<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"My big news of the day: I was allowed to drive on GM&amp;#039;s Milford Road Course. For about a half-mile. In a Prius. And then I hitched a ride around the whole track in GM&amp;#039;s latest Camaro terror. Guess which was more fun? Big news of the day for everyone: The Camaro Z/28 is fast. Okay, so that fact wasn&amp;#039;t exactly in question. The new top-dog, lightest, track-focusedest Camaro has all of the makings of a serious road-course weapon. We&amp;#039;ve already shown you video of the N\u00FCrbrurgring lap it set, a 7:37.40 in the rain. But a little personal experience on the Lutz Ring helped paint a faster picture. I drove the track, if briefly and with an escort, on my way into a press event for the reborn Z/28. There, Camaro head honcho Al Oppenheiser gave us more details about the car: That &amp;#039;Ring lap? It was the best one they got on video, but not the best the car can do. The car is capable of more, something in the 7:31.9 realm. But because of the intricacies of N\u00FCrburgring industry test days\u2014namely that other manufacturers are out there testing stuff they don&amp;#039;t want on video\u2014there&amp;#039;s no hard proof. Although the Z/28 is still in development, Chevy announced final power figures for the car: 505 hp and 481 lb-ft of torque, up from the promised 500 and 470. The Z/28 goes on sale in the first quarter of 2014. Oppenheiser expects they&amp;#039;ll sell 3000 to 4000 of them over the car&amp;#039;s two-year run, which is about half as many ZL1s as they&amp;#039;ll sell. In addition to being the fastest Camaro around the &amp;#039;Ring, the Z/28 will be the most expensive Camaro GM has ever sold. So, easily north of $65K.  Weight should be around 3837 pounds, or about 80 to 100 pounds lighter than an SS. They took out the A/C, and it only has one speaker to play the door chime. The Z/28 rides on 305/30ZR19 wheels at all four corners. Think about that for a second\u2014a 305-series tire on the front axle. That&amp;#039;s basically unheard of, and it apparently makes the track-widened car follow ruts in the road that you didn&amp;#039;t know were there. Cornering grip is currently pegged at 1.08 g. They might find more before it goes to production. And downforce. It&amp;#039;s something like 440 pounds less lift than what they started with, which means downforce at speed. And then I got a ride in the car, with one of GM&amp;#039;s Level 3 drivers, the 30 or so folks certified to wheel on the MRC at full tilt. (We asked nicely and GM  set Tony Stewart loose on the track in the new Vette. And then there was that time I drove part of it in a Prius.) Downforce, cornering grip, speed, it has all of them. And it sounds spectacular. Oh, and Mark Dickens, GM&amp;#039;s Director of Performance Variants, can drive. I hit an indicated 44 mph going into turn one in the Prius. Dickens got the Z/28 up to 144 before braking\u2014and late, thanks to the car&amp;#039;s big carbon-ceramic brakes. The particular car I was in (the Z/28, not the Prius) was used for GM&amp;#039;s 24-hour testing, wherein the car is driven all-out for a total of a day to simulate what an amateur would put the car through during a year of track days. So we can say it was broken-in. It also did 1000 miles of N\u00FCrburgring Nordschleife duty. Make that really well broken-in. One last tidbit: When the car is running at the MRC for the 24-hour test, it goes through a tank of fuel in 22 laps. Given that it&amp;#039;s a 2.9-mile course, and the car has a 19-gallon tank, that&amp;#039;s something like 3.4 mpg. I got 45 mpg in the Prius on the way home, setting a personal best time from Milford to Ann Arbor. Impressive, but those low-rolling-resistance tires really don&amp;#039;t grip like the Z/28&amp;#039;s rubber. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/first-drives/reviews/a5720/camaro-z28-first-ride-lutz-ring/>