---
title: "2017 Chevrolet Camaro SS Convertible Quick Review"
description: "Critic’s Notebook takeaway: This shouty beast needs pasture, not city traffic."
date: "2016-07-29"
modified: "2016-07-29"
authors:
  - name: "Ben Keeshin"
    link: "https://www.thedrive.com/authors/ben-keeshin"
url: "https://www.thedrive.com/muscle-cars/4631/2017-chevrolet-camaro-ss-convertible-quick-review"
categories:
  - "Chevrolet News"
  - "News"
  - "News by Brand"
tags:
  - "Camaro"
  - "Chevrolet"
  - "Convertible"
  - "Critics' Notebook"
  - "sports car"
---

# 2017 Chevrolet Camaro SS Convertible Quick Review

![](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/images-by-url-td/content/archive-images/critics-notebook-chevy-camaro-ss-convertible-hero.jpg>)
*\<em\>www.thedrive.com</em>*

*Welcome to* Critic's Notebook*, a quick and off-the-cuff collection of impressions, jottings, and marginalia on whatever* The Drive *writers happen to be driving. Today's edition: the 2017 Chevrolet Camaro SS Convertible.*

The 2017 Chevrolet Camaro SS Convertible demands your participation in the world—it goads you into a neon Speedo and then hip-checks you into the pool. It shoves you out onto the streamer-framed dance floor at junior prom, even if you’re still munching Cheetos and contemplating a scientifically-unprecedented act of self-dissipation. The [Camaro SS Convertible](<https://www.thedrive.com/muscle-cars/3500/chevrolet-camaro-ss-convertible-quick-review>), especially lacquered in Yellow (do not be fooled by [Chevy’s mellow, saffron-y pictures](<https://www.chevrolet.com/2016-camaro-sports-car.html>), the color is School Bus Yellow backlit by [Julia Roberts’ grin](<https://iwritealot.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Julia-Roberts-14.jpg>)) serves its driver up to other motorists like a sheepish suckling pig on a lurid platter. But the driver, unlike the hog, will be living, thriving, and alert, with just a light shellacking of bug guts across the forehead rather than a honey glaze.

It’s pure spectacle, a V8 Sousaphone over 20-inch wheels that only knows how to play fanfares. The cadmium yellow glow draws gawkers like the insects to a porchlight. Putting the top down waives any right to privacy. One Rolls-Royce convertible aside, never have I felt so transformed into a curious morsel for public consumption; even the usually car-blind hunger for dollops of meaty ‘Maro

![critics-notebook-chevy-camaro-ss-convertible-art-1.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/critics-notebook-chevy-camaro-ss-convertible-art-1.jpg>)
**Max Goldberg/TheDrive.com**

While I’m sure it can be done under the influence of six or seven Gennessee Cream Ales, or after a vigorous day in the mines, it seems nearly impossible to fall asleep at the wheel of a six-speed-equipped Camaro SS Convertible. Between the shifting and the accelerating and the manic braking because you’ve accelerated too quickly—all to a V8 soundtrack tuned to emulate the Lord’s chuckle—driving the Camaro Convertible is a four-limbed hustle. To slip into sleep during such an activity would be like dozing off during the finale of your solo tap routine, thighs and hands wind-milling.

If you get the impression that driving such a charismatic speedboat is stressful, it is, at least in New York City, where I drove the car. Not only can the big motor not stretch its legs, in traffic it’s bound to an uncomfortable shuffle, a sprinter asked to complete a series of 50 two-meter sprints rather than his 100-yard gallop. Looking to do the sports car justice, I drove it to the beach; speeding along a causeway with the roof down and the engine sounding a barbaric yowl is a favorite car memory. Then, we arrived at the beach to find almost no parking. Driving around a twee beach town trying to squeeze two tons of yellow muscle car into remnants of parking spaces—the engine yelping as I feathered the throttle, trying to go slow—felt like walking Big Bird on a leash through a funeral.

![critics-notebook-chevy-camaro-ss-convertible-art-2.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/critics-notebook-chevy-camaro-ss-convertible-art-2.jpg>)
**Ben Keeshin/TheDrive.com**

As glorious and fast and nimble as the new Camaro is—in fact, exactly because it’s so dynamic—it belongs in the country. A lower population density would mean a just-bearable number of stares, and the open road would allow the kind of long-pull, high-gear acceleration that the Camaro is built for. Pulling up to a party on the outskirts of town, cruising to get ice cream with three passengers, or bombing down a mountain road—these are the things the Camaro wants to do. Bill De Blasio would agree: horses this noble don’t belong in the city, subject to traffic and nervous of trampling pedestrians.

While America has always provided relatively cheap cars, it has also always provided *value*. (See: Top-spec Eighties Camaros with poverty-spec outputs.) But today, post-Bailout? The price-per-pound is staggering. You can walk out the door with a burly V8 coupe *with* Magnetic Ride Control for well under $40,000—this, at a time when an utterly option-less BMW 328i lists for $39,345. The moment I give up on urban life, I know exactly the righteous, sun-bright sled to buy.

--

**2017 Chevrolet Camaro SS Convertible**

BASE PRICE (AS TESTED): $49,900 ($50,495)

**POWERTRAIN:** 6.2-liter V8, 455 hp, 455 lb-ft torque; rear-wheel drive; six-speed manual transmission

**WEIGHT:** 3,966 lb

**0-60 MPH:** 4.2 seconds

**MPG:** 16 city / 25 highway

**COUNTRY MOUSE OR CITY MOUSE:** Country lion.

## Author
Ben Keeshin is a former staff writer for Maxim, and before that, contributed writing to the digital sides of Road & Track and Vanity Fair.

### Author social links  
[Twitter](<https://twitter.com/BnKshn>)