Despite ending production in 2023, the lineage of the Chevrolet Camaro nameplate may merely be in purgatory. GM Authority claims that a General Motors team has been working on a plan for a more affordable next-generation Chevrolet Camaro, but the plan has run into a snag.
As GM Authority reported, “Upon being presented to decision-makers, the proposal was ‘blown apart’ due to the business case not being strong enough.” However, the plan isn’t dead yet, with GM Authority adding:
One source tells us that GM is still kicking the project around. “It’s still in play, but the light at the end of the tunnel is now dimmer,” the source tells us.
While reports of no outright cancellation are somewhat encouraging, management raising some fundamental issues could put a damper on morale. After all, this is the same company that decided to build an incredibly expensive 4.2-liter twin-turbocharged hot-vee V8 and then only use it in 1,200 cars. Fiscal responsibility hasn’t been this company’s historical strong suit, so if the business case for a new Camaro is deemed weak, things must be really bad.
Part of the problem might be that the appetite for coupes is currently quite small. In 2015, the first full year of the sixth-generation Mustang, Ford managed to sell 122,349 examples of its pony car. Flash forward a major model cycle, and Ford sold 48,605 Mustang coupes and convertibles in 2023, followed up by 44,003 in 2024. Admittedly, sales were affected by some teething issues launching the heavily revised 2024 model year Mustang, but that’s still a precipitous drop. It’s a similar deal with the Subaru BRZ. In 2013, the first full year of the Toyobaru, Subaru sold 8,587 units in America. Flash forward to 2022, the first full year of the second-generation car, and Subaru shifted just 3,345 coupes.
So what’s going on here? Well, believe it or not, young people actually still want coupes. A 2024 Insurify study of 4.5 million car insurance applications found that Generation Z was 239 percent more likely than average to buy a Toyota GR86. It’s a similar story with the Subaru BRZ. JD Power reported that the median age of new small sporty car buyers was 58 in 2021, while Maritz reported that the median BRZ buyer age in 2021 sat below 40.
Indeed, the real generational shift seems to fall on more mature demographics. The youngest millennials turn 29 this year, which means the vast majority of millennials are in their family-building years. It’s harder to justify a coupe when you’re toting around car seats, especially since they’ve grown so much bulkier than the flimsy plastic tubs we rode around in as kids. This points at a larger potential issue for a new Camaro’s business case — coupes are cool, but like Saves The Day, the car-buying public is through being cool. They have stuff to carry and passengers needing seats, and the rise of the crossover SUV has made lots of people realize that separate trunks aren’t the most practical cargo-hauling arrangements out there.
Indeed, while the midsize sedan segment is in a death spiral, the compact crossover segment is still booming. Last year, the Toyota RAV4 outsold the Ford F-150 in America, and four of the ten-best-selling new vehicles in America were crossover utility vehicles. It’s the right form factor for a lot of people, but the problem is that the crossover isn’t the right form factor for a Camaro. The sixth-generation car was renowned for its balance and handling, and enthusiasts would riot if Chevrolet’s pony car became yet another crossover.
One potential solution is to pull a page out of Chrysler’s playbook, a suggestion that sounds absurd at first glance given the Global Leyland clusterfuck Stellantis is going through right now, but might make sense once it’s explained. Back in the mid-2000s, Dodge revived the Charger coupe, except this time, not as a coupe. While this full-sized sedan was initially met with some uproar, it sold incredibly well throughout its lifespan because it paired four-door usability with V8 performance at a reasonable price point. It was a great mix of what buyers needed and what buyers wanted, so perhaps the next Camaro could be a little more usable than the last one.
After all, the sixth-generation Camaro rode on GM’s Alpha platform, the same one underneath the current Cadillac CT4 and CT5 sedans. It’s an architecture renowned for its handling that can accommodate four-cylinder, V6, and V8 powertrains, along with both rear-wheel-drive and all-wheel-drive and both two-door and four-door body styles. While some re-engineering would be required to build a five-door liftback on the Alpha platform, a sort of Audi A5 Sportback-style Camaro would be especially brilliant. Not only were the beloved third-generation and fourth-generation cars liftbacks, but a five-door liftback-body style offers some significant practicality benefits over a traditional sedan and could be just practical enough to coax pony car dreamers out of crossover utility vehicles.
Looking at what’s currently available in the Alpha platform, the 325-horsepower 2.7-liter turbocharged inline-four would be a perfect match for the 315-horsepower 2.3-liter turbocharged inline-four in the Ecoboost Mustang, and not only does the 455-horsepower 6.2-liter LT1 V8 fit, it would be a great match against the 480-horsepower Mustang GT. What’s more, the platform already offers the Tremec TR-6060 six-speed manual transmission for the row-your-own crowd.
While diehards would love another Camaro coupe, Chevrolet’s pony car might need to change a little to survive. Whether it’s a matter of bringing serious affordability or one of expanding the model’s practicality slightly, it’ll need to buck the trend of declining coupe sales to be feasible.
(Lead photo credit: Chevrolet)
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“The youngest millennials turn 29 this year, which means the vast majority of millennials are in their family-building years. It’s harder to justify a coupe when you’re toting around car seats, especially since they’ve grown so much bulkier than the flimsy plastic tubs we rode around in as kids”
I dunno about you but when I was young enough to have ridden in a car seat the average family size was larger than 3.14. Of today’s households only 56% have kids under 18 living with them. On top of that there are a LOT of single Millennials, 51% of men 18-29 are single. So while I think kids may be one reason they are one of several like affordability, parking availability, fashion, etc.
Whatever ends up happening, it’s likely that Generally Mediocre would look at their turbo 3’s that they put in their micro-SUV’s and think to themselves, we have a perfectly cromulent powerplant that will serve well enough as the base engine for the new camaro.
What I would love to see is a 6 cylinder version of the corvette z06 engine.
Flat-plane crank 4.1 L with 500HP with a 6speed manual.
What we need is a small coupe and a big sedan.
My 2019 Camaro feels like a Toyota 86 that’s had the turbo kit and widebody kit installed at the factory rather than aftermarket. It’s right-sized for track & rallycross enthusiasts, but simultaneously too big outside and too small inside for most customers.
GM is facing the tomato sauce dilemma here. Some like it smooth, like a Toyota 86 that can be daily driven on a budget while still linking a twisty track with aplomb. Some like it chunky, like a Dodge Charger Hellcat that can cruise in comfort on the way to a track or drag day at Willow Springs. There’s not one optimal solution for a sporty car — there are two.
Build two new products on the Alpha chassis:
The Alpha chassis is still in production. There’s a market for the above cars, especially if GM makes them affordable.
I like this . Solid. It’s probably time for General Motors to bring back a new retro platform anyway, and roll with it.
I saw a hero in a 911 with TWO kid car seats in the back seats. The rest of us are slackers. We traded our 300ZX in on a Subaru wagon when twins were on the way.
Even better, I saw a Ferrari Mondial with two kid car seats in Munich. I know Ferrari Mondial is one of the most unloved Ferrari cars…
As a millennial in family building stage, my BRZ works just fine being a stay at home dad with just one kid, but 2 wouldn’t work cause of my height (no on can be behind me, front seat touches the back). Fortunately we are stopping at 1, haha. But a coupe with just a bit more practicality (lift back or gasp! Shooting Brake!!!) and similar affordability would be great. And no need for a new platform, the alpha is amazing and Nissan is running around with a coupe on an over 2 decade old platform, so it’s not like it would be suffering much. Makes the most sense for a niche product I think. If you must make a 5 door to add the numbers up feel free, just keep the size from ballooning to Charger proportions.
I still want a coupe, but I would accept a four door. Just don’t put the name on a CUV. What kind of weasel would do that?
I prefer coupes, over the past decade or so, I’ve gone through a 2013 Mustang, 2014 Camaro, and 2016 Challenger, wanted to get another Challenger before production stopped, but I found out I can’t get business mileage reimbursement on coupes, so that killed that idea. No point in taking on a new car loan for something that’s just going to sit 5 days a week, I already have other cars to drive on the weekends
That’s a very good point and I agree with you. But what I wonder is what is the reason for going through so many vehicles that are in similar age? Did you not like them or was it a lease or why did you not hang onto them?
I bought the Mustang new, had it for 4 years, traded it on a new Challenger, then had the Challenger for a couple of years*, took a job that included a company car and also bought a house that needed renovation work, and decided I didn’t want to keep carrying a car loan for something I was hardly using. It had a lot of equity, so I traded it on a used Town Car to use as a second vehicle, plus a lot of cash. Few years after that, I changed jobs again, to something that didn’t include a company car, but did include a long commute, and the Town Car started pissing me off with its paint peeling off in sheets for no good reason, so I traded that in on an ultra low mileage, garage queen 2014 Camaro with a CPO warranty.
I decided against a second Mustang, because of the galvanic corrosion issues I had on the aluminum hood and trunk lid that Ford would not cover under the corrosion warranty, and also liked that the Challenger was just bigger and more comfortable, drove it back and forth to Florida several times, 2400 miles round trip, turned out to be a great highway car
I like it makes total sense thanks for the detail, my friend. I think I would’ve done the same thing.
GM performance should look like this:
Corvette
Monte Carlo (built on the C7 platform)
Camaro
Chevelle (Four door Camaro)
Solstice
Will it happen? Nope. GM hates selling cars
GM didn’t sell enough Camaros to make the platform profitable, so your contention is that they need some BMWesque escalating lineup of
2 and 4 door performance cars?
It’s a bold strategy Cotton . . .
My mother had a third gen liftback for many years (One reason I call bullshit when people say coupes, especially Camaros, can’t be family cars. I lived that life. It as fine.), and the cargo capacity of that was honestly astounding. Look, I love the first gen design as much as the next guy, but Chevy, Ford, and Dodge have been riding that sixties wave for 20 years. The people with true nostalgia for the era aren’t getting any younger. It’s well past time for an update, perhaps even a true new design.
Sporty, practical, and retro if you really insist, don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
“It’s well past time for an update, perhaps even a true new design”
Careful what you wish for. That kind of thinking is how BMWs got giant beaver teeth and Lexus predator face.
*shudders*
True. Last time they tried something new, we had the 2019 Camaro.
However, unlike BMW and Lexus, Chevrolet actually fixed it in 2020.
I’m for it. The only reason muscle cars are coupes is because that just happened to be a popular body style in the 60s. There wasn’t any deeper thought that went into it
Would they even need to do this to the Camaro name? Honestly I’d love a RWD Malibu sedan and coupe!
It is SO hard to find a stick ATS-V coupe in good condition at a reasonable price.