GM's Idea to Bring Back the Camaro as an Electric Sports Sedan is a Fantastic Idea (Save One Thing)

Recently, Motor Trend wrote an article stating that Mark Reuss (President of GM) wants to bring back the Camaro as an affordable, fun car. He also wants it to be an electric sedan. Mark believes that the horsepower wars of the previous decade have focused on big power numbers at the expense of driving fun. Achieving big power adds complexity, which adds weight, which kills driving dynamics. If GM were to focus on making a small, (relatively) lightweight electric performance sedan with around 300 horsepower, I bet it would sell like hotcakes. There are lots of consumers out there who know better than to search for high horsepower numbers when shopping for a fun car (see the success of the Miata and the Toyobaru Twins).

This idea makes too much sense for GM not to execute on it. It's just got one small problem: It'll be called a Camaro.

I'm sure the MBAs at GM would love to prattle to me about how defiling an iconic nameplate by attaching it to an unrelated vehicle invokes warm, fuzzy feelings within potential consumers and would make them more likely to buy it. I bet there's a lot of people at Ford who still think that calling their electric crossover the Mustang Mach-E (instead of just, I don't know, the Mach-E) helped its sales. But, in doing this, you forever tarnish the image that the name has worked so hard to create.

The image that the Camaro has been trying to maintain since the late 60s. It's completely incompatible with the direction GM is going with their electric lineup. Note the individual behind the wheel: The world's youngest classic Camaro owner.

By dubbing a new small, electric performance sedan "Camaro", people will only judge it by the Camaros that came before. And they WILL be disappointed. The Mach-E was able to avoid this fate by being sold alongside the real Mustang. But this new Camaro will have no such stablemate. A back-to-basics, 300 horsepower performance sedan will always live in the shadow of its fire-breathing V8 ancestor. What's worse, the new car will have no choice but to invoke the persona of Camaros of old, which will be restrictive on its design philosophy, its styling, and its engineering. The engineers should be allowed to go hog wild on a clean-sheet design philosophy for a new vehicle in a lineup; they will be afforded no such luxury with the Camaro name lurking over their shoulders. It should be allowed to be its own thing, and it will be much better for it.

The son should not be the spitting image of his father.