Australian Muscle Car – July 01, 2019

News

B

rauwahhhhh,bup,brauwahhhhh.As

the Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 goes up in

tyre smoke on Sandown’s front straight,

exhaust bellow reverberating through the

empty grandstand, somewhere up there

in racer’s paradise Bob Jane is surely smiling.

Jane, an all-time racing legend, died last year

and is sadly missed. But there’s no doubt he’d

have cheered on this rubber-melting display.

Jane raced the original  rst-gen ZL1 Camaro

to victory in the 1971 and 1972 Australian Touring

Car Championships. It was the 1969 model with

a 427 cubic inch big block V8 engine and he won

theSandownroundin ’71andnishedsecond

in ’72 – but that year with the small block 350,

which Jane had been forced to  t as part of

CAMS’ (futile) attempt to handicap the Camaro.

So it’s appropriate we’re back at this track

nearly 50 years further on, lighting up this murky

mid-winter’s day in the latest supercharged V

ZL1. This one, unlike Jane’s awesome beast, is a

road car. But what a road car. Get a clean launch

and you’re propelled up the road like a rocket,

emulating the quarter mile King the original

ZL1 limited run was designed to be back in ’69.

But get to the corners and the resemblance

dropsaway.

The ZL1 stops w

presidential authority, steers with accuracy, grips

with tenacity and  res off the corner like the Big

Bertha cannon it truly is.

Yep, this is a great American muscle car.

But there’s now more than a little Australian

innovation mixed into this amazing act. That’s

because it’s ‘remanufactured’ by HSV (or Holden

Special Vehicles as it is rarely referred to these

days) from left- to right-hand drive at its Clayton

factory just a few kays west of here.

‘Re-what?’ some of you might be asking. Well,

HSVs Camaro ZL1 isnt cheap, but nothing else in its

price range comes close to delivering the same kind of

sledgehammer bang for buck, as Bruce Newton discovered

when he was let loose in HSV’s new performance fl agship.

ZL1 sledgehammer