AutoTrader Find of the Week: This Camaro is a Collector Muscle Car That’s Actually Affordable

The Chevrolet Camaro is dead.

While GM has teased a successor, production on the current sixth-generation Camaro ended in January this year. Sales of the pony car had been steadily declining. While the previous generation regularly sold over 80,000 units a year, the current iteration only hit a high of about 72,000 in its first year and has since declined to a third of that. Both the Dodge Challenger and Ford Mustang have been essentially outselling the Camaro almost 2-1. 

Ironically, while this latest Camaro was something of a sales flop, it’s also been often touted as one of the best modern sports cars — a proper driver’s machine, not so much concerned with taking on its traditional pony car rivals, but indeed the entire world of sports cars. It’s a spectacular performer, punches far above its weight class, and offers tremendous value for money.

But it’s still dead. 

And if you’re feeling a keen sense of deja vu right now, don’t worry. You’re not alone.

The exact same thing happened to the Camaro over 20 years ago, and this simply pristine 2002 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28 SS 35th Anniversary offered for sale by Titan Automotive Group in Regina, Sask., on AutoTrader is proof.

Yes, the fourth-generation Camaro had a GM parts bin interior (seriously, every GM car of this vintage from the Corvette to the Jimmy had that head unit). And it was essentially based on a then 20-year-old architecture. But so overwhelming was the performance of the “catfish” Camaro, that it caused Ford to tuck its tail between its legs in embarrassment. In 1999, the Camaro so handily outperformed the Mustang Cobra that SVT pulled the plug on the 2000 model entirely. When it happened again in 2001, the rumour was SVT boss John Coletti was so frustrated he demanded the next Cobra have a supercharger to finally “terminate” the competition.

Camaro optioning has never been normal, straightforward, or obvious, and the fourth-generation is no exception. The SS package was an option on top of the Z/28, though it was mostly cosmetic, adding an air-induction composite hood and a taller rear spoiler.

For performance enhancements, you had to add the Y2Y package to your SS.

Adding the Y2Y package meant go-fast additions from GM’s internal performance division, SLP (Street Legal Performance), including a revised intake and exhaust bolted to the Corvette-derived 5.7-litre V8. You also got a Hurst-branded shifter bolted to a Tremec six-speed manual transmission.

Present on this 2002 model is SLP’s Blackwing air lid and smooth intake bellows, which were said to bump the factory 325 horsepower to 345. Also optioned on this example is SLP’s signature Center Mount Exhaust (CME), which on stock motors was reported to add an additional 10 horsepower. 

And, of course, this is the special 35th Anniversary edition, which came with very striking “Code 81” Bright red exterior paint (with dual silver stripes that fade into checkered racing flags. T-tops were standard on coupes and had a red body-colour roof pillar (the ’02 Z28/non-SS cars had black). 

The matte black-accented hood scoop stripe is stock, as are the unique 10-spoke SS wheels with black inserts and black anodized brake calipers all around.

There’s also a good deal of 35th Anniversary branding and identifiers. Silver-embossed Camaro lettering on the front and rear, for example, is a dead giveaway (in case the stripes weren’t enough). The ebony leather seats with grey leather inserts sport custom 35th Anniversary embroidered headrests — the logo is also on the front floor mats and rear hatch trophy mat and denotes the SS badge on the front fenders.

Technically, all 3,369 35th Anniversary cars were Canadian — produced at the Sainte-Thérèse Assembly plant in Quebec. However, only 369 cars stayed in Canada, with the rest exported to the U.S., and this car is one of them.

Originally sold in Quebec, the car was next registered in Manitoba in 2006 before making its way to Saskatchewan in 2023 — where Titan tells AutoTrader that it was recently traded in on a 2022 Camaro SS.

With just over 85,000 original kilometres on the car and a listing price just under $28,000, this is somebody’s chance to own a little piece of muscle car history. This was the end of the original Camaro lineage and an example of what GM can really do when the beancounters let the engineers off the leash.

This car did what the Camaro was originally meant to do. It beat a Mustang so badly, so embarrassingly, that Ford actually put a model on hiatus.

But it didn’t matter. GM killed it anyway. Partly to make way for the GTO and partly to avoid cannibalizing Corvette sales, but mostly because, just like today, sales were in a slump, and GM didn’t have much confidence in the future of the segment.

When Ford finally got the new “Terminator” Cobra together for the 2003 model year, it may have finally been a worthy competitor, but there was no one left to “terminate,” so it was a totally hollow victory.

The Camaro will be back, but it’ll never be as it was. So it might be worth snatching up this one before everybody realizes it’s a certified muscle car classic.