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The much anticipated Production Touring Chev Camaro broke cover and raced in the final round of the NSW Motor Race Championships last weekend.
Driven by Chris Lillis, it proved to be more than a worthy contender not only against the Class A2 Ford Mustangs, but also for outright honours.
On its track debut, the Camaro qualified third behind a pair of Class X BMW M4s, and finish just behind them in the nine-lap sprint race, the three covered by 1.1s. In the one-hour, 31-lap endurance race Lillis was second 1.6s behind race winner Simon Hodges.
The Camaro uses the LT1 version of the LS3 engine from the HSV Clubsport. “It has more power than the Clubsport, it still has a six-speed and three pedals, and the brakes are as good,” Lillis said.
“Being lighter and more powerful, it is much better aero wise and bring us a lot closer to the Mustang, that is where our Clubsport has lost out. The brakes are equal or if not better than the BMW.”
The project began at the end of 2019. Lillis and Nathan Callaghan finished second outright in the Australian Production Car Championship after the duo and Matt Holt were third at the Bathurst 6 Hour endurance race.
Being Holden fans and wanting something to take on the turbos and the Fords, they wanted to stay with General Motors. They sounded out a Camaro and were able to obtain an engineering car from Holden Special Vehicles in May 2020.
Covid caused the project to lay dormant until early 2021 when it went to Peter Muir at Bond Roll Bars for a cage. It then went to Holt’s workshop for fabricating the brakes and suspension including the Bilstein shocks built and developed by Heasmans. “Matt and his guys, Jamie and Jay had built several HSVs, the Camaro was another matter.”
Another major hurdle to overcome was replacing the factory wiring and adapting a Motec system which had not been done before. After that, the car was shipped to West Australia, for Lillis and Callaghan to facilitate all the paint and the interior work. The car was shipped back to Sydney to have its first shakedown run at SMP around three months ago, with just a couple of test days since.
“We owe a lot for the support of Statewide Oil Distributors who supply Mobil 1 products to wholesalers. After a great debut, there is still a lot of development to come.
“We are looking forward to competing at the final round of the Australian Production Car Series at the Bathurst International, but we not going to overdo it there. We want to finish there with a straight car, ready for next year,” Lillis concluded.
