Like an old dog with IBS-inspired flatulence, the Camaro is set to be dragged by General Motors management behind the Detroit offices and put down with a double tap from a Remington — 2024 will be the final year for GM’s flagship muscle car, as reported by the Detroit Free Press. This news follows the similar retirement of the Dodge Charger and Challenger.
Jamie L. LaReu reports:
On Wednesday, GM said the final sixth generation Camaros will come off the assembly line at the Lansing Grand River Assembly Plant in January next year.
Scott Bell, vice president, Global Chevrolet, did not say what will replace the muscle car, but said “this is not the end of Camaro’s story.”
Chevrolet spokesman Trevor Thompkins told the Free Press that at the end of model year 2024, the sixth generation Camaro will have completed a strong nine-year life cycle, and “Chevrolet made the decision now as a part of continuously evaluating our portfolio offerings for progress toward our EV future and sales demand.”
GM started production on the current model Camaro in late 2016. Its sales comprise a small part of Chevrolet’s total sales. It served more as a halo product, like the Corvette, to shine on the brand and bring in new buyers across the portfolio. The Camaro sales were up 12.5% for 2022 compared with the previous year. For all of last year, GM sold 24,652 Camaros. But American-made performance cars have been a declining segment in recent years.
As sad as it is to see the end of the line for the internally combusting Camaro, the GM product has long been the runt of the litter in the American pony-car conversation — 2017 was the last time it beat out either Dodge’s Challenger or Ford’s Mustang in sales. Since then, it’s obvious that the Detroit product has been an afterthought. Why? EPA regulations, of course.
The muscle car’s death is a matter of artificially limited supply, not a demand problem. Auto manufacturers deplore seeing the gaseous and glowering pony cars leave the showroom floor because that means they’ll have to sell a heap of EVs and soulless econoboxes (one of which I own) to square their fuel-efficiency scores for when the EPA bureaucrats come a-calling. As reported by the New York Times in 2021, “the most significant climate action taken to date by the Biden administration and highest level ever set for fuel economy — would require passenger vehicles to travel an average of 55 miles per gallon of gasoline by 2026, from just under 38 miles per gallon today.”
If the standards are averages, the lowest-hanging fruit will be pruned — even if it’s the best product sold by the car manufacturer.
For now, Ford will continue with the Mustang. But even the king of pony cars will find the reaper in his parking bay eventually (speculatively 2028). The numbers are against him.