special

REAL DRIVINGLIFESTYLE MOTORMAGAZIN 2012 ISBN 978-3-942853-12-5

The light at the end of the tunnel ...

... doesn’t always have to be of a train.It can also be a very pretty American convertible in an underpass.Chevrolet and especially the Camaro had to fight a lot in it’s history.First, the competition with the biggest competitor, the Ford Mustang and then the design sins in the 80s and 90s.

Finally the image change in Germany from an American mu-scle car seller to a mass manufacturer for car buyers with smaller budgets.The split of the Chevrolet Corvette in an own brand in 2005, did not make life any easier.So what, now the Corvette is a Chevrolet again and the Auto Show in Detroit shows the new Corvette .

Where is the connection to the Camaro?A Camaro is, like the Corvette, an affordable sports car from the U.S..To call the current Camaro a little Corvette would be wrong for the sporty machine.

The Camaro already personifies dynamic with its mere presen-ce. The beautiful sports car makes you want to touch the surface to study each light edge in detail and to feast on the successful forms.

Whether the Camaro is open or closed. The soft top opens and closes in 20 seconds. The luggage compartment offers 385 li-ters with an open or a closed roof.

„The soft top

opens and closes in 20 seconds. The

luggage compartment offers 385 liters with

open or closed roof.“

The interior is typically American. The circular instruments with extra controls are reminiscent of the 70s. The crisp 5-speed ge-ar-shift meets particularly sporty natures. The automatic gearbox costs 2,000 € extra and is not the best option. The leather seats are comfortable and they sooth the sporty setting of the athlete. Adults on the back seats have naturally not much, but enough space.

Especially for nervous pilots and control freaks who always want to focus their eyes on the road, the speed can be displayed on a head-up display. When starting the transparent mice theater shows first the Chevrolet bowtie and then switches to the vehicle´s data. German developers like to mock about such gimmicks, but you get used very quickly to the info directly in the vision field and soon you do not want to miss permanent-present information any-more. No wonder that for example BMW also has been selling sys-tems like this for some time.

Speaking from mirrored information: the images from the parking camera appear in the inside mirror. Smart idea.

The 6.2 liter V8 has 432PS and a lot of torque power with 569 Nm. The Camaro sprints in 5 seconds from zero to hundred and runs more than 250 kilometers per hour.

So much power is not available for such a low prize elsewhere in Germany. Porsche, Maserati or BMW char-ge a multiple for more than 400 hp. The Ame-rican dream costs from 39,990 €, the Conver-tible from 44,990 €.

„ P o r s c h e , Maserati or BMW

charge a multiple for more than 400 hp. The American dream costs from 39,990.- €, the

Convertible from 44,990.- €.“

Unfortunately, in Germany we had to wait a long time for the coupe and the convertible. The numbers have just been too small for a large model offensive in Europe.If you then finally hold a Camaro in your hands, many different fields of application come to your mind.So the U.S. Sportscar can show what it can do - of course not only in the sun, but also in rain. The rear wheels draw traces on the ground already on dry surfaces but on wet roads the pilot must be a little bit more careful.

Physics is physics and a lot of power has to be handled care-fully. When it rains heavily, even the most tolerant photographer will become ill tempered and then subways and underground garages come in handy.

When the rain ends, he starts to search. Not for the next gas station, to blow dry the car, but for the next big puddle.

Reflections are beautiful, not only in the windscreen or in the rear-view mirror, but sometimes also as raindrops of water on the varnish or in puddles of water next to the car. Since it is some kind of distance from Munich to the sea, puddles are the solution.

But please, without spectators, to produce in peace and wi-thout interruption. Easier said than done. Finally, research leads to an underground car park with water damage. One man´s sorrow is another man´s joy.

The underground car parking space is nice, but then it is not the last item on the to-do list.Fortunately, the sun comes through the clouds and we drive out to the countryside. Somewhere there must be a big puddle. Best with a bit of mud. Only wimps never make their car dirty.

Car wash, yes, but to get it really dirty before is a must. But time is against us.When the sun burns down, the most beautiful puddle has no chan-ce in the long run. Not only that, the pool of water still must be usable. How do I put the Camaro so that there is a nice image? How do I make the car so dirty that it looks good? Aerosol mud is not an option. That‘s what people do on a car show. So that the poor car fans think an SUV is really used off-road some times.I even do not want to drive in extreme terrain.I only want a puddle, blue sky, some clouds and a bit of dirt.And then...Just off the motorway. Right next to the road. Wonderful. A mound of earth beside a puddle. Twice driven through and the car has just the right layer of dirt for the photo.

Not too much and not too little.God is after all motorists. Or at least his buddy St. Peter.

And the Camaro looks great even dirty.It is just not a vehicle for wimps.Late but at least then the Camaro pays enormous on the Chevrolet brand.The GM subsidiary is not only cheap, with Spark, Aveo, Cruze, Ma-libu, Captiva and Orlando, but also sporty and low with Camaro and Corvette.

Compared with its nearest competitor, the current Camaro has be-come the stuff of winners. Ford also makes GM no great difficulties because the current Mustang is no longer an enemy, but rather a victim.That was different for a long time and also results from Hollywood.

First, the Mustang was the symbolization of the cool American way of life. Especially since 1968, Steve McQueen in the classic thriller „Bul-litt“ raced in a GT 390 through the streets of San Francisco in 9 minutes and 42 seconds and chased the villain in a superior moto-rized Dodge Charger.But that is more than 40 years ago. Chevrolet struck back cinemati-cally and positioned the Camaro in 2007 as yellow-black-Power Bumblebee in the blockbuster saga „Transformers“.That brought the turn.In 2010 GM sold 81,299 Camaros and Ford 73,716 Mustangs.

But much more important is, that the Camaro is cooler and more beautiful than the Mustang.