If you’ve ever driven an Elise or Cayman S hard you’d take that statement back. I’ve AutoXed both cars, and I would kill, literally kill to get the steering feel from either into my Z06. Ultimate grip is on-par w/ my Z06 street tire for street tire (I ran both the P-car and Elise on their stock tires) as well. Obviously neither is a match straight-line, but the Cayman S isn’t too bad.
I think what everybody is missing about the quote Habib posted is the fact that the got-damnz Cobalt SS ran right with these cars. That is flat-out insanely impressive.
Now, am I a little disappointed the new Camaro SS was only 2 seconds faster than the Cobalt? Yes. Am I at all surprised? No. If you were to get split times I bet the Cobalt was faster through the tighter sections that are very transition and braking intensive. The Camaro (despite horrific aero) was probably faster on the many HP intensive “straights.”
I really, really wanted to like this car. I LOVED my '99 Z/28 and I still sort of miss it. But I am just not at all happy with the styling, and the proportions are terrible (it looks “okay” sitting by itself against a landscape or something, but park it next to anything other than a F250 and it looks like a bulbous mess).
And at ~3800lbs it’s just too much. I had my Camaro down to about 3300lbs and had rather stiff coil-overs in it. Even still it drove “big and heavy” but worked well enough that I could routinely embarrass exotics and such, and even ‘vettes with your “typical Corvette driver” behind the wheel. I’ve AutoXed and run canyons in 3800lbs cars before (for example E39 M5) and sure, you can hustle them but it’s just not as fun. You are just always fighting the weight, and transitions are just sooooooo slow.
But then, as more of a DD type of car maybe I might like it after all. Clearly it’ll outperform my current DD (IS250) in acceleration, but I actually have my doubts about steering feel and transitions. Meh, I’m sure I’ll test drive one as soon as they’re around, but it’ll really have to do something special for me to make me pick it up, which is sad because I had always assumed that was a foregone conclusion from the time I first heard the 5th Gen rumors.
-TJ