The outgoing Chevrolet Camaro is good at a lot of things, like burnouts and sending people to jail for speeding and keeping up with Porsches on the race track. One thing it isn't is light — your average Camaro SS comes in around 3,900 pounds. Fortunately, the 2016 Camaro stands to lose "more than 200 pounds" on its new platform.
That's the official word from General Motors this morning, which is nice because it saves us from months of speculation about the car's weight like we did with a certain pony car from Ford. Still, there's no specific weight figures just yet, simply "more than 200 pounds" compared to the fifth-generation car, and GM doesn't say which model or models that refers to.
But if it's about 200 pounds across the board, an educated guess could be about 3,500 pounds for the V6 and 3,700 pounds for the V8. If that's true, the new Camaro's weight will be about in line with the 2015 Mustang.
As the Camaro moves to the Alpha platform used by the excellent Cadillac ATS and CTS, we knew some weight loss was inevitable. How'd they drop the pounds? All sorts of ways, the General says:
A new architecture, one of the most mass-efficient ever from General Motors, is responsible for much of the weight savings. Additionally, dozens of small changes cumulatively contributed to shedding pounds. For example, the beam that supports the instrument panel is now made of aluminum, saving 9.7 pounds (4.4 kg) over the steel beam on the current generation Camaro.
In addition, the front and rear suspension assemblies are now aluminum, and links on some models feature an intricate, structurally optimized design made with a rigid composite material that’s even lighter than aluminum. As a result, the total weight for the suspension is 21 percent lighter compared to current steel-intensive assemblies.
The all-new Camaro drops in May, unless it leaks out first.
Hat tip to Nick!
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