He Had 580 Horsepower Sitting in His Garage – Then Almost Bought the Slower Camaro Anyway

A Camaro ZL1 owner puts his own 580-hp supercharged coupe up against a naturally aspirated 6th Gen SS in a real head-to-head – and walks away second-guessing which one is actually the smarter $40K buy. Heat soak, rev-matching, and a full driving comparison decide it, not the spec sheet.

Five hundred and eighty horsepower is supposed to settle an argument, not start one. That’s what makes this comparison so interesting: a reviewer who already owns a supercharged Camaro ZL1 — the car with the bigger number, the badge, the bragging rights — spent an entire video walking back his own certainty about which Camaro is actually the smarter $40,000 buy. On one side sits the 5th Gen ZL1, GM’s factory-blown answer to the Shelby GT500. On the other, a naturally aspirated 6th Gen SS that costs less, weighs less, and drives, by his own admission, differently enough to make him question the math. This isn’t a spec-sheet fight. It’s a real owner putting real seat time against a number everyone assumes should win outright.

What the Video Covers

The comparison runs long — nearly half an hour — and it earns every minute. The reviewer walks through why someone would buy a 5th Gen ZL1 in the first place, then spends real time on what he calls the car’s “flaws”: known heat-soak behavior under the supercharged 6.2-liter LSA, and the common problem areas that show up once these cars rack up miles. From there he flips the argument, laying out why a 6th Gen SS — a car with roughly 125 fewer horsepower and no supercharger at all — can still out-argue the ZL1 for a buyer with $40K to spend.

Then comes the part that actually sells the video: a back-to-back rev-off, followed by a full driving comparison of both cars covering launch feel, magnetic ride control, steering, braking, and how each car behaves once you’re not trying to prove anything and just driving normally. He covers the ZL1’s factory manual-shift feel, the SS’s rev-matching manual gearbox, and closes with his own final verdict on which one he’d actually put in his garage — and why.

⚑ Featured Gear

Start Car Conversations →

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

The Cars Behind the Comparison

The 5th Gen ZL1, built from 2012 to 2015, was Chevrolet’s most serious response yet to the Shelby GT500 era of pony car horsepower wars. Under the hood sits the LSA, a 6.2-liter supercharged V8 borrowed from the Cadillac CTS-V and fitted with an Eaton TVS 1.9-liter supercharger, rated from the factory at 580 horsepower and 556 lb-ft of torque. Buyers could pair it with a Tremec TR6060 six-speed manual or a six-speed automatic, and the ZL1 name itself was a deliberate callback to the legendary all-aluminum 1969 COPO Camaro ZL1 — one of the rarest and most valuable muscle cars ever built.

The 6th Gen SS, sold from 2016 through 2023, took a completely different approach: no supercharger, no forced induction gimmicks, just GM’s 6.2-liter LT1 V8 — the same naturally aspirated small-block found under the hood of the C7 Corvette Stingray — producing 455 horsepower and 455 lb-ft of torque, good for a factory 0-60 mph time of around 4.0 seconds. It’s less powerful on paper, but it’s also lighter, arguably sharper in the corners, and considerably cheaper to own and maintain over time. If you want the fuller story on how Chevrolet built the car this whole ZL1 lineage is chasing, we went deep on the modern Shelby Super Snake and the horsepower arms race that forced GM’s hand here.

What Makes This Comparison Worth Watching

What separates this from a typical spec-sheet showdown is that the reviewer isn’t selling either car — he owns the ZL1 and still gives the SS a fair, sometimes uncomfortable hearing. That’s rare in car content, where the bigger-horsepower car usually wins by default. Here, the conversation about heat soak, factory shifting feel, and how a car behaves on a boring Tuesday commute matters just as much as which one wins the rev-off. For anyone cross-shopping a used 5th Gen ZL1 against a 6th Gen SS in today’s market, that’s the kind of real-world context a spec sheet simply can’t give you.

The supercharged-versus-naturally-aspirated debate has defined Camaro ownership for well over a decade now, and this video is a genuinely useful entry into it — less about which car is objectively faster, and more about which one you’d actually want to live with.

Watch the full video above and let us know your thoughts in the comments.