GM officials seemed very proud of the Chevy Camaro Z/28, of which they’ll be making 2,500 examples in total, when it was revealed last year, but they still couldn’t escape the fact that it was a high-performance Camaro that could be, if not reproduced, at least loosely mimicked by fitting a regular V8 with certain parts.

However, we now learn that, like Ferrari, GM is looking at aggressively preserving exclusivity. What they’ve done is limit the availability of 35 key components that make the Z/28 what it is, specifically in order to make it very hard to replicate.

The interest is obviously to keep the value of the original Z/28s up, and smooth their way to hopefully becoming future classics.

If you’re interested, the source article from GM Authority holds the complete list of taboo parts, which you can also see below.

1. 22958646 ROTOR-FRT BRK
2. 22958647 ROTOR-RR BRK

3. 22958658 CALIPER ASM-FRT BRK

4. 22958607 CALIPER ASM-FRT BRK

5. 22958637 CALIPER ASM-RR BRK

6. 22958634 CALIPER ASM-RR BR

7. 23179350 MOLDING ASM-RKR PNL

8. 23179351 MOLDING ASM-RKR PNL

9. 23487228 SCOOP ASM-HOOD AIR

10.22968220 ESCUTCHEON – FRT GRL EMB

11.23468210 EMBLEM – FRT GRILL

12.22954889 WHEEL ASM-STRG

13.22873225 WHEEL-FRT

14.22873227 WHEEL-RR

15.23179322 FLARE ASM-F/FDR

16.23179323 FLARE ASM-F/FDR

17.23179324 FLARE ASM-RR WHL OPG

18.23179325 FLARE ASM-RR WHL OPG

19.23172755 DIFFERENTIAL ASM

20.23172756 DIFFERENTIAL ASM

21.22908036 EMBLEM ASM – E/Gate

22.22908498 EMBLEM ASM – FRT GRL

23.22894294 SEAT ASM-FRT

24.22894302 SEAT ASM-FRT

25.23473010 SHAFT ASM-RR WHL DRV

26.23473011 SHAFT ASM-RR WHL DRV

27.23468208 GRILLE – FRT UPR

28.22925211 PLATE – F/FDR VEH NA

29.22972716 COVER – D/SEAT BK

30.22972708 COVER – P/SEAT BK

31.12653293 SHIELD – INT MANIF SIGHT 12653294 SHIELD – INT MANIF SIGHT

32.23104737 SPOILER – F/END 22997723 FASCIA – FRT BPR

33.22985096 FASCIA – RR BPR LWR

34.22968219 COVER – FRT FOG LP OPG

35.22966600 COVER – A/CL HSG 23468209 PLATE – FRT GRL EMB BKG.

However, we now learn that, like Ferrari, GM is looking at aggressively preserving exclusivity. What they’ve done is limit the availability of 35 key components that make the Z/28 what it is, specifically in order to make it very hard to replicate.

Should improve the cars looks and performance

Chevrolet might be restricting buyers from purchasing certain parts from the Camaro Z/28 but it appears the company will offer a variety of Z/28 packages.

According to Car & Driver, Camaro owners will be able to purchase nine different Z/28 performance packages including a suspension package that includes the Z/28's springs, dampers and anti-roll bars. There will also be a package that includes a Torsen limited-slip differential and 3.91:1 axle gearing.

Customers can also order other package that include the Z/28's cold-air intake, exhaust manifolds, cat-back exhaust system and brake cooling ducts.
Last but not least, there will be an aerodynamic package which includes a front splitter, wheel arch extensions and a rear spoiler. The package also adds an aerodynamic underbody tray which should reduce drag and lift.

If you're a Camaro fan, you probably know that GM has decided to deny availability of certain Z/28 parts to non-Z/28 owners, in order to maintain the performance model’s exclusivity. Most of the restricted parts are visual elements, but the good news is that Chevrolet will allow non-Z/28 owners to buy performance Z/28 replacement parts, as well as some visual elements.

According to Car & Driver, Chevy will offer nine Z/28 performance packages for non-Z/28 Camaros, including the Camaro Z/28 suspension kit with the Z/28’s spool-valve dampers and springs, anti-roll bars, and front and rear suspension pieces. That’s interesting, since Z/28 buyers can only purchase the spool-valve dampers individually.

Another package includes the Z/28’s helical differential that comes with an integrated heat exchanger for the diff cover and boasts a 3.91:1 axle ratio. A differential cooling package is also offered – it is the same as the Helical kit, but doesn’t include the differential. Also up for grabs are the Z/28’s brake cooling ducts, cold-air intake, exhaust manifolds (V8 models only) and cat-back exhaust.

The Recaro sport seats (a factory option on 2014 model-year Camaros) are now available on all 2012 and later cars through the performance catalog.

In a somewhat contradictory move, Chevrolet will also offer some of the Z/28’s aerodynamic elements to other Camaro owners. These include the front splitter, wheel-lip extensions, underbody tray, and rear spoiler.

The 2014 Chevy Camaro Z/28 has wowed the world with its track-rated performance, but to date, we haven’t seen one cross the dyno to verify what the 7.0-liter LS7 under the hood is really putting out. That has now changed thanks to Redline Motorsports.

Skip past the one-minute mark to get to the dyno action, then listen to the big V-8 as it spins up the roller on its way to one heck of a photogenic set of curves.

With torque nearly flat from 2,500 rpm to redline and horsepower that builds like a tsunami, the figures show the rated 505-horsepower is perhaps a bit conservative, as this dyne run pulled 455 horsepower and 420 pound-feet of torque at the wheels.

That’s just 10% drivetrain loss if the rated 505 horsepower at the crank is correct. The torque figure likewise reflects either rather small drivetrain losses or a slight underrating of the engine, with just 13% of the 481 pound-feet of torque at the crank lost on its way to the wheels.

Of course, this is just one car and one dyno—the figures may not mean much at all in absolute terms. But as a first data point, it looks like the Z/28’s powertrain is more than ready to deliver.

Al Oppenheiser can rattle off from memory the Chevy Camaro's many brushes with doom. Let's not even count the one that threatens overhead--a blanket of thick, low clouds intensifying from light to dark.

No, the pony car's chief engineer can rattle off the times and ways the Camaro skated through GM's bankruptcy while other projects were canned, to emerge not just a survivor, but a solid business case.

The Camaro, you see, is a part of what used to be GM's Zeta family--a rear-drive clan of cars chopped one by one from GM's big block. The Camaro endured Chapter 11 while a new Chevy four-door, an unnamed Buick, and the Pontiac G8 ST bit the dust. (A shipload of STs, in fact, were on the way from Australia to U.S. dealers when GM vice chairman Bob Lutz pulled the plug.) Even the Camaro convertible was delayed more than a year, sacrificed then revived as GM recovered better health.

Do we even need remind you the Camaro wasn't even in the lineup from 2003 to 2009?

Given all that, it's all the more amazing that the Camaro now accounts for 100,000 sales a year, even now in its sixth year. Part of the reason is it keeps getting better, with a much-improved base V-6, a revamped tire and tuning setup that dialed out some of freshman- and sophomore-year understeer, then a ZL1 with a Corvette powertrain and a 'Vette-grade adaptive suspension.

And now, the Z/28. It's hard to describe the Z/28 as one of Chevy's "small-batch" Camaros when the ZL1 alone sold more than 10,000 copies last year. But among the less common Camaros with the heritage nametags, the Z/28 finally has a bell-clear mission: to be the most track-capable offering of all.

Conceived, executed. The Z/28's a car that makes western Michigan's Gingerman Raceway seem even quicker and smaller than it is.

A half-thousand horsepower

The Z/28 badge has its roots in the SCCA Trans-Am series and in the late Sixties, but hasn't always been the go-to badgework for great machines. Oppenheiser admits GM hasn't had a good track record with the Camaro, for dubbing its finely graded models like SS, 1LE, and Z/28 in a consistent way. In this generation, the Z/28 wasn't even the first out of the workshop, with the ZL1 and 1LE emerging first.

With a short run out the door for the 2014 model year, the Camaro Z/28 hits full speed in 2015, going into production next week. Though it hasn't been bred for a specific series, it's focused on the track--Oppenheiser sees it garaged during the week, driven briefly on the road to the more interesting public and private tracks around the country, everywhere from epic battlegrounds like Road America to quicker cuts like Gingerman, to privateer palaces like New York's Monticello Motorsports Park.

It doesn't have the supercharger V-8 engine like the ZL1--it's fattened up instead with displacement, not for ultimate power but for linear performance and balanced handling. The LS7 7.0-liter V-8 gets the nod, with 500 horsepower and 470 pound-feet of torque here, its own induction and exhaust setups, shunting power to the rear through a six-speed manual transmission. Only. It's a union that feels like it should be illegal in a lot of blue states, what with all the guttural noises it makes every time it hooks up. The nominal 0-60 mph time of four seconds sounds like sandbagging.

Four of the showpieces are on its 19-inch wheels--they're downsized from the 20s on the SS and ZL1. They wear some expensive Italian shoes, Pirelli P Zero Trofeo R 305/30 tires front and back, checking in at about eight hundred bucks each, and good for three or four track weekends or 10,000 miles, take your pick. The brakes are Brembos, carbon-ceramic discs with fixed monoblock calipers, six pistons up front and four pistons at the rear, and 28 pounds less hanging off the body than the usual steel rotors.

Bodywise, it's stripped down and winged up, with an aero kit including an adjustable rear spoiler that can boost rear downforce to 150 pounds. From the Camaro SS stock trim, engineers have carved off about 100 pounds alone by chopping things like standard air conditioning, the rear seat pass-through, some sound deadening, fog lights, and five of the six speakers that come standard with the basic audio system. The Z/28 also loses its tire-inflator kit in most states, and gets thinner windows and a smaller battery.

The net: a 300-pound weight advantage over the chubbier ZL1, and quicker lap times too. Gingerman's no Nurburgring, where Oppenheiser says the Z/28 logged a 7:37.47 lap in the rain--but even here, it's pretty simple to see how that's possible, in just a dozen or so corners.

Musclecar umami
The more sophisticated flavors of today's Camaro get super-intense in the Z/28. After all these years, and compared to some more pedigreed sports cars of the now, it's still a guilty-pleasure throwback. It rips to life with the twist of an actual hard key, for God's sake: an M3 wouldn't be caught dead without a pushbutton nestled inside its prophylactic stop/start surround.

Trundle out and get to the right cog via a smooth Tremec shifter, find the cone on the horizon ahead, and let it wind up. The Z/28 wraps itself neatly into the first decreasing-radius right-hander, unwinding steering like it's not connected to an electric motor.

Gingerman's a place the Z/28 can demo with five gears behind its back. Third gear alone gets you through the first kink, down a straight and into a 120-degree bend where you back off the throttle for a short spurt of glorious overrun, and wait almost too late to dig into the carbon-ceramic brakes supplied by Brembo. Carbon-ceramics are a little bit of wizardry: they compress the time and space it takes to yank down the Camaro, editing webisodes of braking down to snapchats with the middle pedal.

Powering out and through esses lets you lean on those huge sticky treads and on the Camaro's limited-slip differential, a geared setup instead of a pack of clutches. It's more exacting, Oppenheiser promises, but between the short straights and the Z/28's own traction-control system, called Performance Traction Management (PTM), it's not working very hard here.

That PTM has five selectable programs, from lots of intervention and slow throttle progression to almost none and well, the opposite of slow throttle. Technically, there's a sixth mode: hold the traction button for a few seconds to shut off all assistance. You have signed the waiver, haven't you?

With more than 1g of grip on hand, the Camaro just sticks. Sticks like the gum left on a passport from security labels, sticks like an old flame who stalks you on Facebook for weeks until making a friend request. The lateral neutrality doesn't feel like any Camaro we've ever driven before this generation; it outsticks the smaller-tired 1LE, too, and Oppenheiser says it out-corners the magnetic-dampered ZL1. The Z/28 has racing-style spool-valve dampers, tuned for firm bump control but a little more forgiving rebound control, and stiffer bushings and spring rates than the Camaro SS.

What we can say, is the Z/28 transitions without much drama over Gingerman's, um, many and varied surfaces. The grass peeking out from patched asphalt? It doesn't stand a chance with this mower clipping it at a hundred miles per hour plus.

And still, a Camaro

The current Camaro's shortcomings are still in full force in the Z/28. It's a big, muscular creature and possibly a future classic, but the greenhouse is a hat size or two too small, like it was styled by Oz' Adebisi.

Because of that, the Z/28 is hideously cramped inside. Short-leg, long-torso types maybe in the center of the Z/28's owner target will have a tough time sliding behind the wheel and sitting anywhere near upright. The cockpit's dressed out with manual Recaro buckets, a sueded flat-bottomed steering wheel and some satiny trim, but it's still the most unimaginative interior in the GM lineup--Spark, Malibu, and Impala included.

It still blasts past those failings, even priced as it is at $75,000, including a $995 destination charge and gas guzzler tax. It's one of the most expensive cars ever offered by Chevy, a substantial leap even over the more powerful Camaro ZL1’s $55k sticker. And it doesn't come with some things that the handful of 2014 Z/28 owners seemed to want: 88 percent of them opted for the $1,150 comfort package that adds air conditioning and a six-speaker sound system (the stock Camaro Z/28 has no A/C and just a single speaker, pared down for weight savings).

For that price, you'll get a competition-ready car with an honest-to-God, give-a-shift manual gearbox, carbon-ceramic brakes with the stopping power of a naked Miss Universe pageant on free cable, a half-thousand horsepower, and a magnificent 7.0 liters of displacement. With no artificial aspiration(s).

Now the naming strategy makes sense. Oppenheiser admits the suffixes applied to the Camaro's badges have been all over the map in its five generations. One of the goals this time around, was to make each of them mean something, so that "ten years from now we know what we're talking about."

In the newly defined hierarchy, the Camaro RS is show, not go; the SS and 1LE are the entry points for track weekends. The Camaro ZL1 is the pony car for those who want Corvette power but don't need the name, but do occasionally need a back seat.

The Z/28? It's the competition-ready certification, and it earns that track stamp of approval.

Another day, another Hennessey-tuned super machine putting down ridiculous power... not that we're complaining, mind you. The latest machine to get the HPE treatment is the new Chevrolet Camaro Z/28.

From the factory, the LS7-equipped Z/28 sees 500 horsepower and 470 pound-feet of torque on tap. Hennessey and his team can get a bit more than that.

The HPE600 benefits from ported cylinder heads, a camshaft upgrade, long tube stainless steel headers, and a bit of ECU tuning. The result is an impressive 636 horsepower and 545 pound-feet of torque; those are flywheel numbers. At the rear wheels, the HPE600 Z/28 is putting down 552 horsepower and 474 pound-feet of torque.

Assuming the traction control can handle the increased output, the car should make the 0-60 mile per hour run in the mid-to-low three-second range. Considering that the Z/28 wears 305-series tires at all four corners right from the factory, we have to assume those runs should happen quite easily.

The Z/28 is a $75,000 Camaro as delivered, so adding in the HPE600 package will make sure that your Camaro is one of the more expensive variants on the street. Still, it will also be one of the fastest, and, coupled with the high-tech suspension, top-notch brakes, and seriously sticky rubber, you'll have one hell of a track machine at your disposal.

Package costs 13,000 euros

GeigerCars has introduced a new performance package for the Chevrolet Camaro Z/28.

Dubbed the Geiger Camaro Z/28, the car has been equipped with a mysterious performance package which enables the 7.0-liter V8 engine to produce 620 PS (456 kW) and 725 Nm (534 lb-ft) of torque - an increase of 108 PS (79 kW) and 73 Nm (53 lb-ft). The company declined to release additional performance data but the standard model lapped the Nürburgring Nordschleife in 7 minutes and 37.47 seconds.

The performance package takes about two days to install and costs a whopping €13,000 ($17,431 / Ł10,370) including a 19% VAT.

The other day we brought you the dyno video of John Hennnessey’s take on the track-tastic Chevy Camaro Z/28, and today, we bring you a virtual ride-along as he tests his new creation himself.

While he treats the car politely as it’s a client’s car with only 500 miles on the odometer, Hennessey still pushes it a bit as part of the official validation process to make sure it’s ready to run when the client takes possession.

Whatever you do, however, be sure to turn up your speakers, as the sound is just beastly.