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Say Hello to the Green Machine!

Cars
ZL1

October 11, 2021 0

After sitting in both a 6th gen Camaro and a C7 Corvette at the Chevrolet booth in at the NHRA top fuel drag races in Phoenix I started thinking seriously about upgrading the FRC to a newer car. A few months later (July 2018) I found myself test driving a new 2018 2SS Camaro. Unfortunately the car just didn’t seem like a viable FRC replacement so I turned my attention to C7 Corvettes. By spring 2019 I had one, by summer 2020, it was supercharged, but by fall it was sold. I sold it for a variety of reasons the largest being that it had a ton of small to big issues.

By summer Charlotte was beginning to fall out of love with the 335 and we started brainstorming ideas. Short supply of new cars and an insane used car market made us feel pretty sure we’d be sticking with the 335 for the foreseeable future. We briefly considered her looking for a mid size truck like a GMC Canyon but were told it would be 6-12 months to order one and we already had a truck that was barely being driven. By that time we were both officially full time work from home. So our strategy shifted from replacing the 335 with another AWD/4wd vehicle for winter to finding something fun with a manual transmission that could be driven year round with the exception of during snow storms.

Combining what we both wanted in a car we came down to only one: A 6th generation Camaro. A 2016 – 2018 to be specific. And it would either need to be a well optioned 2SS or a ZL1. Preferring to stick with a 2SS due to price concerns we looked at quite a few but found without exception they all had title issues, had been wrecked, or just didn’t seem to be in good condition. Ultimately finding a clean 2SS with magnetic ride control and NPP exhaust pushed the price up to a point that jumping to a ZL1 started making a lot more sense all things considered.

We missed one in Chicago by a day, but there was another in Oklahoma City that everything checked out on so we made a deal and I booked a 1 way flight to OKC. A upgrade to first class was only $150 more so I went for it as I’ve always wanted to fly first class! They sent a lot porter to pick me up at the airport. After checking out the car I took it on a test drive…and found it was not running right! They asked me to give them until morning to try to get the issue sorted out under warranty at the Chevy dealer.

I kicked back for the night, and had a few beers.

To my surprise the Chevy dealer had the issue fixed by 9am the next morning so I headed back to the dealer, and took it for a test drive. Satisfied with that I spent 90 minutes going through absolutely everything on the car I could then made them jump through a couple hoops like putting it up on a lift and giving it a quick detail. After some paperwork I started my 12.5 hour drive home.