With all the talk in the industry these days revolving around the new 2015 Ford Mustangs and Chrysler’s vaunted supercharged Hellcat, it’s easy to see how the Chevrolet Camaro could and has gotten lost in the fast street car conversation. But alas, Camaro owners are still out there hammering on their vehicles at the drag strip, delivering impressive numbers to rival or even best their Ford and Chrysler peers.
Camaro owners just like Floridian Stephen Vigoa, who recently reset the elapsed time record for a stock bottom, stock cubic inch Camaro with his modified ZL1. Those in Camaro and LS circles are already familiar with Vigoa, as he made headlines for pushing his car into the tens and then the nines with his once-bolt-on combination, and for giving a high-dollar McLaren everything it could handle in a side-by-side race in West Palm Beach a year ago.
Over the weekend Vigoa stormed to a pass of 9.863-seconds at 138.96 miles per hour with his red ZL1, doing so with the aforementioned stock bottom end, an aftermarket camshaft, ported stock heads, a ported supercharger, and the usual list of bolt-on’s. This, according to Vigoa, is a new record for such a combination.
Vigoa’s 2013 ZL1 was built-up by and is tuned by Jay Healy of KraftWorks, and features a Kraftworks custom cold air intake setup and reservoir tank and a KraftWorks-spec’ed custom camshaft from Comp Cams. The supercharger is a 1.9L factory Eaton piece that’s been ported by Latozke Racing — the outfit that also ported the stock LSA heads that sit atop the 6.2L V-8 that already produced a staggering 580 horsepower before Vigoa ever even laid hands on it.
Vigoa added American Racing headers to the package, along with a Nick Williams-built 102mm throttle body, Injector Dynamics ID850 injectors, and a 2.55 upper and 9.55 lower pulley to the supercharger to help deliver additional boost.
Backing the power up is the bone-stock six-speed 6L80E automatic transmission and torque converter and even the stock, unmolested suspension setup. And, according to Vigoa, absolutely nothing has been done in the weight reduction department, as the car tips the scales in race trim at a post-Thanksgiving-dinner-like 4,260 lbs.
“I drive the car to and from the track all the time I still can and have jumped on the road course with it,” says Vigoa. “It’s just a great combination. I love the car and it takes one hell of a beating. I bought it in March of 2013 and haven’t stopped pushing it since then.”
As he shared with us, in addition to the Eaton blower on the car, it also sports a Nitrous Outlet plate setup that he plans to get set up for use this year in hopes of pushing the car to the outright elapsed time record for ZL1 cars, which stands at a 9.60 currently. He’s debating somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 to 200 horsepower, in hopes the tires will take it.
Vigoa went 6.31 at 109 to the eighth-mile on his record run, and 1.40 to sixty-feet, which is quite impressive when you consider just how much weight is being moved from a dead-stop.