Before Ford Camaro began transforming into alien robots, it had a very intriguing beginning. Back in 1967, the boom in sales of the Ford Mustang was clearly affecting the sales of the Chevrolet brand. The Chevrolet Corvair, which was initially made to combat the Mustang was not getting any increased attention. Add to that the involvement of the Corvair in the book by Ralph Nader entitled Unsafe At Any Speed and there was no doubt that the brand needed something new. So in 1966, Chevrolet General Manager Pete Estes began sending a string of coded telegraphs to various automobile publicists in the country. Though they were hard to decipher, it was pretty evident that the brand was cooking something up to battle the attention that the Ford Mustang gained.
So after a press conference in Michigan, the first model of the Chevrolet Camaro came out in 1967. The car made such a buzz not in part to the car itself, but more on the marketing ploy that was used. One journalist asked during the press conference what is a Camaro and why was the car named as such. Pete Estes obliged by saying, “A small, vicious animal that eats Mustangs.” It was a fitting description to the car as the sales caught on during the later year of that decade.
Compared to its contemporaries, the Chevrolet Camaro was mass-produced in different interior forms. They sold the car in two-seaters and four-seaters. Although the Camaro was initially a pony car, some of the models following the initial one were classified as muscle cars. In order to veer away from the Corvair’s failure, the Camaro adapted the same front engine configuration and rear drive train of the Mustang. This may suggest that the car is never really a Chevy original. But in a sense, nobody holds the rights to construct such a drive train. Therefore, there is no conflict with this issue.
The thing that stands out when it comes to the Chevrolet Camaro is its overall design. It may have incorporated the same extended hood/shortened rear look as that of the Mustang as it had a distinguishable design up front. The grills along with the headlights are pushed inside and the bumpers were higher than other pony cars during that time. It was compact and at the same time very powerful. In fact, the 1967 model was popularly used in races after it was released.
