[Brokinarrow]

Originally Posted by cab2g

One day park your car next to an Impala. Look at the profile of both cars and you will see that you are basically driving a full-size car with 2 doors instead of 4. That's where the weight comes from. This car is huge. Now with that said, I love it the way it is. I don't really want a small 2-door car that I will look like a clown getting out of because I am so tall. So there are definitely people out there that appreciate a larger coupe. The Camaro is 12" shorter than the Impala. This car is 24" shorter (13%) than the Camaro and 5.5" more narrow by comparison... This car also has a 2L eingine compared to the Camaro's 3.6/6.2L.

Now, since all dimensions could be added up to provide a total volume of each car, you can start to see why the Camaro is so much heavier as the difference in volume is exponential to the difference in length, width and height by a power of 3. So for example say you have a 3x3x3 cube, you have a total volume of 27 units. But if you have a 4x4x4 cube you have a total volume of 64 units cubed. even though each dimension only increased by one unit, or 33% you have an increase in volume of 37 units cubed. or 137%! So if the mass was uniform over the cubes you would have a cube that was 137% more massive.

So to really simplify things, say half of a cars height is the ground clearance + roof and say that the cars have similar or negligible weights for the windows and roof (pretend they're both convertibles..) So say both cars have a body height of say 28" that would mean that the smaller dimensions of the car would make it have roughly 80% of the total volume of the Camaro. So the weight difference (74% as massive) seems to be in line especially considering that the larger the structure, the larger the supporting components normally are to support the increased weight, such as larger springs, mounts, etc... And of course the Camaro has a much larger engine even its base form, this requires even more beefy components to support the increase in horsepower and torque.

Nicely put sir!