Chevrolet said a Camaro was a small, vicious animal that eats Mustangs
In June 1966, about 200 motoring journalists received a baffling telegram inviting them to help scratch a cat at a meeting of a society devoted to eradicating panthers. Panther was the rumoured codename for Chevrolet's answer to the Ford Mustang. At the press conference, the cat was killed off and a new name unveiled: Camaro.
The launch on 28 June 1966 at Detroit's Statler-Hilton was itself a first, linking fourteen cities in real time by telephone. General manager Pete Estes told the audience they were all charter members of the society, meeting for the first and last time, then revealed project XP-836. The name kept Chevrolet's habit of C-words, alongside Corvair, Chevelle and Corvette, and Estes said it suggested the comradeship of good friends. Pressed by reporters, product managers offered the more memorable definition about devouring Mustangs.
The word's origin is humbler. Two executives, Bob Lund of Chevrolet merchandising and Ed Rollett of GM, reportedly came across it in a 1936 French and English dictionary, listed as slang for friend or pal. The standard French word is camarade, the source of English comrade.
The business logic was simple. The Mustang was a runaway success, and Chevrolet's sporty Corvair Monza could not keep up: its rear-engine layout could not take the full range of Chevrolet engines, and sales were already suffering from bad publicity after Ralph Nader's book Unsafe at Any Speed. So the Camaro copied the Mustang's conventional front-engine, rear-drive recipe and borrowed parts from the Chevy Nova, much as Ford had raided the Falcon. It shared its platform with Pontiac's new Firebird. After press previews in Detroit and Los Angeles, it reached showrooms on 29 September 1966 as a 1967 model.
First-generation cars came as hardtops and convertibles with engines from a six-cylinder up to big V8s, plus the high-performance Z/28 carrying a 302 cubic-inch V8 developed for Trans-Am racing. Four generations ran until 2002. The nameplate returned in 2009 with a retro design inspired by the originals, and sixth-generation production ended in December 2023.
Source: Chevrolet Camaro
