Win on Sunday, axe on Monday: Chevrolet to bin Camaro in 2024 despite successful Supercars debut

General Motors has swung the axe on the Chevrolet Camaro just one round into its life in the Supercars championship.

Chevrolet confirmed today that the last production Camaro will roll off the assembly line next January and will not be updated save for a special collectors edition to commemorate the iconic nameplate.

No successor to the Camaro was announced. With the Dodge Challenger also wrapping up production this year, the news will leave the Ford Mustang as the last car in the American muscle car class still in production this time next year.

While the decision will have no immediate impact on the Supercars, the Camaro’s axing will yet again leave the General Motors faction of the series racing a defunct car model for at least two more years, until the end of 2025, though the car hasn’t been available for purchase in right-hand drive locally since 2020.

Until last year GM teams were fielding a defunct Holden Commodore for almost three seasons following the iconic Australian nameplate’s discontinuation in early 2020.

The Camaro made its Supercars racing debut less than a fortnight ago at the Newcastle 500, the first race under the Gen3 regulations.

Triple Eight teammates Shane van Gisbergen and Broc Feeney scored a dominant one-two finish on Saturday before being disqualified for a technical breach. Van Gisbergen went on to win again on Sunday, with Feeney finishing fifth.

Despite the early blow to the category in the first weeks under new rules, Supercars CEO Shane Howard said the championship’s relationship with General Motors remained strong.

“While today’s General Motors news out of the US will have an impact on our racing product, we respect and acknowledge that change is sometimes inevitable,” he said in a statement.

“GM has been an integral part of our heritage and has played a significant role in shaping Supercars to become what it is today, the greatest touring car category in the world.”

Howard said the Camaro will continue to be raced by GM teams for at least two more years and potentially longer despite the end of its production run.

“We will continue our strong partnership with GM into the future,” he said.

“For fans, the Camaro will continue to proudly represent Chevrolet Racing in the Repco Supercars Championship until at least the end of 2025.”

Chevrolet has remained tight-lipped about its plans for the increasingly volatile muscle car category, with American manufacturers increasingly turning their eye towards electrification.

Dodge is effectively replacing the Challenger with the Charger Daytona SRT, a plug-in electric car with promises to outperform the marque’s current 6.2-litre ‘hellcat’ supercharged V8 motor.

There’s also a long-running rumour that the 2023 Ford Mustang could be the last powered by internal combustion, to be replaced by an all-electric variant by the end of the decade.

Chevrolet vice-president Scott Bell hinted that the Camaro nameplate wasn’t gone for good, leading to some speculating that an electric revival could be on the cards down the track.

“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,” he said. “While we are not announcing an immediate successor today, rest assured, this is not the end of Camaro’s story.”

The American muscle car class has been in decline since 2015, with the Camaro seeing the steepest falls in sales. In 2022 fewer than 25,000 Camaro models were sold in the United States, down from its 2011 high of 88,000.

The Challenger sold around 55,000 cars last year, while the Mustang shipped approximately 45,000 vehicles.