2018 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 Review (The ALMOST PERFECT Car)

A reviewer who’s owned both a Dodge Challenger Hellcat and a Camaro SS 1LE gets behind the wheel of a 2018 Camaro ZL1, and by his own admission, it’s the closest anything has come to matching his Hellcat’s thrill since he sold it. Between a digital speedometer that skips numbers under hard acceleration and a stranger leaning out of traffic to snap a photo, this review captures exactly why one commenter summed the ZL1 up in three words: smiles per gallon. Watch to see what won him over.

Reviewers who’ve already owned a Hellcat rarely walk away impressed by anything else — the Hellcat’s supercharged Hemi tends to reset a person’s entire scale for what fast actually means. So when a reviewer who has personally owned both a Dodge Challenger Hellcat and a Camaro SS 1LE gets behind the wheel of a 2018 Camaro ZL1 and still can’t stop grinning, that reaction means something different than the usual manufacturer-loaned press car enthusiasm. What exactly does a car have to do to impress someone who’s already had the hardest-hitting Mopar money can buy sitting in his own garage?

A Reviewer With Something to Compare It To

What separates this review from a typical first-drive is the reviewer’s own ownership history — he’s previously owned both a Dodge Challenger Hellcat and a Camaro SS with the 1LE track package, meaning his baseline for fast and engaging already sits well above average. Commenters pick up on this immediately, treating his reaction to the ZL1 as more credible than a reviewer who’s simply never driven anything comparable. When someone who’s had a supercharged Hellcat in the driveway says a Camaro nearly beats it, that’s a meaningfully different endorsement than generic praise from someone with no real frame of reference.

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Chasing the Hellcat’s Shadow

The elephant in the room throughout this review is the Hellcat comparison, and the reviewer addresses it directly rather than dancing around it. The ZL1’s supercharged LT4 V8 doesn’t match the Hellcat’s raw horsepower figure on paper, but the reviewer makes clear that the Camaro’s lighter curb weight, sharper chassis tuning, and Magnetic Ride Control suspension close that gap in ways a spec sheet doesn’t capture. It’s less about which car wins a drag race and more about which one feels more alive doing everyday driving, and on that measure, the ZL1 earns real respect from someone who knows exactly what he’s comparing it to.

The Digital Speedometer Detail Everyone Noticed

One specific moment from the drive stuck with viewers enough to get repeated call-outs in the comments: footage of the digital speedometer climbing so quickly under hard acceleration that it visibly skips numbers rather than counting up smoothly. It’s a small detail, but it’s the kind of visceral proof of acceleration that a horsepower figure alone doesn’t communicate. Viewers note it’s the sort of thing that makes a passenger’s stomach drop before their brain even processes what just happened, and it’s exactly the kind of moment that gets clipped and shared long after the full review is forgotten.

Bystanders Reaching for Their Phones

Around the five-minute mark, the video captures another driver on the road visibly leaning out the window to snap a photo as the ZL1 goes by, a moment multiple commenters singled out independently. That kind of unscripted public reaction, a total stranger stopping what they’re doing specifically to capture the car on camera, is difficult to manufacture and speaks to how much presence the ZL1 still has on public roads, years after its debut and long after the initial hype around its launch had faded.

Winning Over a Mustang Loyalist

Perhaps the most telling comment comes from a self-described Mustang person, who admits this review is the first time a Camaro has genuinely impressed him, adding that he never expected to feel that way about GM’s pony car. Brand loyalty runs deep in this segment of car culture, and a Mustang owner publicly conceding ground to a Camaro is a much stronger signal of the ZL1’s quality than praise from an already-converted Chevrolet fan would ever be, since it costs him something socially to admit it.

Rekindling an Older Generation’s Love for Chevrolet

One of the more unexpected comments comes from a viewer born in the 1950s, describing his first car as a 1958 Chevrolet Impala convertible with the 283 V8, and admitting his love for the brand faded as American cars grew over-smog-controlled in later decades. He credits cars like the modern Camaro and Corvette with rekindling that original affection for Chevrolet performance, a reminder that the ZL1’s audience isn’t just younger enthusiasts, but longtime buyers who remember exactly what made American performance cars special the first time around and had quietly given up on the brand ever getting it back.

The Almost Perfect Qualifier

The review’s own title hedges its praise with almost perfect, and that qualifier matters as much as the compliment itself. Even a reviewer this impressed stops short of calling the ZL1 flawless, which keeps the review grounded rather than tipping into pure fanboy territory. That restraint is part of why the comments trust the positive verdict as much as they do — viewers can tell the reviewer is being selective with his praise rather than gushing indiscriminately about every trim level GM sells, which gives the compliments he does hand out real weight.

Smiles Per Gallon

One commenter summarizes the entire review with a phrase that captures exactly what this car is selling: smiles per gallon. It’s not the quickest way to measure a performance car, and it will never appear on a window sticker, but it’s arguably the more honest metric for a car like the ZL1, one built less to win a drag strip trophy outright and more to make an experienced Hellcat owner laugh out loud in his own driveway, which by every account in this video, it clearly does.

A Different Kind of Endorsement

None of this makes the ZL1 objectively better than a Hellcat on paper, and the reviewer never claims it does. What the video does show is that a supercharged Camaro built around chassis balance rather than sheer displacement can hold its own in the conversation with a car that outguns it on horsepower, purely on how it makes a genuinely experienced owner feel behind the wheel. That’s a harder thing for a manufacturer to engineer than raw power, and it’s exactly why this specific review keeps getting referenced whenever the ZL1-versus-Hellcat debate comes back up.

A Reviewer With Skin in the Game

It’s worth remembering that RP Productions built a following specifically by reviewing cars from the perspective of someone who actually buys and daily-drives them rather than borrowing a press loaner for a weekend, which is exactly why this channel’s opinions carry extra weight with the comment section. A reviewer with skin in the game, cross-shopping his own money against a Hellcat and an SS 1LE before landing on the ZL1, brings a different kind of credibility than a manufacturer-arranged media drive ever could.

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