Lets see. It has mostly steel panels, a good structured frame, quality interior, wheel wells/rims/tires that are far too big/heavy, alot of airbags and new crash standards, modern features, IRS, and was based on a heavy chassis made for a bigger car = Heavy car.

 

i think its a little too late for slimming down. given that production starts next month.
my whole goal with this car is, if im taking anything off and replacing it with other parts, im making sure that the parts i put on are lighter than the stock component. i want to try to drop 200lbs off the car atleast. i dont think this would be too hard. between the hood, driveshaft,wheels, exhaust system, im sure that would knock off a few hundo lbs.

 

You've put your finger on the definitive truth.



This car is what it is. Nothing can change that now. It will succeed or fail on it's own merits.
Hopefully, there will be some "lessons learned" that will applied to a future program.

 

That is exactly my point. There AREN'T any. If they were the cars the have, we would expect to see some wouldn't we? Believe me, guys at the top of the board want to win and if simply buying a new car is what it takes, they do it.

You're a bit confused. A Shelby GT is NOT a Shelby GT500. A Shelby GT is essentially a modified GT. It gets springs, shocks / struts, cat back exhaust, CAI and I believe a PCM reflash. Not sure on gears. Maybe wider wheels too.

It also weighs LESS than 3500 lbs, verified on many cars using the scale in the tech building at HPT. Remember this is a stock class where you can't remove anything.

When it became clear that the Shelby GT was the car to have in F Stock, (competitive) people went out and bought them in droves. Now F Stock is practically a spec class for the car.

Lastly, the GT500 does not outperform the lesser cars "in every category". Handling is not the same as skidpad numbers.

Look closer. I'm pretty sure Viper coupes and Porsche GT3s fit your criteria as well.

Nope. You can run the GT500, it's just that no one has. Now to be fair the SCCA panicked when it saw the GT500's hp level and threw it in A Stock where it would be hopelessly uncompetitive. Thing is, you seem to be the only one who recognizes it's potential to kill the lesser cars. Nobody has gone out and bought one, demonstrated it is not an A Stock car and petitioned to have it lumped with all the other pony cars.

As convoluted as this sounds, it can and does happen and is often how change is effected within the classes. Which brings me to my next point....

I could, but it would take digging up last year's results. You see, until this year the SS and WS6 cars were also classed in A Stock. Despite the misclass, one would sometimes see these cars show up but not the GT500. I understand this is not a direct comparison but surely there is something to take away from that.

Also, if the GT500 is superior, why do we not see that powertrain combination in Ford's factory FR500 road racers? They chose not to run it. Why?


Yes, that is part of it. The other part is that the fuel is one of the densest parts of the car. The situation is similar to that of a few years ago when one (or more - can't remember) of the teams went to Champion and said "You know, per space consumed, your spark plugs are one of the heaviest parts of our car. Start making them smaller and lighter until we tell you to stop or we're going to somebody else".

And to take the words out of my mouth, I have never said the engineers "made the car unnecessarily heavy".

What we have said is that an unfortunate decision was made to start with a big heavy platform. I doubt the engineers are the ones who decided that.

We have recognized their efforts to take weight out of the car. Once again someone made the unfortunate decision that this car should be some sort of rolling living room and should therefore have every bell and whistle they can throw at it. I doubt the engineers are the ones who decided that.

Somebody got a hard on for the GT500 and decided that this car should compete in the 500+ hp category as well. It was then left to the engineers to make the car survive behind an engine that we'll now apparently never see anyway. I doubt the engineers were very thrilled about that.


*shrug* If a known and respected straight talking, no nonsense, GM driving national champion says the GM guys told him that they "are not happy about the weight" of the car, I believe it and take that as an admission (or as closely as they can approach one and still keep their jobs).

 

I think everyone here and in GM wishes the Camaro was lighter than it is. I don't think your going to find anyone who is happy this car comes in where it does. But there are those who can justify it and those who understand why the weight is what it is and those that don't or can't.
This topic has been debated for a long time and from many different angles. The bottom line is that the Camaro is what it is and if the curb weight numbers are too big of an obstacle and overcomes many of the other great aspects of the car and prevents some people from buying the car then so be it. We all have our own agenda and needs in this car or others and in the end the car people buy with their money has to make them happy.

 

Wonder how many pages THIS one will get to...

 

My understanding is that the track was wet for the Camaro's 8:20 run.

Weight certainly plays a part in determining overall performance, but so do dozens of other things. Center of gravity, wheelbase and track width, weight distribution, wheel and tire combination, suspension geometry and tuning... all of these have a tremendous effect on what a car is like to drive on a track, and on how fun it is to drive spiritedly on the street.

Those of us who have had the opportunity to drive the G8 can tell you that when you're behind the wheel, it doesn't feel like a 4,100 pound car. Don't get me wrong -- it also doesn't feel like a 3,100 pound car -- but it certainly handles its weight nicely. I had a lot of fun driving it.

The Camaro is based on the same platform, weighs less, and has even more power. I'm betting it has even better weight distribution and a lower center of gravity, too. So, just a guess -- it should be more fun to drive than a G8 GT.

I don't know about the rest of you, but if it's more fun than a G8 GT, then it's fun enough for me.

I guess I can sum all of this up as follows:

 

wouldnt the g8 gxp be a better comparisson of the new camaro? it has the 6.2 in it. but i know no one probably has driven them.
from what i hear about the 8:20 test run, it wasnt so much as getting a good fast time. it was more for dialing in the suspension.

 

The powertrain is a closer match, but that's not the point. I don't think anyone here is saying that the LS3 and the 6L90 or TR6060 make a bad powertrain.

Also, fewer people have driven it, it costs a lot more, and it doesn't change my point.

 

Just think back to the cars of old, they were porkers too!!

 

So your point was that there were only two Mustangs listed at all, and only one of the current generation? That doesn't make any sense. I stand by my comment that the first link you posted does not support your argument as it doesn't have enough data to support any argument about Mustang GT versus Mustang GT 500.

Hence the reason for the question in the first place. I didn't have time to dig through the rule books to find out what the differences were, so I asked.

I agree that skid pad numbers are not the only tell of a car's performance. I'm also not invested enough in this discussion to bother with digging up all of the magazine comparos I've read that say the production GT500 out performs the production GT in every category tested, with lap times, slalom times, quarter mile times, etc, to back up what they say. In fact, Edmunds has an article about all of the modifications they had to make to the production GT in order to best a GT 500 in cornering (it involved wheels, tires, springs, dampers, sway bars, and rear end links).

My questions were more aimed at understanding why guionM's statement comparing a production Mustang GT with a production Mustang GT 500 was countered with an argument that race prepped cars proved the production car statement to be wrong.

As mentioned earlier, I totally agree that a lighter car can be made to handle better than a heavier car every time. However, a heavy car can be made to handle fairly well in it's own right and since the weight discussion is about a production street car most of the race track arguments seem inappropriate to me. I've driven race prepped cars before, and I'd never consider driving one to work every day, so there's a huge difference between track prepped and street prepped.

 

Some of you guys actually need to come out to an autox and see what really handles.
I would bet pink slip to pink slip that my 98 SS in stock form, would be faster than the new GT500 at an autox. I have not ran up against one because most autox guys no its a pig and the Shelby GT will run circles around the 500. I have ran against several 03 and 04 Cobras, which on paper should beat my SS, but they couldnt even get close. The only reason is the extra weight plain and simple.
I feel the same will be true with the new Camaro. Its just to much weight to throw around.
We have a guy who autox's his G8 in Fstock and he is an easy 3 seconds a lap behind the fourth gens, and the Shelby GT's are even further ahead.

 

Not really, later 2nd Gens were huge and heavy, even 4ths got up there a little, but not even they can capture the blatant outta control weight of the 5th Gen. 1st and 3rd Gens are 500-700 lbs lighter than the 5th.

 

Some of us guys have been to autocross's before (both watched/photographed as well as participated).

Just because I don't agree with someone else's opinion it doesn't mean that I don't know what they know, it just means that I have drawn different conclusions from the same information. My priorities are most likely different than those of other people here. That doesn't make my opinion any less valid. For me, the Camaro's weight is not an issue. Do I wish it weighed less? Yes. Is the weight a deal breaker? Not for me.

One other thing to throw into the mix... Independent live rear suspensions weigh more than solid live rears when equivalent materials are used, simply because of the extra parts (universal or CV type joints for the axles, extra mounting points, etc). If the independent rear allows for a greater contact patch between the tire and pavement through cornering, due to the more flexible geometry, doesn't that have the potential to more than offset the extra weight through the extra rubber on the road? If it doesn't, then why don't F1 cars use a solid rear? I'm certain they could design one that weighed less than the independent ones they use.

As far as the Mustang thing, until someone shows the actual results of a test between a GT 500 and a base GT in which the base GT out performs the GT 500, the claims that the GT 500 will get beat by a base GT are nothing more than speculation and/or opinion (regardless of how much personal experience the claims are based on). Chewbacca's claim that a lack of any GT 500s in SCCA results is proof that the GT 500 can't perform is flawed logic. A lack of evidence has never been able to prove anything. Your willingness to bet your pink slip against a GT 500 is nothing more than speculation, regardless of how emphatic you are that you would win.

I honestly think that this part of the discussion has been more like one person claiming that apples are red and someone else claiming they're wrong because oranges are obviously orange. Thus, for my part I'm finished and pretty much wishing I'd have stayed the lurker I am most of the time.

 

Well I am hoping one does show up one of these days, but I also think its a money thing. Not many guys willing to beat on an expensive car like a GT500.