The images was posted on the site of the Benny Boyd GM SuperStore in Lamesa, Texas under the dealership photos. It's now been removed, but we have the screenshot and the Camaro SS is still for sale. These leads to many questions:

Is the main in the photo a representative of Benny Boyd GM SuperStore? Is he Benny Boyd himself? Maybe it's someone who really wanted the Camaro SS and was scaring people off from buying the vehicle. Either way, we think it makes a statement most Camaro SS drivers would support.

Hennessey's first order of business was to take a 2010 Camaro SS and massage its 6.2-liter LS3 V8 to help it pump out mo' powa. They do this by first giving the pony car a little belt-driven boost to the tune of 6 psi, helping it achieve a 2010 Shelby GT500-besting 562 horsepower and 557 lb-ft of rotational fortitude. These numbers will reward owners with a 4.1 second 0-to-60 MPH time and a run down the 1320 in just 12.1 seconds at 119 mph.

Rounding out the package is a Hennessey-designed appearance package with 20-inch rollers and Hennessey badging throughout the interior. Expect to fork over roughly $59,500 for one of the 500 Texas-tuned ponies.

Hennessey Motorsport makes claim that the 2010 HPE550 will lay waste to its 20-inch drag radials via a 562 HP (at the crank), 557 lb-ft of torque blown LS3 and is capable of hitting 3.6 second 0-60 times with a stellar 11.7 @ 121 mph jaunt down the 1320, but this clip claims a 4.3 second 0-60 and a 12.1 @ 120 mph quarter-mile. Either way, this baby's quick. Only 500 HPE550 Camaros will be built and sold via your friendly local Chevy dealer, so get a move on before someone else swipes them all up first. Color us impressed.

(Hat Tip To The Kellys!)

According to Camaro5, this brand spankin' new Camaro SS was reduced to a pile of scrap by an uninsured and unlicensed teenager ridin' dirty in a Ford Escape. We're not sure about the owner, but we would have kicked this kid's ass. Twice, for good measure. (Hat Tip To Cameron!) [via Camaro5]

Yeah, we've been covering a lot of tuned 2010 Camaros as of late, so what's one more? Artisan Performance has teamed up with Turbochargers.com to offer this twin-GTK350 turbocharged SA-600 based on the top dog, LS3-equpped SS model. In addition to slapping a couple of snails on the engine, they've also specified a high-performance, freer flowing exhaust with high-flow catalytic converter, intercooler and wastegate as well as a remapped ECU flash to handle all the excess power being produced. Artisan has also produced a very subtle, yet aggressive body kit consisting of a 1.5-inch flared front wheel arch and 3-inch flared rear quarter panel, front and rear lower fascia lip spoilers, new rockers, functional brake ducting where the gills on the rear quarter panel used to be, a large rear deck lip spoiler and a pair of staggered 21- and 22-inch forged alloy wheels covering upgraded 14-inch SSBC brakes.

Artisan Performance is now taking orders for their Camaro SA-600 turn-key package and is charging a whopping $69,000. That's one damn expensive Camaro. [via Artisan Performance]

Chris Fesler and Jon Moss (of GM Performance fame) teamed up to create this custom limited edition 2010 Camaro SS for the mesh-wife-beater-wearing, previously-Monte-Carlo-Dale-Earnhardt-Intimidator-Edition-driving, family-franchise-starting crowd. They'll build your Camaro with a custom body kit with molded rear lip spoiler (how they do that is anybody's guess) and any LS-series engine that's currently on offer including the venerable supercharged LS9 from the Corvette ZR1. Take that Hennessey! Production is scheduled to start...well, now, and delivery to begin soon after.

Fesler-Moss Press Release

After months of design and calibration Chris Fesler and Jon Moss have teamed up to offer Chevy lovers with their version of the ultimate 2010 Camaro. The Chevrolet Camaro will forever be known as America's original muscle car. Chris Fesler and Jon Moss have expanded on that principle to create the Fesler-Moss Edition 2010 Camaro. The new Fesler-Moss Limited Edition 2010 Camaro is scheduled for release in late April 2009 and will be shipping soon after that. Built with similar historic features that have been prevalent throughout the Camaro's bloodline, the Fesler-Moss Camaro stays true to the original Camaro lines, performance, handling and most important, horsepower. Some features include;

• GM Performance LS-3, LS-7, LS-9 and LSX engines,
• 6 speed or built 4L65E transmission,
• Fesler-Moss braned Magnuson Supercharger,
• Fesler-Moss 3 piece billet wheels,
• Goodyear tires,
• Racing suspension,
• Upgraded rear end,
• Body upgrades,
• Paddle shifter by Mastershift,
• Performance brake upgrade,
• Larger exhaust upgrade,
• Sound system upgrade,
• Color matched interior
• Street legal in all 50 states
• Several different paint options

[via Fesler-Moss]

Not pleased with recently taking the back seat to Hennessey Motorsport in the LS-tuning circle, Lingenfelter has upped the ante by beginning development on its very own version of the 2010 Chevy Camaro SS. Their plan is to release five distinct power packages ranging from a supercharged 550-horsepower model all the way up to a monster 800-horsepower, turbocharged, LS7-swapped version that we're going to talk about a little more.

800-horsepower and 800 lb-ft of torque. Those are big numbers no matter who you speak with and Lingenfelter knows it. The first order of business to transform the already stout 2010 Camaro SS into a fire-breathing beast is a removal of the stock 426-horsepower 6.2-liter LS3 V8 and fill the empty hole under the hood with a Corvette Z06-sourced, 7.0-liter LS7. Now the LS7 already produces 505-horsepower, which would do the Camaro just fine, but Lingenfelter decided to go a little crazy (How 'bout a magic trick?) by taking the aluminum-blocked LS7 and slapping a pair of Garrett oil lubricated and liquid cooled ball bearing snails onto it. But we all know that adding big turbos doesn't necessarily get you very far, especially when you're pushing a big round number like 800-horsepower.

In addition, Lingenfelter has upgraded the LS7 with a Callies 4340 forged steel crankshaft with a 4.000-inch stroke, CNC ported LS7 heads, a multi-angle valve job, stainless steel intake valves, heavy-duty Inconnel exhaust valves, Competition cams with dual valve springs and titanium retainers, JE forged aluminum pistons, Manley 4340 forged steel 'I' beam conrods, a higher capacity fuel system with larger fuel injectors, Lingenfelter 304 stainless steel 4-to-1 headers and a Corsa stainless steel cat back exhaust to round out the mix. All of this is backed by a 3-year/36,000 mile warranty. Hot damn!

Not content with just offering engine packages, Lingenfelter has gone the extra mile in creating an aggressive body kit that includes a large front fascia lip spoiler, revised rockers, custom grille, custom hood with air extractors, a revised rear fascia diffuser with four exhaust pipes, rear tail lamp cover panel and a rear deck spoiler.

Lingenfelter is quite ambitious with its 2010 Camaro SS package, but apparently not ambitious enough to release a price or an exact release date, though you can purchase the styling package as early as this summer.

[via Lingenfelter]

The Peterborough Examiner reports demand has been so high that GM has scheduled the week of June 29th as a work week instead of the previously planned week off. They also report that flex line workers will begin working overtime every Saturday, June through August.

Apparently there's more of a demand for the General's new mullet-mobile than previously thought. Who'da thunk? [via DetNews]

Although we're told it only takes about 30 minutes to fix, we're being told GM's now issued a voluntary "official recall" on the 2010 Chevy Camaro SS over the battery cable issue that caused one Camaro5 member's new Bumblebee-yellow mullet-mobile to die less than 40 miles from the dealership. We're also being told GM's asking for the Camaro SS to be flat-bed hauled back to the dealership rather than driven there under its own power. More coming shortly.

UPDATE: We've just posted a gallery of pages from the technical service bulletin below — so you can see how you'll be affected if you own a Super-Sporty version of the new Chevy Camaro. Sorry for the pages being a little bit out of order. Blame the interns. And by interns we mean us.

Camaro5 snagged these shots of the first dark gray Camaro. While we'd take our 2010 Chevy Camaro SS in black, we have to admit, it looks classy and understated in Cyber Metallic.

Make sure you check out our 2010 Chevy Camaro First Drive.

[via Camaro5]

My boss, and reigning champion for receipt of the prestigious Dark Lord of Public Media mantle award, Nick Denton, just called me an "unabashed American apologist." I don't even pretend to know what that means, but if it has to do with believing that American automakers still have it in them to bring "teh awesome" to market, then hell yeah I am.

Wes had some minor concerns in his review of the new Chevy Camaro that he felt kept it from being a world-beater, feeling Chevy was trying to push the new Camaro up against the sports car world. Whether interior plastics or minor numbness of steering, I'm not going to discount those deficiencies — they're all valid. But you know what? I don't care.

Forget for a moment this car's performance (a mid-four-second 0-to-60 time) and fuel economy (16/24 for the V8-engined SS, 17/29 for the V6) — because this muscle car's got some serious style. I'd seen looks in cars before. Whether it's a Ferrari F430 or a Bentley GTC Speed, you can get 'em. What I was astonished by was how easily the Camaro gets them.

One block into my drive in lower Manhattan saw guys grabbing camera phones to take photos. Never saw that with one o' them fancy-pants'ed Euro cars. Nope, this big ol' 'merican muscle car was something different. It carries itself differently — with kind of a swagger.

So I'm willing to ignore those deficiencies Wes found. Mostly, because I'm not trying to rate this car as a sports car. Instead, I'm rating it for what it is — a big hairy 'merican muscle car. From the moment you sit inside and fire up the big 426 HP V8 engine, you're transported to a world where all you want to do is fire off down the road, stoplight-to-breathtakingly-exhilarating-stoplight. In that world, you couldn't care less about plastics on the dash. No, all you care about is goin' fast and knowing you're able to beat the guy next to you. The new Camaro SS? Yeah, it'll do that — in spades, and better than the competition at the price point. And frankly, that's all I want.

Photo Credit: Wilson Rothman

Asked on May 18, 1999 what my favorite movie was I, like many of my contemporaries, would have had an easy answer: Star Wars. Just one day later, with the release of Phantom Menace, that answer would change forever. It didn't make sense. Episode I, compared quantitatively to its predecessors and, according the huge amount of buzz surrounding it, must have been a much better movie. It had a bigger budget, benefited from modern technology, had really neat imaginary creatures and action-packed space battles. So what changed? Well, the environment in which the space fairy tale existed had, in 22 years, become much more sophisticated. Audiences wanted to experience something new in the same way the original film had been unprecedented for its time. Instead, George Lucas contented himself with producing a fancy new version of the same old schlock. That, and Anakin was really irritating.

With the $22,995 V6-equipped 2010 Chevy Camaro LS producing 304 HP, nearly as much as the V8-engined 2010 Ford Mustang GT, and the 426 HP 2010 Chevy Camaro SS starting at just $30,995, initial impressions of GM's new muscle car are extremely good. It's faster than its competitors and benefits from more svelte looks than the Dodge Challenger and less familiar styling than the 2010 Mustang. It's even more fuel efficient, with the V6 returning an impressive 17 city, 29 highway MPG-rating, while the V8 returns 16/25 MPG when equipped with the slightly higher-geared automatic transmission.

But this Camaro's also supposed to be about more than just numbers (click here for our 2010 Chevy Camaro Numbers Comparison) for one very important reason: it's based on the 2009 Pontiac G8 GXP. When we drove that car last November, we couldn't believe that a $40,000 Pontiac was like the new E39 M5, only better. That impression was the result of a driving experience that wasn't so much about the 415 HP Corvette-derived LS3 V8 as it was the car's subtle ability to read your mind, then react to what you wanted faster than we thought possible from a big sedan. In short, the G8 GXP is a handler before it's a muscle car and that's saying something for a vehicle that can hit 60 MPH in 4.7 seconds.

The opposite is true of this new Camaro. Based on an updated version of the G8's Zeta platform (here called Zeta II), the Camaro gets a 2.5" shorter wheelbase thanks to bringing the front wheels forward 6", then moving the A-pillar rearwards 3.5" to create a longer hood and new front suspension chosen to make that hood lower. Unlike the class-defining Mustang, suspension is also independent all the way around. The V6 starts with GM's FE2 coil-over suspension package, before moving up to standard FE3 on the V8-equipped SS. Wheels start out at a smaller-than-GXP 18x7.5" on the base LS, before moving up to a standard and massive 20x8" front, 20x9" rear on the SS. The G8 GXP's are 19x8". Most of the SS's standard equipment is available optionally on the V6 models, while the RS-package essentially looks like an optioned-up SS, but with a V6 under the hood.

Somehow, all those changes translate into an experience that's no less capable — in fact the Camaro SS is 11-seconds faster around the famed Nurburgring than the G8 GXP — but a lot less involving. Where the G8 GXP is all about including you in the driving, requiring and enabling you to aggressively wring the most out of its chassis, the Camaro SS doesn't seek to make the driver a crucial part of its equation. It makes the classic American muscle car mistake of confusing grip — of which it has plenty — with handling. Throw the two cars into a second or third gear (oh how we love big V8s) 90-degree bend and the Pontiac will encourage you to explore the limits of the rear tires adhesion using your right foot and communicative steering, the Chevy will push its vague front robbing you of speed. Sure, you can get on the throttle half way around and step the rear out, but not with the same degree of control the Pontiac delivers. The Camaro does bring one huge improvement over its platform-mate: there's virtually no body roll under any circumstances.

Well that and the incredibly successful styling. Chevy knows it looks good too, displaying a level of self-assuredness that would be absurd in any other segment. Here's a great example. Our co-driver asked a GM engineer whether the new Camaro increases "length or girth?" His straight-faced response? "It increases opportunity." Cocky, right? But they're right. Where the G8 looks like a rental car, the ZR1 looks like a bass boat enthusiast won the lottery and the CTS-V, even with its classy chrome mesh grille, looks like a tuner conversion, the Camaro strikes exactly the right balance between the mass appeal of its aggression and a more sophisticated retro futurism that successfully references the original while adapting wholly new forms that are completely contemporary. Even though we've been staring at pictures of it for what seems like years, in person it's still surprising how good it looks.

If you've been following Jalopnik or even had a conversation with me at any point since last August, you're probably bored to death with hearing about how good GM's latest crop of performance cars are. The 2009 Corvette ZR1 is the best car I've ever driven, the 556 HP Cadillac CTS-V is an utterly awesome performance sedan and you've already been reading about the G8 GXP. So it comes as a surprise that Chevy's flag-waving everyman muscle car doesn't live up to those driving standards. Sure it's stinking fast, but it doesn't make exploiting that performance rewarding in the way all the above did so well. It doesn't so much defy convention, as drive like you'd expect a Camaro would, a really good Camaro.

The other defining characteristic of the Camaro's driving experience is the interior. Hop in one and like a classic Camaro, the first impression is of claustrophobia. It feels like Chevy's designers have purposefully set out to make the interior, which is actually surprisingly large with adequate space for four adults, feel surprisingly small. Most of that comes from the slit-like windshield; its top sits at about the height of your forehead, something that will be familiar to Lotus Exige owners. Out through that narrow strip of glass, the hood bulge and fenders are prominently visible, accentuating the power under the hood. Unlike the Exige, there's almost 8.5" of vertical seat movement to accommodate a wide range of drivers. All of them will end up with their head in the exact same place: about a half inch from the ceiling as that's the only position that affords adequate forward visibility. Strangely, the wheel and instruments sit very high, never affording the wheel-in-lap arrangement that I prefer, even with the seat all the way up and the wheel all the way down.

That interior is also going to be a bugbear for the Camaro. While the overall shapes are appealing, the materials are mostly cheap plastic, even on the big knobs that you use to adjust the HVAC and stereo (Nav isn't an option). A huge swath of that cheap plastic runs from the steering wheel all the way to the right door. The standard-on-SS auxiliary gauges, mounted down low in front of the gear lever, are largely worthless on the move due to their positioning, but look really cool, providing a false sense of driver/machine integration that just isn't born out in the driving experience. Believe it or not, the 2010 Mustang with a few options is actually a nicer place to spend time.

On initial impressions and despite a spec sheet that strongly claims otherwise, I'd tip the hat in the Mustang's favor when it comes to driving enjoyment too. To create it, Ford engineers essentially took the old model and made it as good as they possibly could. The result is, for the first time, a Mustang that's as much about going around corners as it is about acceleration, which is good, because the Camaro SS leaves it for dead in a straight line. Despite the Mustang's live rear axle, which never really manifests any limitations on the road, the 'Stang is ligher on its feet than the Camaro and has considerably more steering feel. The Camaro's is dead on center, never really manages a huge amount of feel in general and is overly light. It's so light, that it's possible that the engineers that drove it around the Nurburgring did so one-handed.

The much-touted performance of the V6-equipped Camaro doesn't live up to its Mustang GT-killing hype. While GM has gone to great lengths to make it as visceral as possible — the crisp exhaust note sounds almost as good as a 370Z — its flat torque curve leads to a somewhat uneventful feeling of acceleration, especially out of faster corners where the Camaro's prodigious 3,780 Lb curb weight leaves you with foot flat on the floor, wanting for more. Nor does the V6 manifest a handling advantage over the V8, even when equipped with all the RS options. Its steering still lacks feel and it becomes harder to push the car around corners using the throttle.

GM's Hydra-Matic SL50 6L50 6-speed automatic gearbox does however do an excellent job of keeping the V6 on the boil, particularly in "sport" mode. Its one of the quickest-to-shift slushboxes we've experienced and never seems to find itself in the wrong gear. In fact its so good that it renders the steering wheel-mounted shift buttons largely irrelevant. The 6L50 is clearly better than any of the Camaro's domestic rivals.

Look at the value-for-money and the performance numbers of the Camaro combined with its Dragon-tastic looks and you can't help but feel GM has a winner on its hands. It'll beat its competitors hands down, not only in a numbers-based pissing contest, but also in the public's imaginations: an advantage presented by its futuristic-yet-retro styling. It's exactly the car GM should be making, a car that will sell; it's just not the unprecedented new experience that we were hoping for, it's not a real driver's car. With the Camaro, GM has chosen to stick with the muscle car archetype rather than push the limits of what's possible, it's not likely to win many conquests from more adept sportscars like the 370Z, Audi TT and BMW 3-series as Chevy hopes it will. The result, like the new Star Wars films, is a product that will undoubtedly be a commercial success, just perhaps not a timeless classic like the original, a product that will blend in with, rather than stand out from, its rivals.

Photography credit: Wetzel Tucker

We drove both the V6 and V8 versions of the 2010 Chevy Camaro on Monday and, while we can't tell you about that till Friday, March 20th at 6pm (EST), we can take a look at how both Camaros stack up against the competition on paper. Will the clear bang-for-your-buck advantage translate to the driving experience? Check back Friday at 6:00 PM to find out.

All the models featured in this comparison are stock, base-spec vehicles. Where possible, manufacturer's official numbers have been used.




Photography credit: Wetzel Tucker

We'd much rather see Megan Fox doing this in the complete opposite direction, but we still feel a little dirty watching the 2010 Camaro put its clothes on and we now feel better for it. [via GM]