We will be completely honest -- We don't like making promises that we can't keep. We see a lot of other manufacturers on forums post mockups and renders of products with promises of delivery in a few weeks, but end up not delivering until several months later, and most of the time scrapping the project--leaving people with a sour taste and sometimes losing their deposit.
Our philosophy is to keep our heads down and silently work on projects which enables us to not need to cut corners to make deadlines. Underpromise and overdeliver is our philosophy. Needless to say, when CamaroSix forum member, MeSSohappy, a fellow Canadian, approached us about the idea to create the 2017+ Camaro ZL1 Rear Rock Guards to go alongside our ZL1 Front Rock Chip Guards we were a little apprehensive.
The Camaro ZL1 was young when we first released the front splash guards so they did not get a lot of attention, but as the ZL1 became more available, more and more enthusiasts were taking it to the track and noticing how much road rash was hitting the ZL1--And, endless amounts of stone chipping from daily driving. The splash guards, mud flaps, rock chip guards are the best solution for that. We wrote a blog post for Corvette owners on how to protect their paint using rock guards that can be applied to the ZL1 called The Top 5 Ways to Protect Your Corvette's Paint
What began as a simple thread asking about the various stone and splash guard options for GM's beastly 2017+ Camaro ZL1 quickly evolved into a thread about a full package solution from ACS Composite--Not just the fronts. MeSSohappy took it upon himself to drum up the interest over time and presented it to us.
If we recall correctly, we initially turned MeSSohappy down the first time or at least shared our reservations about such a project; however, he was determined to make this happen as the interest had continued to grow on the ZL1 discussion forum. ZL1 rear rock guards were always in the cards, but it was a product that was low on our to-do list. To convince us to bring that to the top we set MeSSohappy with the task of securing 35 unique orders of the Camaro ZL1 Front Rock Guards. Once 35 orders were placed, we said we would have the guards ready after eight weeks.
Around mid-November 2018, the first CamaroSix order came through. It was a slow start, but with each new order the frequency picked up. Eventually, we hit order number 20 at which point we knew that the CamaroSix members were going to hit their mark. We finalized the design and set it off to tooling to get a head start on the project. We ran into a few hiccups (as is the norm in product development!). Orders twenty through thirty-five caught on like wildfire and occurred within two weeks. Shortly after the forum members hit 35 (the final count was 41).
The list put together by CamaroSix forum member MeSSoHappy to track interested ZL1 owners.
We received our first prototype on March 2nd or 3rd and quickly called all local Camaro ZL1 and ZL1-1LE owners in our area so we could go test them on the car (Most Camaro owners in Montreal store their car especially a ZL1/ZL1-1LE during the winter. Not an easy task to find someone!). We liked what we saw and raced back to send them next-day airmail to surprise MeSSohappy. As much as we would have loved to officially call these the MeSSoFlaps we'll have to stick with unofficially calling them that.
First glimpse of the ACS Composite ZL1 Rear Rock Guard injection mold when we first received it back from the tooling.
Overall, it was a fun experience and a nice challenge that we consider doing in the future! Thank you to all the front flap purchasers that had faith in the project, and a big thanks to MeSSohappy for bringing this all together. This is one story that will go down in ACS Composite history!
You can browse our full list of Camaro 2017+ ZL1 products here: https://acscomposite.com/collections/camaro-2017-2018-zl1