Horsepower-crazy General Motors fans are anxiously dancing around their mailboxes waiting for the latest edition of the company’s performance parts catalog to arrive. As with past years, the glossy pages are packed from margin to margin with everything you need to give your Bow Tie a little extra giddy up. For 2011, the catalog has fully embraced the Camaro, and a pair of dealer-tweaked versions of the Chevrolet muscle car show exactly what you can do with little more than a crate engine and some spare time.
DeNooyer Chevrolet in New York decided to plop an LSX454 in their orange Camaro, coupled to a six-speed manual transmission via the same clutch used in the mighty Corvette ZR-1. The car turns over 520 horsepower and 530 pound-feet of torque at the rear wheels thanks to a tune-port fuel injection system.
But that’s downright child’s play compared to what the minds at NeSmith Chevrolet in Georgia cooked up. Those wrenches plopped an LS9 behind the Camaro’s headlights. With minor tweaking, the supercharged V8 is kicking out right at 700 horsepower, and NeSmith threw in beefier axles and a Baer brake system to bring the whole party to a stop.
