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2016 Chevrolet Camaro is a reborn Alpha in familiar clothing (pictures)

Chevrolet's 2016 Camaro may not look all-new at first glance, but it's a whole-cloth redo for one of America's most popular and storied performance cars.

Chris Paukert
Following stints in TV news production and as a record company publicist, Chris spent most of his career in automotive publishing. Mentored by Automobile Magazine founder David E. Davis Jr., Paukert succeeded Davis as editor-in-chief of Winding Road, a pioneering e-mag, before serving as Autoblog's executive editor from 2008 to 2015. Chris is a Webby and Telly award-winning video producer and has served on the jury of the North American Car and Truck of the Year awards. He joined the CNET team in 2015, bringing a small cache of odd, underappreciated cars with him.
Chris Paukert
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The 2016 Camaro looks awfully familiar, but line it up next to last year's car and you'll see how much more crisply surfaced this car is.

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This bright yellow paint is a $395 option.

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The 2016 Camaro is 2.3 inches shorter overall and rides atop a 1.6-inch shorter wheelbase.

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This is likely to become a familiar view to would-be rivals who challenge the Camaro SS at the drag strip.

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This rear three-quarter view really shows off the Camaro bodyside's sinewy lower third.

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Dead-on rear is arguably Camaro's least interesting view, with a very tall and flat bumper, and derivative narrow tail lamps giving it a chunky, squared-off look.

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The Camaro's new headlamps can come with LEDs.

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RS and SS models (the latter is shown here) receive LED tail lights with light tube accents.

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The Camaro's young design team resurrected the car's tri-color emblem from earlier models.

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Chevrolet's familiar bowtie logo remains one of the most recognized corporate symbols in all of autodom.

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Until the inevitable range of higher-performance models surfaces, the SS trim is the top-performing 2016 Camaro extant.

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For $895, Chevy will happily fit your Camaro with a dual-mode exhaust that has electronic baffles that open at high engine revs for better acoustics.

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Behold, Chevrolet's latest 6.2-liter small-block V8. Dubbed LT1, it can also be found under the hood of the C7 Corvette. In this tune, it makes 455 horsepower and 455 pound-feet of torque.

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The Camaro's trunk looks even smaller and shallower for 2016 than it did in last year's model.

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The interior gets an overhaul too.

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These 1SS seats are nicely comfortable and supportive. The seat fabric itself feels somewhat coarse, though grippy.

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Note how high up the rear seat's bottom cushion sits. It's uncomfortably upright, and there's effectively zero headroom. Use this space for extra cargo room.

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An eight-speed automatic transmission is also available, and it's even a little bit quicker, but the six-speed manual is a good unit and ultimately more engaging.

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These oversized vent bezels neatly double as fan-speed and temperature control knobs. It's best to have big hands to operate them.

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This higher-end model's instrument cluster smartly mixes analog gauges with an 8-inch reconfigurable color center screen.

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GM's venerable OnStar telematics system is nicely integrated into this frameless rearview mirror.

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Clean, simple iconography is a hallmark of Chevrolet's MyLink infotainment system. Note the "Projection" button, which tips you off to its Android Auto and Apple CarPlay capability.

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A mixture of hard keys and touchscreen buttons keeps things simple.

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MyLink incorporates voice integration with casual speech pattern recognition.

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