I’ve had the Chevy Camaro on my  mind a lot lately, and that’s never a bad thing. The Camaro is one of the greatest lines of muscle cars ever made. Ask someone who knows nothing about cars to think of the archetypal “muscle car,” and nine times out of ten, they’ll call a Camaro to mind. From its first announcement back in 1966 (the first time 14 cities were connected up to a conference call), it’s had a lot of success stories. When asked what the Camaro name meant, GM told the press it was a small animal which “eats Mustangs.” You can see what they were aiming for really, can’t you?

Of course, with a production run as long as this, not every model is going to be as incredible as the last. There are going to be some disappointments.  The decades of production also means that some of them are going to be standouts, not just for the Camaro, but for motoring as a whole. In this article, I’m going to take a look at the seven greatest Camaro models to ever grace the world’s highways and byways, and three which missed the mark.

1969 Camaro ZL1

If you want to talk about the “quickest” Camaros, it’s pretty inevitable that you’re going to end up talking about the latest models. Now, I don’t have a problem with the new models, but they don’t qutie get me the same way. That’s why I wanted to talk about this incredible car from the late 60s. The car whipped its way from 0-60 in 5.3 seconds, and could hit a quarter-mile in 13 seconds. This was thanks to a 427 ci all-aluminum engine, which, while it may have been rated at 435 horsepower, could actually produce over 500. This was a recipe for some magic.

This car was so great it had to be produced by some backdoor secrecy on the parts of the designers. It utilized the Central Office Production Order (COPO) program, meant to be used for building taxis and other specialty vehicles, but that was also used to build exceptional muscle cars. They brought in drag racer Dick Harrell to help design it, and well, the speeds speak for themselves. Only 69 were built, but if you have several hundred thousand dollars to spend, and want one of the best Chevys ever made, the ZL1 is what you need.