While waiting for the CTR to reemerge from its tune up, here a review of the Camaro. Given that it was tested some days after the GT, I decided to do some back to back testing, too, so as to get more comparable results.
Tried it at GVS and at R246 so far. The first shocker was that one could take the porky regular Camaro and turn it into a competitive 600PP contender
The second was just how well it performs.
On GVS it is hugely confidence inspiring and it really allows you to take all possible liberties without biting. The rear has lots of grip and cornering speeds will match much more race bred machinery. It will for instance easily handle the uphill left handed at GVS at over 200 kmh and never drop under 150 kmh at the baseball stadium right handed or the penultimate off ramp at R246.
The engine is strong, the gearbox luckily unaffected by the current GT6 glitch and the torque never really threatens the rear end, as long as you drive with a modicum of feel. In fact, the only way to get it to bite - and then it truly does - is to deliberately drive it over kerbs. As long as you stay clear, or touch them in a relatively straight line, you should be fine.
On both tracks there was just one corner that needed several attempts to get right, all the others were completely intuitive. And this was the Asakasa Palace chicane - finally it worked well but it requires much more thought than the regular driving a the car. In fact it is probably one of the most relaxing non-race 600PP car out there in my opinion. 👍 definitely something for endurance events, were they ever to return.
The comfort and trust it engenders also means that I immediately closed to within my regular distance on GVS, namely between 1,5 and 2 secs off your posted time. So time to see how it compares to the Ford.
More power, less weight, and the same PP. In principle it should not even be close but it is. After driving the GT some more, I discovered that it can be pushed quite a bit beyond what my first impression told me but it then also gets less relaxing - not surprisingly.
Managed to beat the Camaro time wise at GVS, albeit only by half a second a lap or so and not by your stated 2. It can equal the Camaro's cornering speeds pretty much anywhere but takes about three times the concentration to do so and is much easier to get wrong. In effect it is one of the rare cars in GT that I find very easy to drive at less than full tilt but going beyond 90% also raises the difficulty more than proportionately.
At R246 the time difference for me was starker - almost 2 secs a lap. And while with lots of care and concentration each corner could be done equally fast as in the Camaro, it just monsters the other car on the straights to such an extent that the odd small error did not matter. In fact it was one of the very rare cars, where the slight kink on the start finish straight regularly turned into a heart in mouth moment if one took it without lifting. But make no mistake, this is not a straight line dragster - it will corner exceedingly well but will also need a very capable driver to get the most out of in the curves and to consistently do so.
So all in all another great pairing from you guys, making me eagerly anticipate the next release 👍
Simply too much rear end grip to give it character one would expect from a 500 bhp RWD car, it insisted on holding the road no matter what and the front end seemingly couldn't be tweaked to overwhelm the rear so that's the best I could do without deliberately making the rear more slippery. oh well, at least it goes fast, quite seriously fast for a 550PP car in fact. Never expected it to be that fast and it definitely doesn't feel like it.
