The Flowtie Is a Real Thing That Will Make Your Chevy Camaro Z/28 Faster

2014 Chevy Camaro Z28 Flowtie

Engineers working on the 2014 Chevy Camaro Z/28 looked at every way possible to make it perform better on the track and one of their solutions is the Flowtie.

Nope, this is not a made up thing but an actual, real, name for a tiny piece of design engineering that helps improve the airflow to the engine. The Flowtie is what you’ll see where you normally see the iconic Chevy Bowtie logo on the car’s grille. It’s still there, you say? Look again.

The traditional bowtie is filled in, which Powertrain Cooling Development engineer Richard Quinn noticed was deflecting the air away from the engine. This had a big impact on engine cooling which is in turn a big issue for track performance.

Now, there was no way they were going to just get rid of the bowtie, that’d be like getting rid of the “S” on Superman’s chest, so instead they just gave it a little modification. Instead of a solid bowtie it’s now just a chrome outline dubbed the Flowtie.

This might seem like a ridiculously small change, but when it comes to vehicle performance, every little bit matters and it turns out this one mattered quite a lot. Simply by removing the center of the bowtie, an additional three cubic meters of air flows into the engine every minute.

This dropped the temperature of the engine coolant and engine oil by 2°F during track testing of the 2014 Chevy Camaro Z/28 and helped the Flowtie become standard equipment for the vehicle.

Check out this video of the 2012 Chevy Camaro ZL1 with an old-fashioned bowtie…

Nicole Wakelin fell in love with cars as a teenager when she got to go for a ride in a Ferrari. It was red and it was fast and that was all that mattered. Game over. She considers things a bit more carefully now, but still has a weakness for fast, beautiful cars. Nicole also writes for NerdApproved and GeekMom.