Depends on the Camaro. My friend had one with a factory 427 engine (which was not supposed to be available, so they put 396 emblems on the fenders). That thing had about an actual 650 HP after he put some headers on it and did a little head work. It ran a quarter mike in 11 something seconds at over 120 MPH with slicks and a 4:57 locked differential.
We USED to make great cars in the US. The original Mustang is still a sought after classic, the Corvette is pretty snazzy, and a few other models were top drawer. But no, we never were good at making the highly refined stuff like the Germans. Of course, we won't bring up the subject of French cars here......pretty bad cars. Then there were the British cars of the 70's with Lucas electrics. Lucas, the Prince of Darkness! My first car was an MG 1100 sedan. Three days after buying it the entire electrical system went up in smoke. Having worked on Fiats at dealerships, the Italians were capable of making junk cars quite as well, or as badly, as anybody else.
Ford did manage to beat Ferrari at Le Mans and Daytona with their GT 40, which is still one of the most desirable cars in the world, both the original and the reissued version. For almost two decades, if your Formula One car wasn't powered by a Ford Cosworth engine you couldn't win much. What killed us here in the US w/ cars was when we were building junk in the 70's, the Japanese were importing small, efficient quality cars with excellent dealerships and service. It's been catch up ever since, and now our robots are almost as good as theirs, so the quality has gone up even if the engineering hasn't.
We did manage to put people on the moon, remember? We weren't always stupid. Just now we're not so smart anymore. The whole culture has collapsed, and it's been done by design by Big Corporations in order to have a huge workforce not trained well enough to do much besides their low paying crap jobs. It's all about the bottom line baby.
