Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 vs Ford Mustang Boss 302 Laguna Seca!

A supercharged Camaro ZL1 and a naturally aspirated Mustang Boss 302 Laguna Seca went head-to-head at a real road course, with a professional driver behind the wheel of both. The horsepower gap between them was massive, but it wasn’t actually why one car came out faster. The real difference came down to suspension technology most drivers never think about. Which one would you pick to own?

Which one would you like to own?

Two philosophies of speed lined up at Inde Motorsports Ranch in Willcox, Arizona, and only one driver got to find out which one actually wins on a real road course. On one side sat a naturally aspirated Mustang built specifically to embarrass much more expensive sports cars in a straight fight through corners. On the other sat a supercharged Camaro packing suspension technology borrowed from cars costing twice as much. Motor Trend handed both cars to professional driver Randy Pobst and let the stopwatch settle an argument that message boards had been having for months. The numbers that came back weren’t close enough to be comfortable for either side.

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A Lighter Car With Less Power vs. a Heavier Car With More of Everything

The Boss 302 Laguna Seca’s naturally aspirated 5.0-liter V8 makes 444 horsepower, while the ZL1’s supercharged 6.2-liter puts out a considerably larger 580 — a 136-horsepower gap the Boss tries to claw back with a curb weight hundreds of pounds lighter than the Camaro’s. On paper that should have made for a genuinely close fight, especially given the Boss’s reputation for punching well above its price point against cars with far bigger engines.

Why Suspension Technology Decided the Result, Not Horsepower

Pobst turned a 1:41.29 lap in the ZL1 against a 1:43.74 in the Boss, and the gap came down to hardware rather than raw output: the ZL1’s magnetorheological dampers use two coils inside each shock to electrically vary fluid viscosity up to a thousand times per second, adjusting compression and rebound on the fly in a way the Boss’s more conventional setup simply can’t match. Add in the ZL1’s independent rear suspension, and the extra horsepower ends up being only part of why it came out ahead — the suspension is doing just as much of the work.

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