Chevrolet Camaro vs Ford Mustang. It’s a drag racing match-up that is as old as the two nameplates themselves and as many times as they may have seen it already, car enthusiasts will always stop to watch these two American icons race each – whether it’s on YouTube or at the drag strip.
This week’s Camaro vs. Mustang drag race comes from British motoring program Top Gear. The show recently acquired both a Chevrolet Camaro SS and Ford Mustang GT for a comparison review, so naturally, they lined the two up for a drag race to see which of the two has straight-line speed supremacy.
The only problem? One of Fifth Gear’s drivers, Tiff Needell, had trouble launching the Mustang off the line. It’s hard to say why he couldn’t get the Ford to hook up properly, but it seems as though he was launching the car from 5,000 RPM, which is too high, in our experience. If he programmed it to launch from a lower RPM, it may have hooked up similarly to the Camaro.
Speaking of the Camaro, Needell’s colleague Jason Plato rockets away in the car, leaving the Mustang for dead after hooking up without issue. This discrepancy is perhaps to be expected – it can be hard to compare manual transmission cars in a drag race, as it’s rare to have two evenly matched drivers. Needell has plenty of racing experience, as does Plato, so they should be quite equal, but Needell seems to have gone the wrong way with launch control set-up.
It’s also interesting to note that the Mustang Fifth Gear has is a European-spec version with clear rear lights and side markers and right-hand drive. General Motors would be wise to launch the Camaro into a global entity like Ford has done with the Mustang, but it seems GM is pulling back on the Camaro program, rather than expanding it.
This is also a 2018 model year Camaro (or earlier) as it is pre-facelift, while the Mustang seems to be from the 2019 or 2020 model year. This is also not surprising, as the Camaro is quite rare in Europe.
Check out the video embedded below.
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Comments
This is why in the 21st century automatics are the choice of transmissions in top-end sports cars! The less likelihood of a missed launch.
But nowhere near as much fun-
Tell that 2 the clutch plate/his CNS’s= (Central-Nervous-system) bodily response through his FOOT!! If you go up in RPS’s 2 much: your over torquing the chassis & tires!
This is also without the new eLSD Drag Race Calibration available on the ZL1.
More cubic inches and more torque in the Chevy. No surprise really.