Chevrolet Camaro Production To End In January

Chevrolet has announced that in January 2024, the sixth-generation Chevrolet Camaro will officially exit production. With no immediate replacement, this is where the Camaro lineage stops for now. Chevrolet has promised an eventual successor, but it’s hard to say what form it might take. Will it be as wonderful and conflicted as the current car? Who knows? Still, ten months to buy your dream four-seat Chevrolet coupe isn’t much time at all, but it’s a miracle we still have ten months considering how hard of a life the sixth-generation Camaro has seen.

The reborn fifth-generation Camaro was a smash-hit for Chevrolet, building a whole bunch of cultural relevance on Holden bones. Not only were its ‘60s-inspired looks a huge hook, four-link independent rear suspension gave it an edge over the S197 Mustang which still used a live rear axle. Sure, outward visibility was limited and the large sedan-based platform meant that the Camaro weighed a few hundred pounds more than a comparable Mustang, but that’s show business. You know what else is showbiz? The difficult act of following up a crossover hit.

In 2015, plenty of rumors were swirling around the then-upcoming sixth-generation Camaro. Some expected it to take on a more ‘70s look as the logical continuation of the fifth-generation car’s retro theme. Well, when the sixth-generation Camaro debuted, it looked very similar to the outgoing car. Evolution rather than revolution often works well for mass-market cars like the Toyota Camry and Chevrolet Equinox, but something more specialized like a Camaro deserves more.

It turns out, all the “more” went underneath the new sixth-generation car. Not only is it lighter than the previous-generation model, it’s based on GM’s extremely good Alpha platform. This architecture first came under the Cadillac ATS and was benchmarked against some of the best luxury sports sedans the world has ever seen. The result is a world-class driver’s car dressed in a Busch Light wrapper. In SS 1LE trim, this trailer park icon ran rings around a new Toyota GR Supra 3.0, Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio, and Lexus RC F Track Edition in Car & Driver’s annual Lightning Lap track comparison test. Brake pedal feel is epic, steering calibration is intuitive and feelsome, magnetic ride control is magic, this is a full-fledged sports coupe that wants to dance, and it isn’t even the fastest Camaro Chevrolet offers. If you want to go even faster, you can buy a ZL1 or ZL1 1LE, both of which escaped a truly unfortunate decision made for 2019.

See, 2019 marked the fourth model year of the sixth-generation Camaro, which meant it was time for a facelift. While I doubt that GM still employed the same team that restyled the Pontiac Sunfire for 2003, the 2019 Chevrolet Camaro SS was 2003 Sunfire levels of ugly. Out was any sense of tastefulness and in was a massive single-frame grille covering most of the front end. It was so enormous, it swallowed up the bumper beam, the headlights, the Chevrolet emblem, and the brake ducts. The 2019 grille was so appalling that Chevrolet rallied its troops for an emergency redesign.

The end result is the Camaro SS you see up at the top of this page near the headline, a car that isn’t particularly pretty but isn’t egregiously hideous. Could GM have cleaned up the front end a little bit more? Absolutely. Could things have been a whole lot worse? Sure. At least Camaro owners can take solace in the fact that they don’t have to look at their cars while driving them. Granted, part of that is due to appalling outward visibility, but still.

The current Camaro is misunderstood. It’s the driver’s choice among the current crop of American four-seat coupes, yet drivers of sixth-generation Camaros can’t see out. It’s a car that begged to be taken to the track, yet can’t fit most helmets through its window apertures. It has some of the best inputs and worst ergonomic quirks in the industry, and it really should’ve seen more success than it did. It doesn’t matter whether you choose turbocharged four-cylinder, naturally-aspirated six-cylinder, naturally-aspirated V8, or supercharged V8 power, the Camaro is brilliant to drive so long as you can stand the way it looks.

Of course, the end of any era is prime for money-making opportunities, and GM is marking the end of sixth-generation Camaro production with a Collector’s Edition package on RS, SS, and a limited number of ZL1 models. While we won’t know much about the package until this summer, it feels a bit hollow when looking at how nuts Dodge went with the Challenger SRT Demon 170. Still, let’s wave farewell to a true enthusiast’s bargain. With the Mustang going it alone after January 2024, we may never see a GM coupe like this again.

(Photo credits: Chevrolet)

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