#Camaro

We've known for a while that the sixth-generation Chevrolet Camaro is on the way to the great junkyard in the sky. Now Chevy has officially announced the send-off.

The Chevrolet Camaro might be slated to be replaced in 2024 by an electric sedan bearing the same moniker.

Cue the outrage from traditionalists who insist that even an electric Camaro should be a coupe/convertible and not a sedan.

We don’t normally pay too much attention to pony-car pissing contests or quarter-to-quarter sales battles because, well, they aren’t always interesting and/or newsworthy.

What happened this past quarter caught our eye, however.

Today’s Rare Ride started out as a beautiful Chevrolet Camaro convertible and was transformed into a Pontiac Hurst Trans Am by an enthusiastic owner. We’ll let you be the judge on how successful the operation was.

Buy/Drive/Burn continues its cheapest of series today, as convertibles follow up the vans, trucks, and sedans we’ve covered already.

When it’s time for ragtop fun on the lowest possible budget, which of these three gets the Buy?

The last (and only) time Rare Rides covered a Camaro, it was a heavily altered Callaway SuperNatural from the Nineties. While that Camaro was all about performance, today’s Camaro takes a different tack.

It’s a Berlinetta, the Cadillac of Camaros (probably).

Reeling from the pandemic-born financial crisis, Hertz is unloading some particularly cost-intensive vehicles from its rental fleet. While plenty of these vehicles are old stock it would have had to get rid of eventually, Hertz is limiting fleet turnover this year, recently cancelling roughly 90 percent of new vehicle orders it had on the books for 2020. The company’s also selling some of the special performance vehicles slotted into its lineup every year ⁠— and not all of them seem to have accrued the kind of mileage that would normally warrant a sale.

We’ve chronicled the rental agency’s plight for a while now; Hertz seems to be on the brink of declaring bankruptcy, making it a good case study for the perils confronting auto rental groups everywhere. While we don’t think selling a handful of high-horsepower Chevrolets will be anyone’s saving grace, it might help Hertz scrounge up some loose cash — and provide a half-decent opportunity for enthusiasts to procure a bargain project car.

This series featured a Callaway creation once before — the incredible and Teal Time upholstered Speedster from 1991. While the Speedster showed what Callaway could do with a Nineties Corvette, the company dabbled in similar era Camaros as well.

Let’s see what they created.

It’s no secret that Ford routinely cleans up in the muscle- and pickup-related segments, often to the chagrin of General Motors. The Blue Oval routinely outsells GM in both fields. Eager to change a few minds, Chevrolet began offering a $2,500 discount to Mustang owners (or lessees) interested in purchasing a Camaro. That rebate rose to $3,000 last month.

This month, the General is making another offer. As part of its Black Friday Sales Event, Chevy is willing to part with the Camaro at a 12-percent discount below MSRP. The only restraint is that it has to be a V8-powered SS model, making this catch feel like more of a perk — as we wouldn’t mind seeing more of them on the road.

Not happy with sales thus far this year, General Motors wants Ford Mustang owners to know there’ll be cash waiting for them should they wander into a dealer in search of a Chevrolet Camaro.

As 2019 draws to a close, GM’s pony car sits in third place in the niche segment’s sales standings. This, despite a 2019 model year refresh and a greater availability of four-cylinder offerings. Maybe a few grand will compel rival owners to make the switch?

If you’re a frequent car renter, odds are good that you’re not enthralled with the experience. That goes double if you aren’t putting payments on a corporate account because you’re weighing the price against what you actually need. Most of the time this leaves you ping-ponging between a dirt-cheap “compact” that’s technically a subcompact and a slightly larger “midsize” that costs an extra twelve dollars per day.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There are countless ways to trick rental agencies into giving you a free upgrade and plenty of programs that reward repeat customers for their loyalty, but you can also bite the bullet and simply splurge for a vehicle you might actually want to drive. Most companies have special divisions offering exotic, performance, and premium luxury models. But only Hertz will let you rent a specially designed, 750-horsepower Chevrolet Camaro.

We’re living in a golden age of performance where somehow, despite all the focus on electrification and sport-utility development, you can still buy a nearly 800 horsepower coupe off the showroom floor for less than six figures. All of the so-called “Detroit 3” manufacturers are offering supercharged V8’s that start with the Camaro ZL1 and Corvette Z06’s 650 hp and top out at the Challenger Redeye’s 797 hp. The new Shelby GT500 falls in between, with 760 hp.

Are they the fastest iterations of each of their respective platforms? Yes. Does that make them the best? No. In fact, they become inferior in the process.

Judging from the comments on yesterday’s post about what the new C8’s rump might look like, most of you lot aren’t quite sold on the possibility of Corvette copying some of Camaro’s homework. One commenter used the word ‘ersatz’, for which he gets extra TTAC points.

This got us thinking: is there ever an appropriate time for an automaker to reprise styling cues on another model?

A report surfaced today from Muscle Cars and Trucks, suggesting that the Camaro will not live on to see a seventh generation. Having been sold continuously for the last 10 years, the iconic pony car is not planned to transition to the new A2XX platform. Current product plans forecast production to 2023, but nothing further.

The current sixth-generation Camaro is built on the Alpha platform that was utilized by the outgoing ATC and CTS. The new CT4 and CT5 models are built on an updated version of that platform, dubbed A2XX. While all 3 models will be built alongside each other at the Lansing Grand River Assembly Plant, the Camaro is not slated to receive a redesign to transition onto the newer chassis.

Buy/Drive/Burn returns this week with three American sports cars in their most basic, purest form. The Big Three are represented here, and they don’t get any cheaper than this. No options or fripperies are allowed, and one must receive the Buy.

Start your (small) engines — it’s sports car time.