- Every once in a while, as you get older
you start to think to yourself,
maybe I shouldn't just buy cars
that are popular in the community.
Maybe I should buy a car that's for me,
maybe I should buy a car that actually
has a lot of horsepower,
a lot of performance potential,
a lot of modification platform capabilities
and isn't overcharged up the ass
like pretty much every other car out there right now.
This is Nate's Camaro ZL1,
and I would argue this is one of the last cars out there
that you can buy that are a high performance muscle car.
Yes, it's not a tuner,
that can still fit the bill.
In today's episode of Behind The Wheel,
we're gonna see if it's actually worth picking up though
if you're a tuner person or if these cars are just big,
wide blind pieces of plastic.
(upbeat music)
So, this ZL1 came from like the story of Branded Title Co,
and when they were putting the car back together,
which is still a clean title,
it actually took two ZL1s to kind of put
the bits and pieces back together.
And that's kind of the comments
that I want you guys to ask
or give me your thoughts below,
on whether you actually think it's worth buying
a super clean one mile, or like one owner car,
or do you think it's worth picking up something
that may have a couple owners,
may have a little bit of history behind it
because you're actually gonna get a good deal on a car.
I wanna know if you think it's worth
actually buying a super clean low mileage car right now
because I feel like you're paying
out the absolute ass for it.
For me, I don't think it's worth it.
I don't think it's worth even buying a car right now,
but that's just me.
Nate's ZL1 though is an absolute monster.
It's 650 horsepower,
it's 650 foot pounds of torque.
The thing is fast, it's nuts.
And no matter what anybody says,
you cannot see out of this car,
which is probably why it's so known
for like getting thrashed and crashed
and tossed into trees is because,
you look around, I can't see anything
behind Steve's head all the way
till probably my rear taillight.
I can't see a damn thing.
Even the windows are tiny,
it's smaller than my head.
You couldn't even fit a human head out of those window.
It is terrible.
But the interior's pretty okay.
I like the interior for what it is.
This is a 2018, it's a ZL1.
The biggest issue with Chevy
is kind of like their plasticy interior bits
that feel a little too cheap
for the amount of money that you're paying for a car.
Now, this car specifically,
you can get a clean title right now
probably around 10K miles, for 62 I wanna say.
65,000.
Now, let's get the obvious out of the way
because I think that's important.
This is a ZL1.
This is the...
(car engine roaring)
Nicest car in the Camaro platform
outside of the 1LE that you can get.
Now, even with that you're still not gonna be
the popular kid at school
because it's not a tuner car.
At the end of the day, it's not a tuner car.
So for most people under the age of like 28,
they're not gonna think that this is a cool car to buy
regardless on how much horsepower it has
because it's a muscle car and muscle cars are boring.
But what I can say is, this thing fricking scoots, okay?
And it's got the LT4 in it,
that would be the engine that's hiding underneath this hood.
And there's nothing more menacing,
in my opinion, out of all the cars
in terms of like domestic muscle cars,
there's nothing more menacing
than having that bull cut thing
you've got going on for the engine.
Now I know the Corvette had it too,
they have the clear glass plates
you could see the supercharged on the Corvette
but I do really love the way that this thing looks.
Now, the only problem with this car inherently
before you even get anywhere with the car
is the fact that it is still very, very hard to see.
And at the end of the day, it's still a Chevy,
it's still GM.
So you can see it in different places
like this plastic dash that just
kind of is a little bit too far away
to see if it's real or not real.
You've got a nice Alcantra all throughout the car,
which is great, really enjoy that.
But it does kind of get taken away every once in a while
when you realize you have just plastic
literally everywhere else.
You would've been better off
doing some sort of just hard plastic
or some sort of semi-gloss so that it wouldn't look so,
I don't know, Chevy Tahoey.
It's in track mode, there we go.
(car engine roaring)
We're not gonna do anything crazy around this roundabout
because I know what 650 horsepower can do.
(car engine roaring)
What?
(nervous laughing)
Now, if you can get past like the free-to-play style windows
and the fact that you're watching your rear view camera
out of what looks like a prison cell,
this is a great car for you.
For $60,000, I'm not sure there's much out there
that can actually top performance.
Like performance for performance, this platform,
because you're looking at things
at the $60,000 mark right now, like a Supra.
And you're gonna have to modify a Supra
to get anywhere near this amount of power.
Now don't get me wrong,
I know we're gonna start a flame more in the comment section
but really this car wasn't intended to even go
after that tuner market,
it was intended to be the top option
before the 1LE came out for the big three.
When you look at Dodge and Chevy,
and Ford and things like that,
and this car did it, I mean it did it super well.
You have to remember, for these cars
to come in at $60,000 for the amount of power that you get,
for the amount of platform you get is pretty astounding.
And sometimes you do have to get over the fact
that it's gonna have some things
that it had to go a little bit cheaper on.
I will never like Chevy's infotainment system,
I just won't, I can't get used to it.
It looks like some 10 year old had fun
with a free-to-play mobile app
that you could build yourself
and this is what they managed to come out with.
I don't like how like opaquely similar it is
to those childhood games that you'd get at the library.
What was it like Backyard Football?
When they pull out the phone, that's what it looked like.
It literally looked like that.
I can't get over it.
(car engine roaring)
You will spank every car on the road with this car,
almost every car on the road with this car.
And if you can get into one of these cars
you will convince everyone else around you
that these cars are worth buying.
And for Nate that's a couple reasons
why he loves this car so much.
We have it in the track mode with the tracks control off,
we have it in the most aggressiveish setting
that we can possibly do.
But the turn mode is very, very comfortable.
That has a lot to do with the amount of money
that they pumped into the suspension on this car.
Another thing that he loved a lot was the LT4 engine,
which is, I would agree, it's a fricking cool ass
just looking engine.
It performs,
it does super well.
And then of course the sound,
the sound is really good.
Now, I'm not a fan of overtly loud domestic muscle cars,
like at low RPM,
and this does have a little bit of that.
But once that supercharger whine comes through,
I absolutely agree,
it's probably one of the best
sounding exhausts that you can have.
But the shortcomings are the fact
that you have to take off your legs
if you're ever gonna use the back seat of this car,
which we know you're not going to,
but every once in a while,
somebody's gonna make a poor decision
on a Friday night that results
in somebody crawling in the back
so you can take them home,
and this car doesn't do a very good job with that.
The plasticy interior can sometimes
leave a little bit to be desired.
Mostly, again, it's like, it's just this piece.
And I wish they would've done something here
because I probably would avoid saying anything
if they didn't have this piece,
'cause it's right in front of your face.
And you can't pack anything in this car.
Are you kidding me?
(upbeat music)
And the last thing that I'm gonna say about this
before we get into the outro of this.
This is the last thing he doesn't like about this car,
which is actually kind of funny.
'Cause when you look at it, there's a ton of trunk space.
There is an absolute ton of trunk space in this car
but because of how they have it shaped
you can barely fit anything into the back of this.
You'd have to put everything vertically down
and then it has to be shorter than the height of this
if you ever plan to actually get anything into the trunk,
which is a pretty odd design.
I feel like they should have just made it
a hatch like an Audi RS 7.
Don't break.
That was pretty solid,
that didn't feel plasticy at all.
That feels a little plasticy, all right.
The ZL1 is a car that definitely needs
to get all of the respect it deserves,
probably on a racetrack and not on a street course
in any way, shape or form.
And Nates Z1 is actually pretty darn well done.
There's just a couple things
that you're just gonna have to be okay with
and that'll likely never change on the Camaro platform.
They're always gonna have a little bit
of a plasticy interior.
They're always gonna have terrible A pillars.
They're always gonna have a bad time in terms of trunk space
because they don't know what to do with the space back here.
And if this car was a movie,
it would definitely be Talladega Nights.
And if the car was a one liner,
it'd be, hey, baby on a scale of one to America,
how free are you tonight?
We gave it, okay, sorry.
We gave the interior and exterior a rating of seven.
I know I gave a lot of flack for the seven for the interior,
yet the exterior looks super good
but the reason that I say that is
because the Alcantra really ties it all together.
Performance obviously gets a nine
and modifications on this car gets a seven,
which puts us at 30 out of 40.
You guys have to let us know in the comment section
if you haven't yet, what you would rate this car,
and if you'd pick up a ZL1.
And if you're looking for wheels, tires and suspension,
be sure to check it out over at fitmentindustries.com.
As you can judge by the sound
or as you can judge by the asphalt that we're standing on,
I'm pretty sure we're gonna have to sneak around
and see if we can maybe do a couple, two, three burnouts
with the old America machine.
I'm Alex from Fitment Industries and we will see you later.
Peace.
(mellow upbeat music)