It is one of the great
American pony cars. Chevrolet's Answer to the
Ford Mustang. It has been a fixture of
American racing, a track Ready, V8 powered beast. The car has inspired fierce
passion among fans. My wife was sitting with
me, I said, "we're going to Get that car." People name their Camaros. There are people that
collect them. I like to say you can never
have too many. But now it's going away and
it's unclear if it will ever Come back in different
shape or form. They would like to be 100%
light vehicle electric by 2035. So, yeah, every
decision that's made Regarding the product
portfolio from now until Then will be defined by
that. So why did GM decide to put
one of the most iconic American sports cars of all
time to rest? And what does the future
hold for the Chevrolet Camaro and its fans? I got my Camaro in 2009. I did that after watching
the Transformers movie. When I saw that car change
in the tunnel from the Second gen into the fifth
gen and my wife was sitting With me, I said, "we're
going to get that car." Francisco Mercado, who goes
by Cisco, is a gearhead and Car fan. My first car was a VW 1965
VW Bug. I learned how to drive
stick shift on that car, and Since then I've had so many
cars I can't even count. He's had Mustangs, Dodges
and Camaros. That's his big love. Ever since that
Transformers movie nearly 15 Years ago.
Now he is the president of
New York Fifth Gen, a club Filled with fellow Camaro
fans who collect, modify, Wrench and bond over what
they consider to be the Coolest, most fun car on
the road. Sadly for these fans,
though, the Camaro, as they Know it, will soon be gone. Released in 1966. The Camaro was GM's answer
to the Ford Mustang in the Then-nascent domestic
sports car segment. These were gas-guzzling,
stylish, muscular cars meant For racing, cutting loose
or simply attracting Attention like its rival. It was intended as a sports
car for the people. The 1960s and 70s were the
era for high performance Sedans, sometimes called
muscle cars and smaller Coupes, sometimes called
pony cars. The Camaro and Mustang were
the latter. The car rolled into
dealerships for the first Time on September 29th,
1966. It sold 221,000 units that
year, though it was a Success, it was only about
half the Mustangs sold in 1964, the first year that
vehicle was sold. However, over the years,
the Camaro has made its own Stamp on history. We focus a little bit more
on the whole driving Experience. It's not- it
hasn't been just a Straight-line car. Camaros have been great
handling cars, fun to drive, You know, everything from
the latest zl1, you know, Going to Nurburgring,
things like that, showing That it can, you know,
stretch beyond just what People think of as the
muscle car. It can go up against true
high-performance sports cars From anywhere.
From the beginning, the car
was closely connected with Racing, like the Indy 519
67 and 1969. The tradition continued for
generations. The Z28 was introduced in
1967. Camaro's best year was
1979, 282,571 sold and 85,000 of them were z28s. Camaro has always been about
affordable performance. Really. It's a two-door
coupe or convertible and you Get you get reasonably and
then the base car, you get Reasonable power, but you
also get these really great V-8s. That said, Camaros can be
expensive. Zl1 can sell for $80,000
with the 1LE track package. They're not necessarily
cheap, but they're cheaper Than than than a lot of
sort of luxury sports cars Or they're cheaper than a
Corvette. Right? They're cheaper than a
Porsche. They're cheaper Than a Ferrari. But still,
they're dynamic. They're exciting. They certainly do project
an aura of youthfulness and, You know, of attitude and
and a little bit of like We're we're out to have fun
and we're out to go get There. I think it really
does does cross sort of Income levels. It crosses
minorities, it crosses Gender, it crosses all
walks of life. However, the car is not
known as the easiest to live With in its segment. The Camaro is notorious for
having rather poor Visibility. Outlets like
Consumer Reports have noted It as one of the worst in
its category. You've got some compromises
in terms of what you can do With the vehicle, but it's
all worth it when you're Driving it. This is not the first time
the Camaro has been
Discontinued. Declining
sales led GM to pull it off The market in 2002. Scott Settlemire was a
product manager for Camaro And ran auto shows for
General Motors. He's also worked closely
with the Camaro fan Community online. I lobbied Strong to get it
to come back into the Portfolio, and so we
finally brought it back. We showed the concept in
January of 2006, and I was Able to invite 250 Camaro
enthusiasts to the unveiling At the North American
International Auto Show in Detroit. And when we
unveiled it, I had Full-grown men burst into
tears. I think there was such an
outcry from the Camaro Enthusiasts and things that
it's always been it was Always in the back of our
minds to bring that back. And we did that. Beautiful show car 2006,
which kind of brought back Some of the heritage, you
know, Camaro kind of a Little bit of this of the
69 Camaro in there. And when that was shown, it
was shown as a concept. But once it was shown in
the enthusiasts, we have to Get that to production. And basically it became it
was an early 2010 model Where we came out in 2009
and and that was a big hit. 61,000 units sold in 2009
when it was introduced again Through 2014. Sales were consistently in
the 80,000 range, and this Time it sold better than
its rival, Mustang. But by 2019, sales had
fallen to about 48,000, the Lowest in years, and it
lagged far behind Competitors. There are a
few reasons why this Happened. First of all,
people just aren't buying Sports cars like they used
to.
By 2010, the infiltration
of the crossover utility Vehicle was well underway,
and since then, the segment Has taken over. Cars made
up 43% of all sales in 2010. In 2022, they made up 19%. Sports cars already a niche
segment at just over 5% of The market in 2010, were
less than 2% in 2022. Crossovers broadly
described are vehicles that Include elements of cars
such as unibody Construction, but look more
like sport utilities. Those have gone from 25% of
the market to almost 50%. Pickup trucks have also
gained share from 14% to Almost 20%. If you add up trucks, SUVs
and crossovers, that's Three-quarters of the
market. I'm kind of old school
hardcore. I love sports cars, you
know, like the Camaro and The Corvette. But, you
know, the SUV design, you Know, crossover, they do so
many things. Well, the Camaro sold 24,652
units in 2022. While that is a 12.6
increase from 2021 compared To the Chevrolet Silverado,
it's a fraction GMC Sierra Cadillac Escalade. Pretty much all of GM's
best selling vehicles are Pickup trucks and SUVs. The Corvette, Camaro's
pricier sports car sibling Outsold the Camaro by only
about 10,000 units, Making The case for a sports car
with a big V8 engine is also Getting harder. Another
reason the Camaro has Declined in popularity. There are a lot of things
changing. Obviously there's a lot of
regulations coming the way With emissions and fuel
economy and things like that That have to be balanced
going forward. The Biden administration has
released the toughest fuel
Economy regulations ever
Stellantis, a GM competitor Saw the writing on the
wall. They planned to end Production of the
gasoline-burning version of The Challenger, which
outsold both the Mustang and The Camaro in 2022. So far, the plan seems to
be a fully electric vehicle. For now, Ford has kept its
two-door Mustang, but has Also attached the Mustang
brand to a four-door Electric crossover called
the Mach e Chevy unveiled a Hybrid version of its
Corvette in January 2023. Every year, the federal
government releases a report That ranks the fleet-wide
fuel efficiency and CO2 Emissions of every
automaker selling cars in The US in 2021. The most recent data
available, Dodge parent Stellantis, was ranked the
worst, followed by GM and Ford. Despite its plans to
aggressively push into EVs. GM's corporate average fuel
economy actually dropped From the previous year. Those new Biden rules,
those require an average of 49 miles per gallon across
an automaker's fleet by 2026, more than twice that
of GM's fleet wide average. The Camaro gets an average
of about 25 miles per gallon For the four cylinder, but
that quickly drops to 16 Miles per gallon for the V8
version. That is for a car that
makes up a tiny share of GM's US sales just over 1%. They do have to meet more
and more strict regulations, So the decision has to be
made. Does this vehicle fit
within that space? Do we have enough offset
credits? Are we just going to pay a
fine for having it? And how does that fit in
that broader portfolio? Finally, the Camaro might also just be a casualty of
The tough times the auto
industry has had to endure In the last few years. Camaro production was
affected by the 2019 GM Workers strike, which cost
GM about $4 billion that Year. A lot more money than
investors had expected. Then, plants were shut down
in 2020 and supply chain Shortages plagued the
industry in 2021 and 2022. GM had to make difficult
decisions as to what they Were going to build. And with that, with that
plant, it wasn't that easy To turn it back on just to
build Camaros and keep that Plant running at a good
space. The challenge is that in
killing the Camaro, GM is Pulling an iconic brand
name with a loyal and Enthusiastic fan base
behind it. It's tough to get a sticky
brand name, and so you could See a reincarnation or a
rebranding of this same name Under but under EV or an
SUV brand, for sure. Yeah. Chevy's going to remain a
performance brand. You know, we're going to
still be racing, you know, Camaro is going to stay
active in in racing for the Future. Evs are going to be High-performance. You know
we have models, we have Models on other products. A future Camaro EV is
likely. That's the direction
everyone seems to be moving In direct competitors and
the larger industry, Including GM itself. Camaro is currently built
on the same platform and at The same plant as some of
the Cadillac vehicles. And the plan so far is to
take that brand electric. This one's kind of run its
course and we'll move on to Whatever's next. They're
not making any statements or
Or proclamations of what's
happening. But, you know, we don't
think this is the end of Camaro's chapter in history
or Camaro story, just like We've done in the past. It
had a little bit of a hiatus And when we had the right
technology, we'll come Forward and bring it back. If you look at the EV side,
startup margins, operating Margins are somewhere in
the -30, -40 for a lot of The electric vehicle OEMs. And so there is a long road
ahead in trying to get those Margins back to the 10 to
15% operating margins that Tesla has. GM, like most legacy
automakers, is not making Money on EVs. It expects to make
single-digit profits on its EV portfolio by 2025. As you move the portfolio,
how do you balance the 90% Of your portfolio that is
declining on the combustion Engine side and slowly
increase the electric Vehicle portfolio? That's,
you know, let's say sub 10% To 30%, but it's a massive
profitability drag on you. So, um, so I think that is
a very that's a tightrope That it's a balancing act
for, for GM and that's why We kept it neutral because
they first need to get to Profitability on the side. GM is also ramping up its EV
portfolio at a time of Brutal price competition. Tesla is cutting prices
everywhere globally. And at the same time, you
have the other OEMs are Trying to come in. They have they are starting
off with fairly negative Profitability on the EV
side. The market, especially for high-performance, High-priced EVs, is
crowded.
Longtime rivals are either
jumping in or broadcasting Their plans. A lot of the low-hanging
fruit is probably getting Taken out by Tesla, given
that they were first to Market. And so as you try
to penetrate the market More, you need to bring
pricing down. The average price of an EV
was just over $61,000 in 2022. That's just a few
thousand lower than the Average price of a luxury
vehicle as of May 2023. Camaros start at $26,000. Gm has pledged to sell a
lot of EVs at mainstream Prices. The automaker is
targeting about $30,000 for Its upcoming Chevrolet
Equinox, EV, for example, But that is still over
$3,000 more than the base Price for the internal
combustion version. Then, of course, there is
the issue of charging 1 in 4 Car buyers considering an
EV don't have and can't Install charging at home,
for example. Then, there is the
experience of driving the Car. It has to have a Camaro
sound. Now, I don't know how you
do that with an electric Motor. Electric motors not only
produce different sounds, They drive differently. The weight is balanced
differently because there is No engine. Instead, there
is a huge heavy battery at The base of the car. Electric motors deliver
power differently. There is instant torque,
the kind that can throw People back into their
seats. Fans are taking GM at Its word that this is not
the end of the Camaro's Story. What I would say to the
average Camaro guy today is
Keep the faith, the car is
coming back and you won't be Disappointed. It's going to come back. But what form is it going
to come back in? It has to appeal to the
Camaro owners. It'll be electric and
you'll have some people Dragging their feet and
kicking and crying. No, I don't want I don't
want. But I guarantee you When they get into that car
and they feel the power and They feel the torque
without no noise, but They'll have to get used to
that.
