[Billy10mm]

Been wanting to write this post for a while.

I've had my 1LE now since April of 2014. I've put 45K miles on it in that time, and they were truly awesome miles. The car continues to tickle all the right receptors. The sound when I start it up every morning is still intoxicating. Power continues to be more than plentiful and despite the fact that I'm long out of warranty, I have no desire to modify the power-train in any way at all. Handling too, continues to be almost perfect for a street car. 4 years in and the car continues to handle mid-corner bumps in a single, well-controlled event. Since purchasing this car, I've driven a base C7, a base 991, a GT350, a Hellcat (garbage), and a Scat Pack (garbage with less horsepower) and nothing is as well-tuned out of the gate as my 1LE in the suspension department except the 911 and it had so many other shortcomings that it doesn't matter. The shocks are really what make this car as well-mannered as it is. Springs are a bit soft, which you can really feel under braking, but overall the package works so well that I can't justify the money to improve it (and if I was going to do something, it would be to swap in the full Z/28 suspension package).

The real key to the whole thing though is in the API. For those that don't write software, API stands for Application Program Interface. It is the way you interact with someone's software program and Al and the rest of the crew at Chevy really did an amazing job on the driver's interface with this car.

I've been auto-crossing for two years now and I work very well with one off the club's instructors and often let him drive my car as he's a better driver than instructor. Like me, he's a purist. He cares very little about how much power a car makes, or how fast it shifts, he just wants a fantastic driving experience. Every time he gets in the driver's seat he comments on the lever between the seats. The shifter in my 1LE, which still feels brand new, is just so divine. An almost perfect throw, soft-touch surface, evenly-spaced gates, no annoying vibrations at idle or under load (ever drive an E30 M3?), it sits in the perfect spot relative to the wheel, and there's no slack at all. There are very few cars in the world that have a shifter that feels as good as this one. I love the Alcantara on the steering wheel as well, it's a special little touch that doesn't cost much to Chevy, but makes a world of a difference to me. The pedals are far enough away to satisfy the lawyers, but close enough to be able to heel-n-toe easily.

A driver engineered and built this car. When you watch the video of the ZL1/1LE on the Nurburgring, and you realize that that isn't some paid hot-shoe driver, but one of the Camaro team's chassis engineers doing the driving, you realize the kind of team that Al put together and why this car is so capable despite being so heavy. That's another thing. Cars this heavy don't handle like this. They just don't. It's very hard finding a car that weighs 500lbs LESS than my 1LE that handles as good as it does. And now that I'm two seasons in to racing it around the little orange things, I'm much more comfortable with it sideways and even then its amazing. It's November in two days and I still have the G2s on. Not out of laziness, but out of enjoying the 40-60 degree days where I can drive like Chris Harris for 5 or so minutes before the tires get warm, while staying entirely under the 25mph speed limit.

When I bought this car I was given the green light on an agreement my wife and I had made many years earlier. If I passed a certain income level I could buy a 911 GT3. Two things happened, the GT3s got more expensive, and more critically, they dropped the third pedal (yes, I know the third pedal came back this year but that didn't help me back in 2014). So I looked at used GT3s instead and during the research, I happened upon a Car & Driver lightning lap issue and read for the first time about the 1LE. Within two days, I had seen just about every piece of content on the car that YouTube had to offer and had read just about every publication's articles. I was nervous when I ordered this car; afraid I was going to regret not getting the GT3. That never happened.

I love this car.