Photo: Ford
April is when the Big Three in Detroit publish their first-quarter sales and a few other details that include the average transaction price. In addition to well-to-do investors who can make or break the automaker's fate, this information helps us regular Joes get a grasp on the market's trends.
As far as the Mustang-Challenger-Camaro showdown is concerned, the sales won’t take anyone by surprise. Once again, the Ford Motor Company outsold Stellantis and General Motors with 17,274 units of the pony car of choice in North America. Take a look over the numbers again, and you’ll notice that Mustang sales have contracted by 4.4 percent over Q1 2020.
Second place goes to a rather old muscle car as far as the platform is concerned. Against every imaginable odd, the Dodge Challenger improved from 12,138 units in the first quarter of 2020 to 15,096 examples for this quarter. That’s an improvement of 24 percent, which is very impressive for a segment of vehicles that’s been decreasing for years now.
Last, but not in the least, General Motors takes the final step of the podium with awful results. 7,089 examples of the Chevrolet Camaro represent a decrease of 1.3 percent over the same period of last year when 7,185 units were sold, which goes to show that GM has pretty much dropped the ball.
The reason the ‘Maro is currently sitting at the bottom of a hole it cannot escape is, of course, the automaker’s reluctance to make the model a bit more exciting. You know; I’m referring to Mustang Shelby GT500 and Challenger SRT Super Stock levels of exciting, not the Camaro ZL1 1LE that is virtually unchanged since February 2017 with one notable exception.
Over four years since its grand unveiling, the only notable improvement to the highest-performing Camaro out there is a torque-converter automatic transmission with 10 forward ratios. Believe it or not, that's about it.
The following quarter isn’t going to be lucrative for the small-block V8-engined pony car either. As you may have already heard, GM was forced to stop production on March 15th because of the global chip shortage.
Second place goes to a rather old muscle car as far as the platform is concerned. Against every imaginable odd, the Dodge Challenger improved from 12,138 units in the first quarter of 2020 to 15,096 examples for this quarter. That’s an improvement of 24 percent, which is very impressive for a segment of vehicles that’s been decreasing for years now.
Last, but not in the least, General Motors takes the final step of the podium with awful results. 7,089 examples of the Chevrolet Camaro represent a decrease of 1.3 percent over the same period of last year when 7,185 units were sold, which goes to show that GM has pretty much dropped the ball.
The reason the ‘Maro is currently sitting at the bottom of a hole it cannot escape is, of course, the automaker’s reluctance to make the model a bit more exciting. You know; I’m referring to Mustang Shelby GT500 and Challenger SRT Super Stock levels of exciting, not the Camaro ZL1 1LE that is virtually unchanged since February 2017 with one notable exception.
Over four years since its grand unveiling, the only notable improvement to the highest-performing Camaro out there is a torque-converter automatic transmission with 10 forward ratios. Believe it or not, that's about it.
The following quarter isn’t going to be lucrative for the small-block V8-engined pony car either. As you may have already heard, GM was forced to stop production on March 15th because of the global chip shortage.
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