2023 was equally good and bad for the pony car and muscle car genres. For starters, Mustang and Camaro sales are up 2.2 and 25.9 percent, respectively, over 2022. The bad news is that both the Camaro and Challenger ended production in December 2023.
Despite being hampered by multiple problems at launch, including quality-related issues and supply chain woes, the Mustang is the big winner of 2023 due to 48,605 deliveries in the United States of America. Of course, said total comprises more examples of the S550 than the seventh-gen 'Stang.
In second place, Dodge's muscle car tallied 44,960 deliveries in its home market, which is 18 percent down on the 55,060 delivered in 2022. The final L-platform vehicle was a black-painted 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170, which rolled off the Brampton plant's assembly line on December 22.
A week earlier, General Motors ended Camaro production at the Lansing Grand River assembly plant in Michigan. Instead of giving the sixth-gen Camaro a Hellcat-rivaling supercharged small block, General Motors cheapened out with special editions of the LT/RS, LT1, SS, and 650-horsepower ZL1.
The ZL1 Collector's Edition was limited to 350 units, all of them finished in Panther Black Matte. The Panther part harks back to the codename of the original Camaro from the 1960s, which General Motors developed as a response to the unexpected popularity of the Falcon-based 1964 Ford Mustang.
Photo: Ford
The sixth-generation Camaro ended 2023 with 31,028 deliveries in the United States, improving 25.9 percent over the 24,652 deliveries for 2022. That's 2,585.666 cars on average per month as opposed to 3,746.666 for the Challenger and 4,050.416 for the Mustang. This is the second time GM has discontinued the Camaro, but as opposed to the first, General Motors confirmed that the nameplate will come back. Rather than a pony car, the successor is expected to take the form of an electric sedan.
Similar to the long-rumored Corvette sedan and SUV, the Camaro is also rumored to be spun off into a two-vehicle range. However, only time will tell what General Motors actually has in store for the Camaro. As far as Stellantis is concerned, only the Charger has been confirmed to return in late 2024 for model year 2025 as a three-door liftback. It's not known if the all-new Charger serves as the successor to the L-platform Challenger, but we do know that both inline-six turbo and electric powertrain choices are in the offing.
The range-topping electric powertrain sports an 800-volt architecture and more than 800 horsepower. The 400-volt lineup ranges between 455 horsepower for the base Charger 340 to 670 horsepower for the Charger 440 with the Direct Connection Stage 2 upgrade. As for the twin-turbo sixer, the so-called Hurricane produces up to 540 horsepower and 521 pound-feet (706 Nm) of torque in the 2025 Ram 1500.
What about the S650? Expected to start production in late 2024 at Multimatic's Markham facility in Canada, the Mustang GTD promises more than 800 horsepower from a revised Predator V8. The 5.2-liter supercharged lump makes 760 ponies in the S550 Shelby GT500 and 740 in the F-150 Raptor R.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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