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Test Drive: 2016 Chevrolet Camaro RS 2LT V6: How Is The Sixth-Generation Camaro In Real Life?


Test Drive: 2016 Chevrolet Camaro RS 2LT V6: How Is The Sixth-Generation Camaro In Real Life?

As I was shooting pictures of the car, I noticed shadows that weren’t mine appearing out of nowhere. “Nice car, man. Brand new, isn’t it?” “I didn’t think these were at the dealers yet!” “Is this the V8 version?” I should have seen it coming…even in the middle of a medical campus parking lot, people were coming out in droves to check out the red and black 2016 Chevrolet Camaro RS, and oddly, only one guy asked about the V8. Others asked about the horsepower figure, but only one person asked about whether or not there were eight cylinders under the hood, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise: Six cylinder cars are now hanging out in the 300 horsepower range, which ten years ago was base V8 territory. So when I learned that the first sixth-gen Camaro on the local lot was a V8, I wasn’t put off…if anything, I was intrigued. Chevrolet’s Camaro was recently revamped for 2016, moving off of the Australian Zeta platform and onto the Alpha platform, shared with the Cadillac ATS and CTS. Journalists who have already driven the car praise the handling, which I will get to, and the V6 is far from a penalty box item: unlike the Mustang, which uses it’s six-spot as the base engine, in the Camaro it’s the midrange choice. Amazingly, I was cut loose with a brand-new, $41,605 14-mile-old RS 2LT model…not sure who signed off on that deal, but thank you, good sir! How did the Camaro do? Read on…

Exterior:

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A lot has been made about how the sixth-gen Camaro is smaller than the fifth-gen, but unless you spend more than a couple of minutes looking the cars over side-by-side, you will initially struggle to find the difference. The most obvious standout is without a doubt, the sixth-gen is a narrower car, but only just. The Rally Sport doesn’t have the “rental spec” look about it at all. Front, sides and back say late-model Camaro, but upgraded nicely. The body has been sculpted nicely to give off the impression of being muscular, which becomes evident from behind the wheel, where the front fender shapes make me think of a C3 Corvette. The roofline is low…more on that in a moment…and the wheels are handsome and the Red Hot paint is spot-on for a muscle car. The dual-tipped exhaust is a nice touch. I do wish that Chevrolet would have just blacked-out the space between the taillights that has the Bowtie badge, but that’s just being nit-picky.

Interior:

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I’m being nice when I say that the interior of the Camaro was tight. “Claustrophobic” might be a better term. One of my main issues with my ten-year-old Chrysler 300C is that the roofline is low…for a tall driver like myself, it makes seeing street signals difficult. I’ll never complain about the Chrysler again, because this Camaro re-set the bar. Whoever keeps making the Camaro a four-seater has a sick, sick sense of humor…unlike older Camaros, where it was potentially possible to fit four people into the car, there is simply no physical way that I could have anyone sit behind me and tolerate driving the car more than a mile or two without amputation being an option on the table. You might as well get used to the fact that you have a package tray with seat belts back there. Driver and passenger should be comfortable, however…the seats themselves were plenty nice for my short drive, with plenty of bolstering for fun time on a track or curvy road.

Gauges and instruments are clear, materials are decent, but ergonomics might have taken a hit in the name of style. The rings around the heat vents in the center console adjust the temperature, so instead of looking for a button or slide, you’re twisting that bit of chrome like Inspector Gadget spinning the dial on a safe. Over time, that would become intuitive, but for a test drive, it was annoying…especially when I had a desert wind blowing up directly at me on a decently warm day. The touch-screen stereo/navigation system/God only knows what else deal seems easy enough to operate, once you spend the time programming what you want to bring up via steering wheel controls. The automatic’s shifter and manumatic paddles feel just like the ones I encountered in the Chevrolet SS I drove last year and functioned just the same…which is perfect, because they have a satisfying feel to them and the paddles work when you tell them to, not when the transmission feels like it. The steering wheel did catch me off-guard…it’s a tiny, flat-bottomed piece and it honestly felt like a video game steering wheel than anything else.

The Drive:

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The Camaro’s 3.6L LGX V6 is a stout piece, cranking out 335 horsepower@6800 RPM and 285 ft/lbs of torque at 5300 RPM. Ever since footage of Cadillac CTS, ATS and Camaros with this engine started to appear on the Internet, I’ve been dying to give it a go myself. Now, here I should probably explain my test drive route: most of the roads are listed at 45 miles an hour, I get one exit-to-exit run on Interstate 65 in the busier section of Bowling Green, and that’s that. In a bright red Camaro that could only have come from one dealership in town…I wasn’t about to completely uncork the car and see if the V6 could lay rubber. There’s plenty of footage proving it can and will. The LGX’s horsepower rating alone should tell you what’s up, being five horsepower more than a 1996 Corvette’s. Don’t sweat the power.

The question really is, do you suffer by choosing the V6? The answer? Hell no. Around town, if you leave the shifter in drive, the RS behaves like any V6-powered Chevy you’ve driven in the last ten years, just smoother. Acceleration is fair, noise is throaty but minimally invasive, and the transmission plays nicely. Slap the shifter into manual mode, click down a few gears and let the V6 rev, and prepare to be amazed. At about 3,000 RPM, Dr. Jekyll gets thrown out of the room and the LGX becomes Mr. Hyde. The exhaust gets louder, deeper and angrier and the tach’s needle starts swinging around the dial with a purpose. I would really love to take a manual trans V6 Camaro around NCM Motorsports Park just to see how the engine plays between more than two gears…nothing against the automatic at all, it’s a solid unit, but I would like to feel the difference.

The handling, though, is the surprise. This is a base RS…not the upcoming V6 1LE package, no MagnaRide shocks here, yet I wouldn’t hesitate to run this Camaro around any stretch of asphalt anywhere, anytime. The steering is dead-on, but the Camaro did like to wander a bit, possibly tracking worn sections of pavement. Given the way the car responded to steering inputs, I won’t blame the Camaro for that. The ride is firm but isn’t brutal. You could live with this car day-to-day no problem, so long as you don’t mind the gun-slit view.

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I’m glad I drove the V6 model first. Yes, the V8 is still enticing, and I’m still very curious about the turbocharged 2.0L four-cylinder that is coming out shortly. But the LGX V6 is an extremely worthy V8 alternative. As for the Camaro itself, I’m not quite settled on the subject. In my eyes, it stuck too close to the fifth-gen in style, and the visibility out of the car is horrible. Driving manners make up for that in leaps and bounds, but with the Cadillac ATS easily $10,000 higher (before options) and the CTS above that, the Camaro RS is the entry-level for the sweet six. A well-optioned Mustang EcoBoost undercuts the Camaro by about five thousand dollars, give or take, and for that kind of money you could have a well-optioned Dodge Challenger R/T. If you are a die-hard Chevrolet guy, you aren’t seeing any other option, and we’d suggest driving the V6 first before committing to the V8. But if you don’t care about brand loyalty or need the room inside, the other options combined with the higher price would have us looking elsewhere first.

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Thanks to J.T. at Campbell Chevrolet in Bowling Green, Kentucky for hooking us up…you rock!


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4 thoughts on “Test Drive: 2016 Chevrolet Camaro RS 2LT V6: How Is The Sixth-Generation Camaro In Real Life?

  1. jerry z

    Almost $42K for a 6 cyl Camaro. Sorry but can’t see paying that kind of money when a 1LE can be had for close to that price.

  2. Crazy

    How much of that almost 42k sticker was the dealerships b/s.. new car, red sports car, mark up..
    It’s a sports car not a sedan, stop bitching about how low the roof line is..
    No one buys a mustang or a Camaro thinking they’ll seat 4, only reason the f body has 4 seats is to not upset the cart with the vette..
    New car makes the 2015 look real dated..
    I find it odd that writers will pee themselves when driving or looking at a chopped top anything, or a supercar but complain that the Camaro’s roof is low, and seeing out of it sucks..

  3. greenjunk

    sorry crazy, you’re wrong on this one. I drove this exact car in white 2 weeks ago, it is TIGHT, it is TINY and at $42k next year you could buy a used c7 with 25k miles on it for that kind of cash and theres more room for luggage. Bryan fails to mention the incredible shriek the exhaust makes followed by an incredible pop upon shifting. Its the cars sole redeeming quality next to the ats like handling.

  4. James

    How much of that almost 42k sticker was the dealerships b/s.. new car, red sports car, mark up..
    It’s a sports car not a sedan, stop bitching about how low the roof line is..
    No one buys a mustang or a Camaro thinking they’ll seat 4, only reason the f body has 4 seats is to not upset the cart with the vette..
    New car makes the 2015 look real dated..
    I find it odd that writers will pee themselves when driving or looking at a chopped top anything, or a supercar but complain that the Camaro’s roof is low, and seeing out of it sucks..

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