By Suspension is important. The proper suspension has to toe the fine line of “connected to the road” between boat-like handling and spine-shattering ride stiffness. The standard 5th Generation Camaro, like most pony cars, leans a little bit more in the boaty direction from the factory. Fortunately, Chevrolet’s performance engineers popped their heads into the design meetings and made sure that there’s room to improve your Zeta platform Camaro. Whether you’ve got a V6 convertible street machine or an SS 1LE that needs a little extra edge, coilovers can bolt in and change your suspension tremendously. The extra adjustability and new spring/strut pairing can help you find that perfect balance of road feel and ride comfort you need.
Why Coilovers?
Whatever setup you’re going for, the most complete overhaul of your car’s suspension system is a coilover suspension kit. These kits include replacement dampers, springs, and mounting hardware, rather than just a set of springs. This more advanced suspension system allows for adjustable ride height and dampening as well as other fine-tuning. This allows for decreases in body roll, better ride, and smoother transitions in corners.
The first part of selecting a set of coilovers is to figure out how and where you’ll be driving. Are you looking for a system for street use or one for high-performance driving experiences and track days? Time attack, drifting, and drag racing all benefit from different components. Manufacturers may offer unique systems for several of the areas listed, or have a single product targeted at one of the driving modes mentioned.
As always, when you consider making any changes to your suspension, the factor you need to consider first is the tires. They are the vehicle’s only direct link to the road. The coilover kit you select should be one tuned to the type of tires that you’ll be using. For example, street coilovers take the best advantage of ultra-high performance summer tires. Performance coilover systems designed for track use are more aggressive to pair with slicks or DOT-R tires. These tend to ride tighter than most people will be comfortable with on the street.
For track days, a set of moderately-priced coilovers, combined with larger diameter sway bars with adjustable links are a great starting point. As you learn the characteristics of the car over laps and laps of track driving you can begin to make adjustments – one at a time – to optimize the set-up to your car, tires, and driving style.
So What’s the Best?
For the 5th gen Camaro, you can go a few different ways. BC Racing makes a popular kit for the Camaro. Their BR series coilover offers thirty levels of adjustable damper preload. The BRs don’t come with a preset ride height, so you can go lower or higher. A lower ride height than stock gives you a lower center of gravity and less wheel well gap. BC Racing’s coilovers are designed for road and light track use, so if you want to go low on the street these are a great place to start.
If you’re looking for flatter cornering and lighter weight for track days or autocross, check out the aFe/PFADT Featherweight coilover system. Pfadt Race Engineering has long been the recommended upgrade for Chevrolet’s performance vehicles, and thanks to their partnership with aFe they’re better than ever. The Featherlight coilovers may be a bit more expensive than the BRs, but they use excellent progressive-rate springs and internal floating pistons to offer faster compression than the stock struts.
If you want good handling on a tighter budget, a set of adjustable struts and some good lowering springs can offer enough flexibility for a dual-duty road and track setup without breaking the bank. For example, Koni Yellow struts pair well with Eibach pro spring kit springs for a slight ride height drop and tighter spring rate. If you’re looking to daily your car to and from work and go to the occasional autocross event, this is a great way to bump up your handling performance while still keeping your Camaro comfortable and safe on the road.
If you want to go full factory, Chevrolet Performance’s Z/28 and 1LE Camaro suspension packages are available off the shelf for V6 and V8 models. The 1LE kit includes sway bars, monotube shocks, end links, and toe links. The Z/28 package goes further (and costs about three times more), including trailing arms, front and rear coilovers, and polyurethane suspension bushings. Factory new Chevy parts cost a bit more, but won’t void your OEM warranty if you still have it. OEM parts are often regarded as more reliable than aftermarket stuff as well since they were designed in tandem with the rest of the platform.
Many drivers won’t reach the limits of their stock suspension setup, and it’s important to make the distinction for yourself of needing an upgrade versus wanting one. Coilover setups are a significant undertaking and the most drastic change to your vehicle’s performance short of completely altering the suspension geometry. If you’re looking for the ultimate in-ride height adjustment and handling tunability for your 5th Gen Camaro, coilovers are the right place to go. For coilover kits and more, check out the Motoroso Marketplace!
