Chevrolet’s 2018 NASCAR Cup Series entry borrowed its ZL1-inspired styling from the street car but almost nothing else, running a purpose-built racing V8 instead of the supercharged engine buyers could actually order. The switch came after the Chevrolet SS, its predecessor, was discontinued with little warning. Read on to find out what makes the Cup car’s engine so different from anything on a showroom floor.
Chevrolet’s NASCAR program had a real problem heading into 2018, the sedan that had been carrying the bowtie into Victory Lane was about to vanish from production entirely, and there was not much time to find a replacement. The team turned to the one nameplate that had never let them down at the track, wrapping a genuine racing engine in ZL1-inspired sheet metal built specifically for 200-mph ovals. This was not a street car with a splitter bolted on, the powerplant underneath had almost nothing in common with what buyers could option at a dealership. What exactly separates a NASCAR Cup engine from the supercharged monster under the hood of a street ZL1?
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A Purpose-Built Racing Engine, Not a Detuned Street Motor
The street ZL1 gets a 650-horsepower, 6.2-liter supercharged LT4, a serious engine by any measure, but not what ended up in the Cup car. NASCAR’s Camaro ZL1 runs a naturally aspirated 5.8-liter V8 designed from scratch for competition, with a wider 4.5-inch bore spacing compared to the 4.4-inch spacing Chevy small-blocks have used since 1955. That is not a small detail, it is a genuinely different architecture built to handle sustained high-RPM racing abuse a street engine was never engineered to survive, one shared across the entire Cup garage under NASCAR’s spec engine rules regardless of manufacturer badge. That standardization is deliberate, since NASCAR has long prioritized close competition and predictable costs over letting manufacturers chase unrestricted horsepower, a philosophy that shapes nearly every engine regulation in the Cup Series rulebook.
Why the Chevrolet SS Had to Go
Chevrolet’s decision to switch to the Camaro was forced by circumstances outside racing entirely. The Chevrolet SS, a rebadged Holden sedan imported from Australia, was heading toward discontinuation as its overseas factory prepared to close, ending production of the V8-powered sedan that had been serving as Chevrolet’s Cup Series entry. That left the manufacturer needing a new body style with little lead time to spare, forcing a compressed development schedule most manufacturers try hard to avoid.
Working Within NASCAR’s Gen 6 Rulebook
NASCAR’s Gen 6 rules, in place since 2013, require every manufacturer’s Cup car to share a common underlying chassis while allowing body panels styled to reflect each brand’s actual production models. That framework is exactly why the Camaro ZL1 Cup car could look genuinely like its street counterpart despite running a completely different engine and chassis underneath the sheet metal, a compromise that lets manufacturers keep brand identity front and center even within a heavily standardized racing platform. Ford and Toyota worked within the exact same constraint at the time, styling their own Fusion and Camry-based Cup entries around the identical shared chassis, which is why all three manufacturers’ cars share such similar proportions despite looking distinct up close.
Engineering the Look Without Losing the Aero
Chevrolet’s engineers leaned on computational fluid dynamics and both reduced-scale and full-scale wind tunnel testing to keep the ZL1’s design language intact while still hitting NASCAR’s aerodynamic targets, a genuinely tricky balance between looking like the street car and performing like a racer built for sustained high-speed oval competition, where even small surface details can meaningfully affect stability at 200 mph. Engineers had to balance that aerodynamic performance against NASCAR’s own approval process, which requires every new body style to pass a template inspection confirming it stays within tightly controlled dimensional tolerances before it can race.
The Number 8 Wasn’t a Random Choice
The car debuted during Daytona Speedweeks in February 2018, officially succeeding the outgoing Chevrolet SS as the brand’s Cup Series entry, and it wore the number 8 as a tribute connecting the new car to Chevrolet co-founder Louis Chevrolet’s own history with the sport, tying the brand’s motorsports roots directly to its newest race car during a launch built around celebrating over a century of Chevrolet racing heritage.
Jimmie Johnson’s Role at the Reveal
Jimmie Johnson, driver of the Hendrick Motorsports number 48 car, appeared at the reveal to speak on behalf of Chevrolet’s driver lineup, calling the new Camaro ZL1 a great-looking race car with real heritage behind it. Multiple Chevrolet teams and drivers fielded the new ZL1 body style across the 2018 season once it entered competition, giving the reveal weight beyond a single team’s marketing moment.
Street ZL1 Versus Cup Car: No Shared Parts
Despite sharing a nameplate and general styling cues, the street ZL1 and its Cup Series namesake are mechanically unrelated machines. The production car’s supercharged LT4 and the Cup car’s naturally aspirated racing V8 share essentially no parts, and the chassis underneath diverges just as completely, with the Cup car built around NASCAR’s spec Gen 6 platform rather than the ZL1’s actual road-going structure, making the resemblance almost entirely a matter of styling rather than engineering. A buyer who orders a street ZL1 from a dealership is getting genuine performance hardware in its own right, just not anything remotely close to what a Hendrick Motorsports or Richard Childress Racing crew chief works with on race weekend.
How Fans Reacted to the New Bodywork
Fans responded warmly to the switch from the Chevrolet SS’s four-door sedan shape to the Camaro’s sleeker, more aggressive coupe styling, a body style that felt far closer to what NASCAR fans associate with genuine performance cars. The visual jump from a rebadged Australian sedan to a ZL1-inspired coupe gave Chevrolet’s Cup entry a much stronger identity heading into the 2018 season, one that resonated immediately with longtime fans of the brand.
The Camaro’s Long NASCAR Résumé Before Cup Racing
The Camaro nameplate had already built a strong NASCAR résumé well before this Cup Series debut, having long served as a winning entry in the Xfinity Series and in amateur and professional sports car and drag racing. That existing track record made the Camaro a natural, low-risk choice once Chevrolet needed a new Cup body style on short notice, rather than a completely unproven gamble on an unfamiliar nameplate. That accumulated racing history across multiple series gave Chevrolet’s engineering and marketing teams a running head start on the ZL1 Cup project, since much of the aerodynamic and branding groundwork had already been proven out in lower-tier competition long before the Cup version ever reached Daytona.
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Cool ride
Looks like the current car with a different hood and nose everything from the front fenders back loos the same a the SS car
Cause nascar let’s them
Beats a Toyota Camry any day any where
Ooo, look – it is a generic NASCAR body (that really resembles little to what any of the manufacturers actually make) with a Camaro nose grafted on. Even better, it is powered by an engine that is based on a block that GM hasn’t made in over 20 years now with a cylinder head design that never made it into any production car. Yet, somehow, it is still considered a Chevrolet Camaro. Wow.
And where can one purchase a V8 Toyota Camry 2 Door currently ?
Jim Liedberg – exactly!
The LAST production rule cars were Pontiac 2+2 , Monte Carlo areo coupes.
David Grandahl – back when NASCAR was NASCAR.
Please explain Mike Gardner????
David – back when cars were based on “stock cars” that the manufacturers actually made? Stock wheelbases, stock roof profiles, stock dimensions, etc. it used to be a “run what you brung” type is racing league where the drivers relied on what the car manufacturers had provided and not a homogenous car that the rules committee decided on.
So true wish run what u brung would come back in some form or another.The cars all look so much a like.
hahahaha your so full of crap
You’re *
i ain’t in school i will spell it the way i please
Now Ford will get the Mustang, Dodge; the Challenger, Toyota; the Celica.
Honestly if Toyota was smart, they’d bring back the “Supra” as a “Celica” option.
I think a NEW crowd may become attracted to NASCAR if a “Supra” looking car ran the tracks. JMO.
not as long as Toyota is paying nascar to run cheated up cars next year
NASCAR decides what brand will win. Just like this year is a Toyota win
It’s ALL the SAME CAR!!! They DON’T use OEM SHEETMETAL!!!
All the same car different decals
Not if Dale is driving
Cause Dodge isn’t in it.
Really? It’s not the car!
Sorry, but grafting a Camaro front fascia on a NASCAR spec body doesnt make a Camaro.
Camaro? Not a Corolla?
It will a Toyota taking over your old time America I want true blooded American racing back
Chevy is killing the camaro the 2017 ones look nothing like the older 60s camaro it honestly looks like shit to me
Really,cars don’t look the same as they did 50-60 years ago?wow.is it only the Camaro?or all the cars on the road today?there’s a reason why cars don’t look exactly the same
Well to me The Dodge Challenger and the Ford mustang still look like 60s- 70s cars camaro straight up looks like a 2017 car like when the camaro first came out with the old school look it resembled a late 60s Comaro now in 2017 it looks nothing like a classic car would resemble but yet ford and Dodge still got that some what classical resemblance
You nailed it. Camaro looks have no style no resemblance to the old ones which I did like. Ford & Dodge do have their muscle cars looking way better than Chevy/GM they killed Pontiac which IMO was sad no more GTO’s Trans Am Le Mans Grand Prix even Buick GSX&GNX and more old school cars are so fine just like wine they just get better with age.
Exactly my point the impalas looked awesome back in the day i just couldn’t get how you make an impala a 4 door car when originally it was a sexy 2 door car
Paula Dolby Evans
Looks ugly as shite no style at all.