General Motors’ next move in NASCAR is likely to determine what replaces the Camaro in Supercars, according to Chevrolet team owners.
Chevrolet has decided to end production of the Camaro, as we currently known it, in January 2024, a call which was announced last week but broadly in line with industry expectations for a number of years.
The nameplate has only just returned to the Australian Touring Car Championship with the advent of Gen3, and Supercars quickly confirmed that it will stay on the grid at least until the end of 2025.
What happens after that is not known, although it is worth noting that Chevrolet’s announcement also gave credibility to speculation that the Camaro will eventually return to showrooms in another form, probably with electrification.
There is no obvious panic among team owners, with multiple competitors pointing to NASCAR, where the same nameplate currently races, as indicative of what Supercars will look like beyond 2025.
“I think we just need to wait and see what they propose to use in NASCAR, and I should imagine that we’ll go down that same route,” Brad Jones told Speedcafe.com.
“GM, in due time, will release what their plan is for that, and then I would say we’ll probably follow suit.
“There’s no surprise that they’re going to stop making the Camaro; I mean, we were all pretty aware that was going to happen.
“I would have thought, if it’s suitable for NASCAR, it’ll be suitable for us,” added the Brad Jones Racing boss.
“In due course, we’ll find out what that is, but they’re clearly not in a position to share that [at the moment].”
Team 18 owner Charlie Schwerkolt, himself a Camaro driver on the road, is of a similar mindset.
“General Motors rang me about it and told me, and I was obviously disappointed but they’ve got something in the pipeline; I have no idea what it is,” he told Speedcafe.com.
“It’s still a modern-looking car, it’s a shame [it will cease].
“It hasn’t been sold here for nearly three years now so it’s not going to affect Australia for now.
“It’s probably going to affect NASCAR and what they’re doing and I believe they’re still going to race ‘til the end of ’24 with the Camaro, so we’ll wait and see what they’re going to do.
“They’ve got to race a GM product so there’ll be something in the wings. It’s not like GM’s stopping – they’re a powerhouse in the world of automotive – so there’ll be something, whatever it is, and we’ll just wait and see.
“[I am] obviously disappointed that you’ve just built a car up and you think you’re going to run it for at least five years, but we’ll see.
“They’ll have something, I’m sure.”
Erebus Motorsport CEO Barry Ryan suggested that a three-year run for the ZL1 Camaro shape was not especially problematic either.
He likened it to the model cycle of the Commodore in the 1990s and 2000s, when what was essentially the same road car was characterised by obvious styling tweaks with each update model, such as the transition from VT to VX and VY to VZ.
Worth noting also is that even the VF Commodore and ZB Commodore, which bucked that trend and each had a life of five years in Supercars, were rehomologated along the way too.
“I don’t think it’s too much of a drama,” Ryan told Speedcafe.com.
“Obviously, we didn’t even have them in Australia so it’s flown under the radar, I guess, but if we’ve got to change the shape again at the end of ’25, well it used to be the VT-VX-VZ thing, it changed every three years roughly.
“So, if it’s a totally different body, that’s what the car’s designed for.
“It just gives us a good endgame that the Camaro’s got to finish at the end of ’25, or if they allow it to go for another year, make sure we don’t overstock with parts, and be ready to change, whether it’s a change from GM to something else, or whatever we need to do.”
Six competitors currently field a total of 14 Camaros on a full-time basis, the others being homologation team Triple Eight Race Engineering, Matt Stone Racing, and PremiAir Racing.
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