But the famous nameplate will live on in some form and the US muscle car will continue as GM’s local Supercars contender
General Motors has announced it will cease production of the current sixth-generation Chevrolet Camaro in January 2024 without a direct replacement, but says the famous Camaro nameplate will live on in future, at least in some form.
Before the Camaro is axed in 10 months, GM will offer North American buyers a limited number of Collector’s Edition versions of the 2024 Camaro RS, SS and ZL1, and further afield the Camaro name could be revived on an electric sports sedan.
However, the US car-maker’s local division says it has no plans to import any more Camaro vehicles Down Under, despite the fact the V8 coupe has just become GM’s contender in Australia’s premier motorsport category under this year’s new Gen3 Supercars ruleset.
So although the Camaro won a race in its debut Aussie outing at the Newcastle 500 two weeks ago, it will not ‘win on Sunday, sell on Monday’, as the old auto marketing adage goes.
But the announcement will likely improve the resale value of the relatively small number of current-gen Camaros sold in Australia since its US release in 2016.
About 1200 Camaro 2SS and 320 Camaro ZL1 vehicles were sold by HSV dealers between September 2018 and early 2020, after the right-hand drive coupe was developed and remanufactured by Walkinshaw Group.
At the time, the American muscle car was intended to act as a spiritual successor for the hot Holden Commodores sold by HSV until 2017, but RHD conversion costs made pricing significantly higher than the first global Ford Mustang’s, at about $90,000 and $160,000 for the ZL1.
A weakening Aussie dollar put an end to the program in 2020, when Holden was axed and General Motors Specialty Vehicles (GMSV) established to sell Chevrolet vehicles led by the remanufactured Silverado pick-up and now the global C8 Corvette.
Speaking to carsales at the recent launch of the MY23 Chevrolet Silverado, GM Australia and New Zealand chief Marc Ebolo confirmed the Camaro would not return to Australia but would continue to represent GM on track here.
“Camaro is the face of NASCAR,” he said. “It’s a global motorsport entry that we believe is the perfect vessel for Chevrolet Racing.
“It is a great brand to ignite the passion for motorsport and it’s a great brand to utilise across all of our business units.”
Chevrolet campaigns the Camaro in a variety of motorsport series, including NASCAR, IMSA, SRO, NHRA and Supercars, and said it will “continue to compete on track, working with motorsports sanctioning bodies to ensure Chevrolet’s presence in racing moving forward”.
“Chevrolet’s products and our relationship with our customers benefit from motorsports,” said Chevrolet’s US vice-president of performance and motorsports, Jim Campbell. “Our plan is to continue to compete and win at the highest levels of auto racing.”
Using the Camaro to sell Silverados is not a unique marketing strategy. Nissan continued racing the Altima in Supercars long after the road-going model was discontinued, arguing it encouraged buyer interest in the Nissan Navara ute and SUVs such as the Nissan X-TRAIL.
“We know at NASCAR for example a lot of them drive their race cars out with their pick-up truck,” said GMSV marketing and communications manager, Jodie Lennon.
“So that’s another big reason why we go to Supercars, to show we’ve got these vehicles you can tow your race cars to race meetings with.”
How long the Camaro will continue in Supercars – and what model it would be replaced with – remains unclear at this stage.
Either way, GM’s motorsport approach is now at odds with Ford, which continues to sell the Mustang it races globally – including in US stock car and drag car racing, international GT3 and GT4 racing and Australia Supercars, where the new seventh-generation Mustang won on its debut earlier this month even before its public release later this year.
It will replace a model that remains Australia’s top-selling sports car and has attracted more than 10,000 sales since its local motorsport debut in 2019 alone.
Conversely, although the Ford GT and Corvette still battle it out in sports car racing internationally, the Blue Oval’s second (modern) generation supercar was never produced in RHD before being discontinued last year, while the C8 Corvette is a global model range that continues to be rolled out, with about 300 sold so far in Australia and the Z06 on the way.
Chevrolet’s announcement confirms speculation about the death of the Camaro muscle-car dating back to at least 2021, amid nearly a decade of slowing sales since 2011, its best sales year with more than 88,000 sales.
The former market leader was outsold by the then-new Mustang in 2015 and has been in sales freefall ever since, proving less popular than the Dodge Challenger since 2018 and find just 22,000 homes in 2022, when it was outsold two-to-one by both the Mustang and Challenger.
First launched in 1967 – two years after the original Mustang – the first Camaro was followed by three more generations until a sales hiatus between 2002 and 2009, when the fifth-generation Camaro emerged on the same Zeta platform as Holden’s billion-dollar VE Commodore.
Ebolo said a factory RHD version of the final sixth-generation model, which may well have saved GM’s muscle-car, has “never been something that’s been in the plans”.
Now, Chevrolet says the Camaro’s axing “is not the final chapter for [the] nameplate”, but is yet to reveal what form the next-generation Camaro will take.
“As we prepare to say goodbye to the current generation Camaro, it is difficult to overstate our gratitude to every Camaro customer, Camaro assembly line employee and race fan,” said Global Chevrolet vice-president, Scott Bell.
“While we are not announcing an immediate successor today, rest assured this is not the end of Camaro’s story.”
Chevrolet is understood to be working on a new electric performance sedan due in 2025, but a recent US report suggested it and an SUV will wear Corvette badges and designs as part of a GM plan to establish Corvette as a sub-brand.
But there’s hope among muscle-car fans that it will remain a coupe – as suggested by a recent GM design sketch – powered by another big-bore petrol V8 following a recent billion-dollar powertrain investment.
Join the conversation at our Facebook page Or email us at [email protected]
Keyword: Chevrolet Camaro to be axed, no further Aussie imports planned