Not withstanding its more experienced brother the C5, or the very pricey Viper GTS-R, the current-generation F-body is perhaps the best-handling production car U.S. automakers have ever built. Right off the showroom floor, the fourth-generation unibody Camaro can pull impressive g's and beat even the best factory prepared racecars of an era long gone. All this performance does not come with a high price tag, either. Today you can walk into your local Chevy dealer and drive off in a brand-new SS Camaro for less than $30,000. When compared to the $45,000-plus you'd shell out for a C5 or the $75,000-plus the Viper call tag will squeeze out of your bank account, the F-body's price seems minor, while its performance-per-dollar ratio is major.
What if there was a way to improve that performance ratio further, without hawking your home furniture to pay for it? Granatelli Motorsports has designed and currently offers several suspension products for third- and fourth-generation F-bodies that will stiffen the chassis and make them stick to the road like their tires were made of Super Glue. We stopped by Granatelli's to check out his parts, and we weren't disappointed in what we found.
Quick Installation
One of the truly great feats of modern engineering is that cars today are so well built, and the aftermarket in such fine tune with any new muscle, that most suspension upgrades can be made in the driveway on any lazy afternoon. Granatelli chose a brand-new 2000 Camaro SS that had just a few miles on its odometer to test its parts. True to claim, the Granatelli suspension pieces bolted on with very minor alignment persuasion in just a couple hours. Granted, this was in a professional shop, with a car hoist and air tools, but even lying on your back using only hand tools, you could still get the job done in an afternoon.
Handling Made Easy
With it's multi-link-type rear suspension, the new F-body handles corners with an ease that car designers could only dream of 30 years ago. But cost and time, as always, limit GM's design and manufacture. Punching millions of stamped control arms from a giant roll of thin steel is always more cost effective than welding steel tubing together. That's why GM, as well as all the other giant carmakers, equips its cars with stamped rear control arms. While these arms work great in a straight line, or when grandma is the pilot, put yourself in the driver's seat and you'll feel those bars flex as you drift into the next corner.
Granatelli has engineered new tubular control arms with welded ends fitting polyurethane bushings from Energy Suspension. The 15/8-inch diameter bars are made from 0.120-inch thick steel tubing, powdercoated bright red, with its ends equipped with grease fittings to make lubing the bushings an effortless task. These tubular control arms will not flex, and by themselves can greatly improve handling.
Adjustability
Adding to the stability and strength offered by the tubular control arms, Granatelli offers two new Panhard bars for the F-body: fixed and adjustable. The fixed bar is a simple bolt-in replacement for the stock, stamped steel piece that will not flex under hard cornering. The adjustable Panhard bar offers the same stiffness in the turns and gives the installer the ability to center the axle housing beneath the car for the best possible weight distribution and handling. Granatelli says that most F-bodies will require an adjustable Panhard bar when installing super-wide rubber like 315/35ZR17s in the back. Otherwise the tire will stick outside the wheelwell on one side and rub the inner wheel tub on the other. Since the rearend is usually out of alignment from the factory, the adjustable Panhard bar allows it to be shifted side-to-side to get the correct spacing for the fat rubber.