camaro ss 2017 vs ford mustang gt 2017
There’s no hotter car on sale in Australia right now than the Ford Mustang V8 GT Fastback coupe
By this, we don’t mean the Ford muscle car is the best car on sale. We refer instead to the staggering popularity that has seen the order list for this Michigan-made muscle machine stretch into the back end
of 2017. Clearly, the Pony car resonates with a certain sort of buyer
We would suggest that it is this version, the 2016 Ford Mustang GT coupe V8 with a manual gearbox, that stirs the soul most of all. Well, our petrolhead souls anyway
Of course, the new Mustang is not merely trading on a legendary image and the company’s past reticence to make it right-hand drive. It also stacks up on paper as a genuine performance bargain irrespective of badge
The car you see here kicks off at $56,290 plus on-road costs. For that, you get a rear-wheel drive V8 performance coupe. Name another new car on the market doing that at present. You can’t, because there isn’t one. It’s such a shame General Motors won’t give us Camaro, yet
Couple that to the right badge and the most road presence of any car south of six-figures (based purely on the amount of people who stop and point) and half the battle is won already. That order list starts making sense
camaro ss 2017
When country-pop-rocker Sheryl Crow watched the sun come up over Santa Monica Boulevard, she wouldn’t have pondered that it would take the globe another six or so hours to spin some sun Australia’s way
Nor would the sleepy passengers on my long-haul flight, a long reach over the Pacific Ocean, have considered that the mighty Boeing 647 can’t match the pace of a sun rise – it takes 13 hours to depart Los Angeles and arrive in Sydney
So why am I musing this
Because last month when I parked a Holden Commodore SS V Redline at the delightful Scarborough Hotel that sits on the coastline south of Sydney, I didn’t think I’d soon be doing much the same thing with its long lost cousin
Having looked east over the Pacific Ocean through the windscreen of a Commodore, I’m now peering west over the same body of water from the front glass of a Chevrolet Camaro SS 1LE Performance Pack
mustang antérieur
The relative space shouldn’t be a huge surprise, given the car’s 5784mm length is less than 150mm (20cm) shorter than Ford’s own Mondeo family car. Cargo space is 483 litres with the seats up, enough for a few larger bags
What’s less impressive, once you’ve moved beyond the design and layout, is the quality
The switchgear lacks tactility, the cabin plastics are much cheaper and harder than they should be — feel around the cup holders, which incidentally are un-ergonomically close to the gear shifter — the handbrake is extremely flimsy, and the carpeting in our test car’s passenger footwell was unfinished. There was just a gap showing through to the underlay
There was also notable evidence of heat soak from the driveshaft into the centre control, meaning you might want to keep your chocolates out of there
All told, the cabin ambience belongs to a car half the price, but then again, in North America the Mustang is indeed a fairly cheap and cheerful offering. Still, a $70k car should feel more upmarket inside than this
All Fords come with a three-year/120,000km warranty and capped price servicing. The average cost of a Mustang service over the first six services (at 12 month/15,000km intervals) at current rates is a very reasonable $3670, cheaper than the XR7. Ford Australia also provides free loan cars
But this is not what Australians are buying in great numbers, and to many a Mustang just has to be V8. Especially a place with a car culture like Australia, where for a certain subset of locally made car fans there’s really no replacement for displacement
Under the bonnet of this beast, then, is an aluminium 5.0-litre V8 engine, upgraded over the old car with a range of updates to make it breathe better. These include larger intake and exhaust valves and camshafts. There are also stiffer valve springs, a new cylinder head casting and a rebalanced crankshaft
camaro ss antérieur
he irony is, of course, that the Camaro I’m driving is closely related to the Commodore from back home, yet it doesn’t come to Australia; but the next-generation one that will come to our country, actually won’t share anything with the sedan that will have its nameplate reborn into a new, front-wheel-drive import for its next generation
Los Angeles has long been a kangaroo-hop between Holden’s Melbourne offices and the General Motors headquarters in Detroit, Michigan. There isn’t a plane that has enough fuel range to take you from our east coast to the north-eastern United State
Having never driven a Camaro, I’ve long wondered how close to a Commodore it might be. It was designed and engineered in our backyard on the Zeta platform that underpinned the VE Commodore in 2006 and continues to do so in the overhauled VF
