Sad News For Those Of Us Who Love American Muscle Cars

I will admit that I am not a Chevy fan–I drive a Mustang. However, I respect the role that Chevy has played in the muscle car arena. The Chevy Camaro is an important part of American automotive history.

On Friday, The U.K. Daily Mail reported the following:

The Chevrolet Camaro, for decades the dream car of many teenage American males, is going out of production.

General Motors, which sells the brawny muscle car, said Wednesday it will stop making the current generation early next year.

The future of the car, which is raced on NASCAR and other circuits, is a bit murky. GM says another generation may be in the works.

Please don’t every make an electric Camaro–the electric Mustang is enough of an insult.

The article continues:

‘While we are not announcing an immediate successor today, rest assured, this is not the end of Camaro’s story,’ Scott Bell, vice president of Chevrolet, said in a statement.

The current sixth-generation Camaro, introduced in 2016, has done well on the racetrack, but sales have been tailing off. When the current generation Camaro came out in 2016, Chevrolet sold 72,705 of them. But by the end of 2021 that number fell almost 70 percent to 21,893. It rebounded last year to 24,652.

The article concludes:

Stellantis, will stop making gas versions of the Dodge Challenger and Charger and the Chrylser 300 big sedan by the end of this year. But the company has plans to roll out a battery-powered Charger performance car sometime in 2024.

Electric cars, with instant torque and a low center of gravity, often are faster and handle better than internal combustion vehicles.

Stellantis, formed in 2021 by combining Fiat Chrysler and France´s PSA Peugeot, earlier this week announced the last of its special edition muscle cars, the 1,025 horsepower Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170. The company says the car can go from zero to 60 mph (97 kilometers per hour) in 1.66 seconds, making it the fastest production car on the market.

In addition, Ford rolled out a new version of its Mustang sports car in September.

The Camaro was first introduced in 1966, two years after Ford’s wildly popular Mustang.

GM retired the Camaro nameplate in 2002, but revived it as a new 2010 model with hopes of appealing to enthusiasts and younger buyers. The 2010 version was similar to its predecessors, with a long, flat front and side ‘gills’ that evoke the original, while still sporting a modern overall design.

Sad news.

Overregulation Anyone??

This is a picture of a Chevy Camaro. According to the Heritage Foundation, Chevy Camaros from 2013 and 2014 are being recalled for violating Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 208—Occupant Crash Protection. The recall affects 18,941 cars.

Gene Blevins/Polaris/Newscom

So what is the problem with the car that constitutes a safety violation? The air bag warning label on the sun visor may peel.

The article reports:

The recall decision was made by the Executive Field Action Decision Committee, following a review by the Field Performance Evaluation Review Committee. So, pursuant to 49 CFR §573.6, the automaker submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) its determination of noncompliance for the requirement that the visor label be “permanently affixed.”

GM also issued a stop delivery order to dealers, and instructed them to inspect the label on each sun visor (“using a finger nail, plastic card, or similar” to determine proper adhesion). In the event a label is prone to peel, the entire sun visor must be scrapped and replaced.

There are a few questions here. How is this recall going to impact GM financially? Would you bring you car in to the dealer if your recall notice told you the recall was about a label on the sun visor? Is this another example of the government overstepping its bounds and having a negative impact on the American economy?

We have done a lot in recent years to improve the safety of the American automobile. This is not an example of that.

 

 

 

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