My time in the SS

I thought I'd scribble some words about my Camaro that I had owned for about a year.
A nice chap bought a very nice G-Wagon AMG from me and left this dusty Camaro in the park with the promise to collect it later that night, a few days go by, and the Camaro still remained in our car park. I called him and asked him when he'd like to take it as we need the space. He pretty much told me that he didn't want the car anymore and would I like it.

The price was extremely fair and it was enough that I couldn't refuse it, even though I had not intended to buy a Camaro or anything like that to be honest. I had always dismissed 'yank tanks' because of the horror stories that you hear as a European about the built quality.

I started using it almost immediately and quickly started to see why the Camaro is actually rated rather highly and puts in half reasonable lap times on a track. The engine is great, a typically American V8 enormous in capacity and spewing out torques with every burbley revolution. The handling was even half decent, quite well balance and with plenty of grip. It was an SS model with the LSD so it could always get the power down to the tarmac or destroy both tyres at an equal rate depending on how you look at it. Build quality was good, actually better than good but not on par with the offerings from Germany but then again it's a Chevrolet Camaro not a BMW M3 and the price reflects this, in terms of value for money it's excellent.

I had many amusing drives out to Fujairah and RAK in it, one memorable drive was to Jebel Jais with a group of friends and I had manage to do a couple of perfect drifts around the hairpin bends which was fantastic fun. Another time on the Kalba roads I gave the car a good work out and it is surprising just how fast it is on sweeping and undulating roads keeping up with what you'd perceive to be much quicker cars.

Acting as a mobile chicane.

The downsides are that it did like to munch through Super unleaded like I drink cold water with a hangover, average was about 14L/100km which wasn't terrible, if I drove carefully on a long cruise I could just about keep it under 10L. But on a 'fun' drive that number would go to 25L, 30L, or even 38L I saw once, so yeah there have been refinery fires that have been more efficient than this. Also driving like a moron also yielded near constant rear tyre replacement which at 1,400 AED each gets pretty annoying every 5 weeks. I tried to be clever and found some Chinese tyres for 500 AED each think they're called 'Nankang Ditchfinders' or something and I'm not sure what compound they're supposed to be but I think possibly they are manufactured out of dustbins. The tyre didn't wear like normal tyres, instead it shod small chunks every now and again or if it did manage to get hot enough to start melting it threw melted rubber all over the wheel arches. Obviously within hours of fitting them they had become egg shaped which resulted in a cartoon like ride, won't bother with those again.

Overall I have admit that secretly I rather enjoyed my time with the SS, even though if you had asked me even 4 weeks before I bought it if I would buy one I would have swore blind that never in a million years could such a thing happen. Truth be told it's actually a pretty good car and superb value for money given the performance. 400bhp and a great V8 soundtrack with handling that is easy to control and fun and when pushed even good enough to keep up with 'quicker' cars.

Would I buy one again? Probably not, unless one fell into my lap at a cheap price.
Would I buy an American muscle car again? Absolutely. A Challenger Hellcat looks like the most comedic thing on the planet, but from what I've read the next generation Camaro could very well be a good all round performer so let's see what they come out with.