel frames, but they are different parts as each is customized for the application.”

We’re all kinds of excited for the Camaro to debut on May 16th, but we have a few more teasers to go until then. Stay tuned for more information as it becomes available!

About the author

Josh Kirsh

Born in Van Nuys, Raised in Murrieta, Joshua Kirsh is a SoCal Native. With a love for anything on wheels since the ripe young age of two, Joshua Managed to turn his love for automobiles into a career. As Power Automedia's newest writer, he plans to bring you some of the industry's hottest news topics while he's not out in the shop wrenching on some of our badass in-house project builds.
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