The 2009 Chevy Camaro

Chevrolet has officially announced that they will reintroduce the Camaro for 2009. The car is a stunning beauty with bold lines. The design is heavily influenced by the 1969 Camaro including its unique interior. The Camaro will join the Mustang and the new Dodge Challenger in the recently revived hot pony car market.

The Camaro was introduced in 1967 to compete with Ford's highly successful Mustang and was slightly redesigned in 1969. The updated car was "squared off" to give it a more aggressive appearance. The results were well liked by the automotive press and the motoring public. Today many consider it the best looking Camaro of all time. Performance was outstanding. The well rounded Z / 28 was the road racing version of the pony car and was powered by a 302 cubic inch small block. This car was designed to compete in the Trans-Am race series and it was very successful. For those wanting straight line performance, the Super Sport with a 396 cubic inch large block was available. The 396 was so powerful that most racers had to modify the rear suspension to keep the cars on the track. The car was an instant classic.

General Motors abandoned the pony car segment in 2002 after sales of its pony cars discharged up. The Mustang was the last survivor of the pony cars. At that time, SUVs and Trucks were the best sellers and sports car sales were in decline. General Motors had further hurt sales by pricing these cars out of the price range of its target market. The car had grown from an affordable performance car aimed at the youth market to a bloated and expensive car that was unattainable by those same youth.

Forty years after the classic 1969 Camaro was introduced, Chevy has decided to reintroduce the model to compete with the highly successful retro Ford Mustang. Ford proved that there was still a large market for pony cars and General Motors wanted a piece of the action.

As stated earlier, the new Camaro was heavily influenced by the '69 version and the designers got it right. The car looks aggressive and bold all at the same time. Performance should be more than adequate with the base model receiving a 250 horse power V-6 and the performance models receiving up to 400 horsepower from the small block V-8. The only weakness of the new car is the interior. It resembles the '69 Camaro too closely and looks a bit dated. The good news is the Chevy has indicated that the interior is one of the focal points with the transition from concept car to production car. General Motors has also indicated that the base price for the standard 2009 Camaro should be around $ 25,000. The performance models should range between $ 28,000 and $ 40,000. This is a good call as anything more would cause Chevy to lose sales to Ford.