Another one bites the dust.
Chevrolet announced Wednesday that production of the Camaro will end in January of next year.
The move follows Dodge’s plan to discontinue the Challenger at the end of 2023 and replace its V8 muscle car models with a vehicle based on the all-electric Charger Daytona SRT concept.
The current sixth-generation Camaro has been on sale since the 2016 model year and has fallen to a distant third behind the Challenger and Ford Mustang in the “pony car” sales race.
Just 24,652 were delivered in 2022, which also put it behind the Chevrolet Corvette’s tally of 34,510 cars.
“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 Scott Bell, vice president of Global Chevrolet. “While we are not announcing an immediate successor today, rest assured, this is not the end of Camaro’s story.”
Chevrolet, along with the rest of the General Motors brands, is working toward having an all-electric passenger car lineup by 2035.
The brand hasn’t said if an internal combustion engine successor to the Camaro is in the works, but it did recently announce a $854 million investment in new V8 engines for its trucks and SUVs.
Many of Chevrolet’s racing cars wear the Camaro name, including its NASCAR Cup Series and NHRA drag racers, and it has not yet said exactly how that will be addressed.
“Chevrolet’s products and our relationship with our customers benefit from motorsports,” said Jim Campbell, Chevrolet U.S. vice president of Performance and Motorsports.
“Our plan is to continue to compete and win at the highest levels of auto racing.”
Chevrolet is also entering a modified version of the Cup Car in this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans as a demonstration of NASCAR’s latest tech.
While Dodge is sending out the Challenger with the 1,025 hp Challenger SRT Demon 170 that’s the most powerful and quickest muscle car of all time, Chevrolet will be offering a Collector’s Edition package across the lineup on the Camaro RS, SS and ZL1 that will commemorate the end of production.
Aside from a darkly lit teaser photo that shows the Collector’s Edition ZL1 casting a shadow shaped like Panther, no details were announced, but Chevrolet said it “pays homage to Camaro, resurfacing ties that date back to the development of the first generation Camaro in the 1960s, most notably the program’s initial code name: Panther.”
The original Camaro was developed to take on the Ford Mustang, which has been redesigned for 2024 and is expected to be sold with turbocharged four-cylinder and V8 engines for years to come, according to Ford.