So Long, Camaro

Automaker will stop making iconic muscle car, but it's possible an electric version will emerge
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Mar 24, 2023 1:19 PM CDT
GM Pulls Plug on the Camaro
A 2023 Chevy Camaro 2SS Convertible is seen at a Chevy dealership in Wheeling, Ill., Wednesday, March 22, 2023. The Chevrolet Camaro is going out of production.   (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

The Chevrolet Camaro, for decades the dream car of many teenage American males, is going out of production. General Motors, which sells the brawny muscle car, will stop making the current generation early next year. The future of the car, which is raced on NASCAR and other circuits, is a bit murky, reports the AP. GM says another generation may be in the works. “While we are not announcing an immediate successor today, rest assured, this is not the end of Camaro's story,” said Scott Bell, vice president of Chevrolet. The current sixth-generation Camaro, introduced in 2016, has done well on the racetrack, but sales have been tailing off in recent years. Chevrolet sold 72,705 of them in 2016, but by the end of 2021 that number had fallen almost 70% to 21,893. It rebounded a bit last year to 24,652.

GM said the last of the 2024 model year will come off the assembly line in Lansing, Michigan, in January. Spokesman Trevor Thompkins said he can't say anything more about a future Camaro. “We're not saying anything specific right now,” he said. If GM revives the Camaro, it almost certainly will be electric, said Stephanie Brinley, an associate director with S&P Global Mobility. “It would be unlikely to see another internal combustion engine vehicle,” she said. GM has said it plans to sell only electric passenger vehicles worldwide by 2035. Brinley said the push to sell more electric vehicles makes it likely that all new muscle cars will be powered by batteries. Electric cars, with instant torque and a low center of gravity, often are faster and handle better than internal combustion vehicles.

Thompkins said GM has an understanding with auto-racing sanctioning bodies that the sixth-generation car can continue racing. GM will have parts available and the Camaro body will stay on the race track, he said. GM will offer a collector's edition package of the 2024 Camaro RS and SS in North America, and a limited number of high-performance ZL-1 Camaros. The collector's edition cars will have ties to the first-generation Camaro from the 1960s and its GM code name “Panther,” the company said. The Camaro was first introduced in 1966, two years after Ford's wildly popular Mustang.

(More Camaro stories.)

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