We’re not sure when it first happened, but at some point the whole auto industry decided that Germany’s “Green Hell,” aka the Nurburgring, has become the benchmark against which performance cars are matched. While the Europeans can afford to take each and every car out there for day after day of testing, American automakers have to pick and choose their battles.

GM has made no bones about testing its performance cars on the ‘Ring, from the new Cadillac ATS to the Camaro ZL1. And it is the Camaro ZL1 that is the star of the final of five videos documenting the Bowtie-wearing supercar’s journey from test track to dealership.

Just to erase any sort of anticipation, the Camaro ZL1’s Nurburgring track time was revealed last October. At 7 minutes 41.27 seconds, the ZL1 beat even the engineer’s time predictions (portions of this video were shot before the actual run) who estimated a time in the low 7:50’s. That’s just .04 seconds slower than a Porsche 911 Turbo, and faster than a Lamborghini Murcielago and or Nissan GT-R. Driver Aaron Link credited his practice with Forza 4 on the Nurburgring track as helping him prepare for the real thing.

This video wraps up the Camaro ZL1’s world-spanning journey from muscle car to supercar, and shows how surprised even its own engineers were at the car’s performance. It seems the reason why ze Germans spend so much time at the Nurburgring is because it really does make for a better car; the Camaro ZL1 is proof of that.