There's been a whole mess of back n' forth over the front grille markings of the purported production 2010 Chevy Camaro SS photos we posted earlier today. There's been some sort of forum fan-boy Civil War going on at 5thGen.org and Camaro5 with some mullet-heads jumping on the "Z28" bandwagon and others steadfastly sticking to the "esh-esh" chrome story. Well, there have to be winners and losers in everything. So those of you who may have thought it was a "Z28" will be forced to shave their mullets and turn in their A-frame t-shirts. Because my forum friends, as you can see above, that grille definitely says "SS." Still, we're happy to see the forums come through with the win yet again. God we love those guys. [Camaro5, 5thGen]

Oh yeah, sorry — in all that Transformers Corvette concept and Z28 hubub, we forgot to show you these camera phone shots taken by a forum fan-boy over at Camaro5 of what's purportedly yet another shot of a pre-production 2010 Chevy Camaro SS. Jeez, all these Camaros with their bow ties — they all look alike. Wait a second — a bow tie? This isn't a pre-production car — it's a production car! The shooter supposedly caught it on the set of a TV show with Christian Slater. No idea what that's all about. But check out that picture below of the "SS" from the back — are those air holes for a shunt in the rear bumper? Is that a clear brakelight in the rear window? Nice. Seriously, how much do we love the guys over at Camaro5?

[via Camaro5]

The hotted up 2010 Chevy Camaro SS version of Bumblebee was snapped either running from, or leading whatever 'bot the Chevy Beat will be playing on the set of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen today in Philadelphia. Hopefully they don't run into the NYC 2009 Renault Laguna Coupe, because we're pretty sure the Renault would be a Decepticon, and nobody wants to see giant transforming robots fight. Oh wait. (Thanks Rueben)

We found one more full frontal shot of Bumblebee dressed up in his new alt-mode form of the 2010 Chevy Camaro SS — so why not leave you with one more opportunity to stare at his newish-looking nose. [via Transformers Live]

Here we go again — first it was the 2010 Chevy Camaro coupe getting the official "leak" by Bob Lutz and Ed Peper, now they've gone and slipped out pictures of the drop-top. There's one shot of the 2010 Chevy Camaro Convertible up above and one more over at GM's little blog project via the link below. [via GM FastLane]

[via TransformersLive]

Look closely at the throttle-body size and shape and the bolts holding it on, the three fluid reservoirs in the same locations, all cues that this is indeed the glorious direct-injection V6. That means about 300 HP, the same sort of power Ford gets from the V8 Mustang GT. And look, they've even moved the battery out of the engine bay, likely mounting it in the trunk like the Pontiac G8. All in all it looks like just the thing for the indulgence-minded muscle car buyer.
[Camaro5]

In 1977, the standard engine in the Camaro... well, you don't want to know. Let's just say that the super high-performance optional 350 put out 170 horsepower and leave it at that. Not only that, the F-body's weight had crept up to 3,500 pounds by '77, about the same as the '65 Impala 4-door and a good 400 pounds more than the '70-1/2 Camaro. Still, I've driven quite a few of these cars and they're actually fairly enjoyable on the street (and lots of fun with Hoon Grade™ engine upgrades).


Ah, the standard rear-window rust. Even in California, GM cars tend to get this problem. Just paint over it!


The huge Malaise 5MPH crash bumper is blended in fairly well with the vast plastic snout on this car; compare this treatment with, say, the Spitfire of the same era and you can see that GM did a pretty good job of bumper camouflage here.

Hemmings Motor News

Last year, both Jen and I wrote about artist Jonathan Schipper, a self-proclaimed artist who baffled us by one of his creations, a gear-driven machine that slowly pushed two 1/18th-scale muscle cars together in a twisted slow-motion Ballardian statement of some sort. I earned a degree from college in something I can actually make money at, not in art, so I guess I don’t have the capability or pretentiousness to understand that statement.

What really made me cringe last year was the vague threat that Schipper promised to recreate the creation on a full-size scale with two actual muscle cars. And it appears he did just that recently in Belgium, though he used two cars that fall outside the bounds of the traditional definition of muscle: a 1988 Monte Carlo and a 1992 Camaro RS. Not to say that I don’t appreciate late rear-wheel-drive Montes or third-gen Camaros, but at least he didn’t use a second-gen Trans Am and a Hemi Charger, as he did in his first piece.

Still, I don’t get it. He did all of this so he could take an elaborate time-lapse video and speed it up? And if he’s going to make a statement such as he did in the title of the piece, then he should back it up with, ohidunno, an actual argument. Maybe this is actually some sort of stunt in which he shows how easy it is to get gallery space and, possibly, public art funding.

The Camaro for '74 hadn't quite reached the overwhelming level of Malaise tape-stripe/plastic-snout overdecoration it would achieve a few years later, but you could see it coming. The 5MPH crash bumpers weren't quite as tragic on this car as on many of its peers, but the 145-horse 350 engine (185 horses if you went for the optional dual-exhaust powerplant) moved the car's 3,500 pounds with somewhat Camry-esque authority.


This car looks pretty good and serves its owner in daily-driver capacity. However, the inevitable GM rear-window rust has a toehold, which means the trunk floor probably has a few holes as well. Plenty of time to solve this problem, given that it's taken 34 years to reach its current state.


I'll try to remember not to let such a long time go by before our next Camaro, lest I become the victim of donuts on my lawn.

The Camaro has finally begun to take its first hot laps at the 'Ring. Here are photos of its inaugural lap. Our shooters say that first impressions are that looks impressive in action, and that its suspension looks well buttoned down on some of the 'Ring's challenging stretches.

We're also hearing rumors elsewhere of Brembo brakes making it onto the high performance models. This Camaro thing seems to be getting less clear as time goes on, despite the no-camo ruling from the Lutzinator. [Camaro5]

So far we've all seen the Camaro in black, and in white, and let's not forget those initial shots of the car's black-and-white-striped theme. But our latest look at a prototype parked in a tree-lined holding pen delves a little deeper into the Camaro's color palette. This time we have captured a Camaro wearing what appears to be the same Velocity Yellow tintcoat offered on the 2008 Corvette.

Maybe not. The new V6-powered Dodge Challenger gets 250 horsepower, which is 20 more horsepower than the V8 standard on the original Challenger, while getting 25 mpg. The latest Shelby Terlingua Racing Stangs have historic muscle car DNA and feature a V6. So does the Shelby CS6. Given rising fuel costs, overall savings and the improvement of V6's would you buy a V6 muscle car?

...we're still of the impression black is the best looking color we've see so far on the General's modern reinterpretation of the muscle car. Though maybe that's just because it hides the ugly of those headlights which we're still hoping, praying and believing are strictly for the pre-production version and not so much for the showroom. [YouTube via CamaroZ28.com]

After that short kimchee-flavored muscle interlude, it now appears we're heading back to the GMgasm...according to the folks at Camaro5, the following is a spy photo supposedly taken by a member of the very aggressively marketed forum of a 2010 Chevy Camaro SS test vehicle caught outside the GM proving grounds in Mesa, Arizona. They claim "We've been told that it sounded like "a demon"! And had a whistling sound at idle." Maybe it was just a test of Chevy's new "kettle edition" Camaro? [Camaro5]

At the very least that sucker should be packin' some serious heat like that 2,200 HP quad turbo'd big block we saw a while ago. We kid, we kid, it's likely the F bomb is named appropriately, because with 1527 lb.ft. of torque at your beck and call, that's probably the only word you're going to be able to say. [Nelson Supercars]

The Rally Sport designation had become more or less meaningless by the time George Bush Senior took office... oh, wait- it was always pretty much meaningless.


Seeing the USS Hornet (and San Francisco) in the background reminds me that the Camaro was once the car to have for sailors stationed at Alameda's now-closed Navy base. You spent 9 months at sea in the Enterprise or Coral Sea, and your Camaro- which was kept stashed in a Navy parking lot packed with GM A- and F-bodies- would be waiting for you and your heavy right foot when you hit shore with a fat bankroll in your pocket. Unfortunately, the Navy wouldn't let its personnel grow mullets.


This example is pretty clean; I wanted to go with an '82 car, but the only ones I could find were hideous beaters... not that there's anything wrong with hideous beaters, but I thought we should start off with a fairly intact car if we're going to add these things to the DOTS repertoire.

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The details for March Mullet Madness entry are available here. Hurry up, as the deadline is this Friday. And do read the mullet classification guide, which is pretty dang funny and kinda says it all, and also shows us The Clooney when he was a Kentucky redneck, before he transformed himself into Cary Grant and decamped for Lake Como.

Let's just get it out of the way: Peak power occurs at 9,000 rpm, to the tune of 2,139 hp; peak torque of 1,926 ft.lbs. comes in at 7,500 rpm. Okay, breathe. With that done, we can move on. We mentioned some tricks, didn't we? How about the engine not having a single gasket? That's pretty tricky right? Moran says he doesn't really like gaskets and has had issues with them in the past, so he decided to go all o-ring for this car. That doesn't just mean little rubber bands all over the place. The craziest one lives on the fire deck and is a silver-plated, nitrogen-filled, aluminum tube ring. The nitrogen heats and expands the ring and the seal gets better and better. Wow. Custom made, auto-centering piston rings, force focusing pistons, an intake system based on exhaust flow concepts.... too much, way too much. Oh, did we mention this runs in the street legal class? No? Cause it does. [via Popular Hot Rodding]