GET TO KNOW: Camaro Engines through the Years

Five generations represent evolution of American performance

- Michael Eckerson

On June 21, 1966, two-hundred Automotive Journalists were informed of an important Chevrolet press conference to be held on the 28th. The rumors were that Chevy was working on a competitor to the wildly successful Ford Mustang.

Foutreen cities were hooked up by telephone and it was announced that Chevrolet’s new pony car would be called Camaro. Chevrolet General Manager Pete Estes claimed that the name suggested friendship, as a car should be to its owner. The story goes that 2 GM executives found the name in a book about French slang, saying that “Camaro” means friend or pal. In reality the word for that is Camarade, Camaro is not a recognized word in French. It’s said that a Chevrolet representative claimed that the Camaro was “a small vicious animal that eats Mustangs”. The Camaro, and its cousin the Pontiac Firebird, were both unveiled on September 12. The Camaro came in a bewildering array of variants with RS, SS, and Z/28 trim levels. The Z28 was the most-powerful model with a 4.9 liter V8.

Sales for 1967 were disappointing, with only 220,000 purchased, compared to 472,000 Mustangs. But the gap would close, not because the Camaro would rise, but because of plunging Mustang sales, by 1969, 243,000 Camaros were sold against 299,000 Mustangs.

Since its 1967 introduction, the Camaro’s engine output has ranged from a low of 88 horsepower to a peak of 580, as the pony car rode the highs of the muscle car era in the late-1960s and the lows of the oil embargoinfluenced 1970s to the emergence of modern technologies in the 1980s and the unprecedented power and efficiency offered today.