Hey Dylan! The Camaro does have it's pros and cons, especially when compared to the 335 you had before. There are absolutely some things that you can do to bring the handling of your Camaro beyond where your previous BMW was.
First thing we would suggest is a set of sway bars. The Camaro is big and heavy and really soaks up increases in roll resistance very well. It's not easy to remove 500 pounds of weight from your Camaro, but a well designed sway bar package can make it feel like it has. Sway bars will help the overall balance of the car by moving it's normal tendency from understeer back to neutral. We took a video during our development process to help show the differences between the stock sway bar package and our Sport sway bars:
More upgrades to consider are our Solid Subframe Mounts and a Trailing Arm package. The rear end of the Camaro has room for quite a bit of improvement for a performance application, and it starts at the Trailing Arms and Subframe Mounts. On hard launches the rear trailing arms can deflect, and the rear subframe will bound around on it's soft rubber bushings. Both of these are major contributors to wheel hop. After some strategic modifications to the rear end you will not only be able to more effectively put power down at the drag strip but really increase the handling capability of your car as well. When we were doing the development of our subframe mounts we also looked at manufacturing a Cross Brace as well, but found that we could get more performance improvement without adding weight or complexity to the bottom of your Camaro by just replacing the Subframe Mounts. Take a look at another video focusing on the rear subframe and you can see how much difference there is after subframe mounts and trailing arms:
Depending on your budget and your performance goals there are a couple different sways you can go with your spring and shock package. If you're looking to drop the car for a more aggressive stance but don't necissarily need the flexibility of coilovers we offer a drop spring kit for the V8 that will lower the car 1.25 inches, which in our opinion is the best balance of improved visual appearance, performance and shock life. Much lower than 1.25 inches on the stock shocks and you run the risk of shortening the overall life of the shock, and degrading the handling of your Camaro.
If you were looking for a more flexible system we do also offer a custom engineered coilover package that offers both ride height control and adjustable dampers. With our coilover system you can drop your Camaro up to 1.5 inches without worry, and really tune the ride characteristics to exactly what you're doing with your Camaro. If you're heading to the drag strip it's extremely easy to tune the car for an optimized drag setup, if you're heading to the Autocross or Road Course you can tune the car stiffer for increased response, and for just daily driving you can find an extremely comfortable ride. All of this is offered in one convenient package that is a direct bolt on installation and was designed specifically for your Camaro.
There are a bunch of different ways to look at modifying your Camaro. All of the above will provide a great ride quality on the street, while drastically improving the handling and fun factor of your Camaro. If you've got any questions please shoot us an email over to
info@pfadtracing.com and we can talk about what you want to do with the car and how our parts can get you there!