Chevrolet Camaro

The Camaro is a pony car (a sports car) of the automobile brand Chevrolet, which belongs to the US automobile group General-Motors (GM). According to Chevrolet, the name "Camaro" is derived from the French word camarade, which translates as "comrade" or "friend".

The sporty car was created as a competitor to the extremely successful Ford Mustang in the mid-1960s and, as a typical representative of the Pony Cars, quickly became one of the most popular sports cars. Powerful SS models and the Z/28 also count as muscle cars. Since it was built on the same platform (F-platform), the Pontiac Firebird was considered its sister model. A similar, no less successful concept was pursued by the German car manufacturer Opel, which belonged to GM until 31 July 2017, with the Opel Manta.

The most popular engine options for the Camaro were large-volume V8 gasoline engines. Also offered were inline six-cylinder, later V6 engines, in the early 1980s also inline four-cylinder, were the entry and next to the smaller V8 engines the basis. Diesel engines or turbocharged petrol engines were never offered. Manual or automatic transmissions were always available in all model years.

Between autumn 1966 and summer 2002, four different Camaro generations came onto the market. From the beginning of 1993, the fourth generation of the Camaro was built, but it no longer had much in common with the original design. In Germany, a 3.8-liter V6 with 142 kW (193 hp) was offered as a coupe and convertible. The 5.7-liter V8 as Z28 with 212 kW (288 hp) was sold in Germany exclusively as a coupe with T-tops (two removable glass roof halves).

The top model, initially only offered in the USA, bears the designation SS, derived from Super Sport, and was available as a coupé and convertible. However, these models were not manufactured by General Motors from 1987 to 2002, but by SLP, an independent tuner and tuner, comparable to M-GmbH at BMW or AMG at Mercedes-Benz.

In August 2002, production of the fourth generation was discontinued due to ever decreasing sales figures.

It was only after a break of almost seven years that GM resumed production of the model series with the fifth generation in spring 2009. Prices for the current Chevrolet Camaro in Germany start at 44,700 euros (as of April 2019).

The sixth-generation Camaro has been offered since 2015 and received a facelift in 2018.