Will Chevy’s Camaro Be Racing In NASCAR Beyond 2024?

There may be a change coming to the NASCAR Cup series after 2024, or not.

This past week Chevrolet announced that the final sixth generation Camaro will come off the assembly line at the Lansing Grand River Assembly Plant in Michigan in January 2024.

After that the future of one of the last gas-powered muscle cars to be produced is open for discussion.

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

So what might this mean to NASCAR?

Chevrolet and NASCAR have a long history together. The first Chevy victory at NASCAR’s highest level came in 1955 with Fonty Flock behind the wheel of a Bel Air at Columbia Speedway in South Carolina. In 2023 as of this writing, they now have 837 wins in the NASCAR Cup series. That’s the most in the sport’s history.

Since they entered the sport Chevy has raced models from the Bel Air, Biscayne, Chevelle Laguna, Lumina, Monte Carlo and Monte Carlo SS, and the Impala and Impala SS.

In recent times the Lumina ran from 1991 to 95 when it was replaced by the Monte Carlo then by the Impala SS in 2008 and it’s ugly winged COT version. The Impala came a year after Chevy stopped production of the Monte Carlo in 2007; but the Impala remained in production until the 2020 model year. In NASCAR however, the Impala had been replaced by an SS in 2013.

What might this tell us when it comes to the future of the Camaro in NASCAR?

Few would argue that among the modern NASCAR stock cars, the Camaro best represents what is seen on the street (as does Ford’s Mustang), and that is not by accident. When NASCAR began to develop its current Next Gen car, it did so with the intention of making them match their street counterparts as closely as possible.

The fifth-generation Camaro debuted in NASCAR’s Xfinity series in 2013. The Camaro ZL1, made its Cup series debut in 2018 followed by the sixth generation Camaro ZL1 1LE in 2020.

That sixth generation it seems might just be the last.

There are several things in play when it comes to the future…