A Four Door Camaro? They Can't be Serious, Can They?

Rumors have been swirling for months that Chevrolet was reviving the Camaro nameplate as an EV-only, four-door sedan. The latest scuttlebutt suggests that while Chevrolet does appear serious about bringing the Camaro back, it won't be EV-only. In fact, current reports point toward a rear-wheel-drive, internal-combustion Camaro, with a turbocharged four-cylinder likely serving as the base engine and a V-8 available in higher-performance versions.

There's been speculation that GM's new-generation small-block V-8 could find its way under the Camaro's hood, although exactly which engine it would be—and how much power it would make—remain unknown. I've heard nothing credible about the twin-turbo 3.0-liter V-6 currently offered in the Cadillac CT5-V being part of the Camaro lineup. The latest musings out of Detroit also suggest that an EV version isn't part of the immediate plan, despite all the earlier rumors about an electric Camaro.

The real kicker is that GM appears to be hell-bent on making the next Camaro a four-door, with no definitive indication that a traditional two-door coupe will accompany it. Right now, "they're saying" the new Camaro is expected to ride on an updated version of GM's rear-wheel-drive Alpha architecture, share its underpinnings with the next Cadillac CT5 and a forthcoming Buick sedan, and enter production at Lansing Grand River in Michigan. The latest reports put it on track for the 2029 model year.

Seems like a last-ditch effort to revive "the automobile" as we once knew it. If this thing fails, my money is it will, looks like future highways will be filled with nothing but "trucks" 

Based on these A.I.-generated renderings, Chevrolet is going back to the "retro Camaro" well yet again, something it first did with the fifth-generation Camaro introduced for 2010. That car deliberately channeled the 1967–69 first-generation Camaro, particularly the iconic 1969 model. The sixth-generation Camaro, introduced for 2016, was essentially an evolution of that design rather than a clean-sheet departure.

The styling of the fifth- and sixth-generation Camaros has always left me flat-footed, though. I find them cartoonish in ways the first four generations of the Camaro simply weren't. Maybe that's just my old-car bias talking, but there's something about those later Camaros that never quite worked for me. They're great cars—my older son has a 2017, and despite its shortcomings, it's an amazing ride—but in terms of "look back at it after parking it" appeal? Meh. Not so much.

Don't tell him I told you that. I need him to pick out a nice nursing home for me. 

The auto industry is interested in one thing above all else: making money. Automakers aren't interested in nostalgia and tradition for old-time's sake. If they can move "units" because of a retro theme or design, they're going to do it. If they can't, they won't bother.

And the best-selling vehicles in the country don't have a shred of throwback about them. The Ford F-Series, Chevrolet Silverado, Toyota RAV4 and Honda CR-V are about as modern and utilitarian as it gets. The Toyota Camry, America's best-selling traditional passenger car in 2025, isn't exactly dripping with nostalgia, either.

And then there's Dodge's new Charger, which supposedly oozes old-school charm. I don't get it. Whatever nostalgia Dodge was shooting for, buyers haven't exactly been beating down the doors. Dodge sold 7,421 electric Charger Daytonas in 2025. There were also 2,141 gas-powered Chargers reported for the year, although that figure included some previous-generation cars still sitting around on dealer lots. The new gasoline-powered Sixpack arrived so late that it had essentially no impact on 2025 sales; production began in December.

I'll bet you a nickel the big sixer has little impact on sales.

Alas, stylish two-door cars, which were a staple of my car-crazed youth, have been falling out of favor for decades. Once pillars of the industry, today's surviving two-doors are mostly niche products—and many are expensive ones. Chevrolet sold 24,533 Corvettes in 2025, Ford sold 45,333 Mustangs, and Dodge's new Charger Daytona managed just 7,421 electric sales in its first calendar year.

Back in the 1970s, the combined sales of the Chevrolet Camaro, Pontiac Firebird and Ford Mustang could approach 900,000 in a single year. In 1979, for example, the three totaled roughly 864,000 sales. That's still an astonishing number compared with today's market, but it wasn't quite the million-plus figure my memory wanted it to be.

Frankly, the world didn't end when Ford labeled its first EV crossover "Mustang" back in 2021. Although, if I'm not mistaken, most people call it the "Mach-E" anyway. And "Mach"—a nod to the iconic Mach 1 Mustang—somehow seems less offensive than calling what's essentially a four-door crossover an actual Mustang. Ford, for its part, explicitly positioned the Mach-E as an expansion of the Mustang family and an all-electric member of the Mustang stable.

So, in the end, the world will be just fine if Chevrolet comes out with a four-door Camaro, even if it doesn't offer a two-door version. It doesn't necessarily mean Chevrolet will move a lot of Camaros if they have four doors, two doors, three doors, or if you have to jump through the sunroof to get inside them.

The market has moved so far away from sedans that it may be too far gone to come back.

The rational side of me totally gets it. The Camaro-lover in me, however, wants to jump out a window.

I mean, they can't be serious, can they? Newsflash, Camaro-boy. They can be. 

 

Perfect Car Casting - "Coop's Car" from "Your Friends and Neighbors" (Maserati GranTurismo)

If you're looking for a something bingeworthy, I can't say enough good things about "Your Friends and Neighbors" streaming currently on Apple TV+. Your Friends and Neighbors stars my spirit animal, Jon Hamm and it hit me with the same sledgehammer Breaking Bad did from the very first minute of the first episode, and it has yet to disappoint my wife and I as we work our way through Season 2. 

While we can't help but be drawn to the extravagant homes inhabited by the residents of fictional Westmont Village, a thinly disguised version of exceedingly affluent Westchester County just north of Manhattan, I, naturally, am drawn to the cars cast in the series. Everyone, it seems, drives the same sort of late-model, big-bucks SUV—except Jon Hamm's character, Andrew "Coop" Cooper, who drives a black-on-black Maserati GranTurismo.

Apple identifies Coop's car as a 2022 Maserati GranTurismo. Not to split the atom, but sorry, Apple, that's not a 2022 GranTurismo—not if we're talking about the car that actually appears in the show.

Based on its styling, the car is a first-generation, M145 GranTurismo. That generation was introduced at the 2007 Geneva Motor Show and remained in production through 2019. Maserati itself says the final version was a 2018 model, with production of the outgoing generation continuing into 2019 before the nameplate took a three-year hiatus.

So, while the car in the show could be from the later years of the M145 run, there's no good reason to call it a 2022. In fact, automotive film-and-TV reference site IMCDb identifies the car as an M145 and notes it as a 2008-or-newer example. From what we can see on screen, I'd be reluctant to pin down the exact model year any further.

When introduced in 2007, the Maserati GranTurismo—and its drop-head (convertible) sibling, the GranCabrio, which debuted at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show—didn't exactly reinvent the grand-touring automobile. It perfected the concept.

Here was a large, beautifully designed, naturally aspirated V-8-powered, rear-wheel-drive coupe with a long hood, short deck and room for four. It could stop traffic simply by sitting at a traffic light, then zip through it with an aplomb that no personal-luxury car of the 1970s or '80s could ever quite muster. The GranTurismo was a genuine grand tourer in the old-school sense: luxurious, fast, dramatic and capable of carrying four people in something approaching comfort.

Coop's car isn't cheap. Early in Season 1, he mentions in a voice-over that he was sitting in a "$200,000 car." That's a stretch if he's talking about the car's original sticker price—at least for most GranTurismos of this generation. A 2012 GranTurismo S, for example, carried an original MSRP of about $125,550, while the 2019 GranTurismo Sport started at roughly $150,000 and the MC was about $163,000.

It's not unlike the well-heeled to claim they overpaid for something and then brag about it. It's also not uncommon for those who appear to be well off, like Coop appears to be, living paycheck-to-paycheck like us bottom feeding poor slobs do. 

Cars like the Maserati GranTurismo aren't for everyone. With do-everything-well crossovers and sport utilities now dominating the market, the inherent impracticality of a coupe these days—even one that supposedly seats four—makes little rational sense.

Which raises the question: Why would anyone drive a car like a Maserati GranTurismo, or others in its class such as the Aston Martin Vantage, Lexus LC 500 or BMW 8 Series?

Well, it could be simply because they enjoy the car. That's why I would. I'd chafe, though, not so much at the cost of these things these days, for an exotic used car they're fairly affordable, but since they're notoriously fragile, the maintenance and repair costs which could run a buyer upwards of $10,000 to $15,000 a year. 

However, Coop doesn't come across as a "car guy." Aside from being a self-centered, egomaniacal womanizer obsessed with money, he doesn't come across as much of anything. In fairness, he might be a better parent than his ex-wife, Mel, portrayed by Amanda Peet, is. He seemingly could afford to drive almost anything, so why a Maserati GranTurismo—and one that's apparently several years old at that?

That's where car casting comes in.

Coop's Maserati helps define who his character is. He's an aging jetsetter whose best days are behind him. He's a "suburban James Bond type" who can still keep up with the Joneses to a certain degree, but it's becoming harder and harder to do so.

And that, friends and neighbors, is precisely why the Maserati is there. It isn't merely a luxury car. It's a character prop and a brilliantly cast metaphor. 

The aging GranTurismo says that Coop still wants to be "that guy" even though he's not quite what he used to be; his choices in life leaving him second guessing what made him appear to be what he never was. 

Season 3 of Your Friends and Neighbors is currently in production. 

Lamborghini Urus - A Pontiac Azteck and a Toyota Highlander Got Jiggy

It's rare that I come across a vehicle and don't immediately know what it is. Such was the case the other morning after my morning workout when I stumbled across this thing that looks like a Pontiac Aztek got jiggy with a Toyota Highlander. The eye-searing color got my attention; otherwise, I probably would have just walked past it, assuming it was some sort of Hyundai or Kia.

It didn't become obvious what it was until I was all but standing on top of the tailgate.

Ah-ha! I know what this is—and it ain't no Pontiac, Toyota, Hyundai or Kia.

It's a Lamborghini Urus.

A Urus?

“Urus” isn't exactly the most lyrical thing to call a vehicle with a prefix as magically Italian-sounding as “Lamborghini,” but it is fitting given Lamborghini's long-standing habit of naming its cars after powerful, fighting bulls. The urus was the aurochs, a large, powerful wild ox that once roamed Europe and is considered the ancestor of modern domestic cattle.

Naming this thing after a big ol' bull is particularly fitting given Lamborghini's use of a stylized bull in its logo. Still, it takes some mental gymnastics to wrap my arms around the fact that Lamborghini makes an SUV in the first place.

And they've been building a Urus since 2018.

However, it's not their first SUV, either. That distinction belongs to the 1986–1993 LM002. The LM002 was a purpose-built, go-anywhere off-roader with roots in a military vehicle project. It may have looked like something the Italian Army would send into battle, but underneath all that attitude was a Lamborghini V12 borrowed from the Countach.

No beauty queen, either, the LM002 makes a little more sense if you remember that Ferruccio Lamborghini started out manufacturing tractors and agricultural equipment before turning his attention to automobiles and deciding to compete with Enzo Ferrari's car-building company.

Lamborghini returned relatively late to the high-performance luxury-SUV party, but when it did, it brought piping-hot pizza and ice-cold beer and pop.

Despite looking like an angry dumpster, the Urus has always been about super-duper high performance above and beyond just about everything else.

Especially aesthetics.

Lamborghini has been part of the Volkswagen Group since 1998, through Audi, and the Urus rides on Volkswagen Group's MLB Evo platform—the same basic architecture used beneath such corporate cousins as the Audi Q7 and Q8, Bentley Bentayga, Porsche Cayenne and Volkswagen Touareg. Of course, the fact that they're platform mates doesn't mean they're identical underneath; Lamborghini has done plenty of work to make the Urus its own beast.

While I didn't wait around for the driver of this particular Urus to appear so I could ask him or her for a test drive—I wasn't even sure whether this thing had dealer plates or temporary tags—what the Urus has going for it above all of its platform mates is speed.

Lots and lots of speed.

The current Urus SE can hit a claimed 194 mph, and Lamborghini says it can go from 0 to 62 mph in 3.4 seconds. Car and Driver, meanwhile, estimates 0–60 mph in 3.4 seconds for the 2026 model, while its instrumented testing of a 2025 Urus SE produced an absolutely ridiculous 2.9 seconds.

Think about that.

Three seconds to go from standing still to 60 miles per hour.

One.

Two.

Three.

Boom.

That's fast.

And it explains why this roughly 5,600-pound "truck" has brake calipers that look like they were borrowed from a locomotive.

All that speed is gonna cost you about as much as a modest home here in the Midwest, though. The 2026 Urus SE starts at a little over $250,000 before you start piling on options, so my running into one in something as plebeian and bourgeois as a mall parking garage is not unlike running into a celebrity in the restroom at a Sheetz or Buc-ee's.

Wow! You poop too? Who'da thunk that?

The thing is, though, if you're going to spend that much money on a vehicle, wouldn't you at least want it to look like something that was obviously expensive and exotic rather than something that could, at a quick glance, blend into the fabric—or woodwork—of society?

For certain, if it weren't for this electric-mango paint job, it probably would have gone completely unnoticed.

 

We Say Goodbye to the Toyota Supra (Again) - And No One Cares

Back in my day, it was such a big story that Chevrolet wasn't making a Corvette for the 1983 model year that it was headline-grabbing, interrupt-the-series-finale-of-M*A*S*H-worthy. These days, Toyota discontinues its MkV GR Supra—this one for sale down in Columbus, Ohio, is a 2022—and hardly anyone notices. 

MkV, or "Mark Five", denotes the fifth generation of the Supra, GR is for Toyota's Gazoo Racing division. 

Granted, the Toyota Supra nameplate isn't nearly as famous as the Chevrolet Corvette's not to mention there was a 16-year gap in production of a "Supra". Still though, for a car as amazing as these cars were, you'd think there'd be more of a story here. 

Toyota introduced the fifth generation Supra in 2019 as a 2020 model and sold about 30,400 of them in the U.S. through June 2026. It wasn't poor sales that did it in, though. The BMW Z4, the car with which this generation of the Supra was jointly developed, also ended production. Toyota says fifth generation Supra production ended in spring 2026, while BMW ended Z4 production in March.

BMW and Toyota's collaboration dates to 2012, when the companies agreed to jointly develop architecture and components for a future sports car. Toyota chief engineer Tetsuya Tada has said he was pulled away from the Toyota 86's launch in Spain and sent to BMW's headquarters in Munich to explore whether the two companies could build a sports car together.

Toyota didn't have a lightweight, contemporary rear-wheel-drive platform and high-performance inline-six combination suited to the kind of performance Supra purists would demand. BMW did. The result was a shared architecture underneath two very different cars: the BMW Z4 roadster and Toyota Supra.

Working with BMW also allowed the two companies to share development and engineering costs, making it something of a marriage of convenience. Tada has said developing the Supra entirely on its own would have added years to the project and potentially pushed its price far beyond what Toyota considered appropriate for a Toyota sports car.

As purpose-built, high-performance sports cars go, these cars may just have been the greatest ones ever sold. Aesthetically, in my opinion, they come up way short. They're cool in a way even the sexiest crossovers today simply aren't, but this is not a beautiful car; frankly, it's almost ugly.

Where these cars really fall down is in being anything other than two-passenger performance machines that can rip your retinas from the back of your eyes. They're hard to get in and out of, uncomfortable and cramped, visibility is atrocious, and they're all but useless as overnight road-trip vehicles. Unless you're OK with recycling your clothing—or worse yet, your underwear.

Toyota first introduced the Supra in the U.S. in 1979 as the Celica Supra. It became its own model in 1986, when the third-generation A70 Supra split from the Celica. Toyota changed the sports-car landscape with its A80 Supra in 1993, but it remained a low-volume car in the U.S. and disappeared from the American market after the 1998 model year. Production continued in Japan until 2002.

The MkV's end doesn't necessarily mean the end of the Supra name. Toyota has not announced a successor, but company officials have said a next-generation Supra is a goal.

1995 Chevrolet Monte Carlo - Shake N' Bake

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby is one of my older son's "desert island movies," and having had a 1997 Chevrolet Monte Carlo LS when he was very young, when I happened upon this Monte festooned in hand-painted Ricky Bobby regalia, I took these photos and texted them to him.

He thought it was the greatest thing since Dr Pepper, Fig Newtons, Wonder Bread and Shake 'N Bake.

He also added, "Who the hell would do that to their car?"

That's a good question, son.

What makes this thing even funnier—or maybe not so funny—is that they have it for sale with an asking price of $4,800.

As much of an automobile enthusiast as I am, and despite having owned a 2002 Dale Earnhardt Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS for years, I have little interest in NASCAR; and I know a lot of people who are really into NASCAR who couldn't care less about cars. Interest in automobiles and NASCAR are mutually exclusive.

I have mixed feelings about Will Ferrell as well. Depending on the movie, I find him best taken in small doses, as his shtick tends to get old with me. The exception is Elf. That's a desert island movie for me regardless of the time of year.

Combine NASCAR and Will Ferrell as they were in the 2006 sports comedy Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and what do you get?

In spite of itself, a very funny and memorable movie—again, best taken in small, YouTube-sized chunks rather than all at once.

I watch it in longer stretches and I lose the joke or the film's slant. I feel the same way about Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, a film that flat-out skewers the broadcast industry as a whole, but after about twenty minutes, I get overwhelmed and lose my grip on the "joke."

What's really remarkable is how well the movie seems to work with people who know NASCAR as well as those who don't. It walks that fine line between satire and mockery, which isn't an easy thing to do. NASCAR itself was willing to be in on the joke, and the filmmakers made the racing look considerably more authentic than the absurdity of the story might suggest. NASCAR provided extensive assistance with the production, and the film was partially shot at Talladega Superspeedway, with additional racing scenes filmed at Charlotte Motor Speedway and the former North Carolina Motor Speedway in Rockingham.

At first glance, you may think this car is pretty well done, but the closer you get to it, the more you realize that while the artist does have some talent, these are indeed hand-painted, as was the entire car. You can't see the brush strokes in the black paint underneath the, umm, graphics.

It seems the artist's ego may have written a check his talent can't cash.

The kicker is that the Chevrolet Monte Carlo used as Ricky Bobby's Wonder Bread NASCAR in Talladega Nights wasn't one of these 1995-to-1999 models. The Wonder Bread car is identified as a 2003 Chevrolet Monte Carlo NASCAR. The movie also used a 1995-to-1999-generation Monte Carlo NASCAR for the Laughing Clown scheme, so there were actually multiple generations of Monte Carlo race cars represented in the film.

And, honestly, those early-2000s Monte Carlo race cars had very little in common mechanically with a street-legal Monte Carlo. They may have worn Monte Carlo bodywork and carried the name, but underneath they were purpose-built NASCAR stock cars—not something you could simply drive off the track and onto the highway.

1980 Ford Mustang - Doesn't Get More "'80's" Than This

Chances are, if at the drop of a hat you were asked to name a quintessential "1980s car," you wouldn't knee-jerk answer, "Oh, 1980 Ford Mustang!" Neither would I, frankly. But when I came across this '80 Mustang for sale on Marketplace about 45 minutes west of The Triple Wide, it fish-hooked me back to the '80s in a way your stereotypical "80s cars," like a DeLorean, simply don't.

After five years of the Pinto-based Mustang II, Ford introduced what became known as the "Fox-body" Mustang for 1979. The Fox platform itself debuted for the 1978 model year under the Ford Fairmont and Mercury Zephyr; the Mustang followed a year later. The "Fox" name was reportedly inspired by the Audi Fox, although the precise origin of the name isn't entirely settled.

The Fox platform would go on to underpin scores of Ford, Mercury and Lincoln models through the 1980s and early '90s. The original Fox architecture lasted through 1993, although a heavily revised derivative carried the Mustang through 2004. So, technically, saying the Fox-body ran all the way to 2004 needs an asterisk—but considering the basic architecture's extraordinary longevity, "Fox" certainly had one hell of a run.

Arguably, the most famous and certainly the longest-running nameplate application of the Fox architecture was the Mustang.

While it was no Chevrolet Camaro or Pontiac Firebird, I thought the Fox-body Mustang was a most welcome breath of fresh air when it debuted in 1979. I even like this factory installed carriage top. The Fox Mustang was roughly four inches longer than a Mustang II and rode on a wheelbase roughly four inches longer—100.4 inches versus 96.2. Goes to show you what a couple of inches here and there can do for an automobile's design.

Have to wonder: if the Mustang II had simply been downsized and remained on the Falcon-derived architecture used by the original Mustang, would it have made a big enough difference aesthetically that it wouldn't be the black sheep of the Ford Mustang stable it is today?

As much better looking than a Mustang II as they were, and far more in line with the loosely defined "pony-car" classification, everyone I drove left me vexed, perplexed and confused. They ride stiffly and feel primitive in ways that other Fox-body-underpinned cars, like the 1983–1988 Ford Thunderbird, simply don't. I say the same about my 2005 S197 Mustang GT: its inherent crudeness feels purposely dialed in.

Although there are no pictures of it, our '80 here is powered somewhat curiously by Ford's 200-cubic-inch, or 3.3-liter, pushrod, one-barrel inline-six. At the risk of sounding like a punk-ass, know-everything Gen Z car blogger who goofs on the cars us Gen Xers grew up with, the little engine that could not cranked out all of 89 horsepower and 143 lb-ft of torque. 

Here's where the story goes off the rails. Ford had intended the Cologne, Germany-built 2.8-liter, 60-degree V-6 to be the optional six-cylinder engine in these cars, the 2.3-liter four was standard. While the 2.8 was offered in the 1979 model year, Ford ran into supply problems with the 2.8, and midway through 1979, replaced the V-6 with the old 200-cubic-inch inline-six. The 2.8 V-6 was then dropped from the Mustang lineup for 1980, leaving the 3.3-liter six as the optional six-cylinder engine.

Couple the little sixer with its light-duty C3 three-speed automatic and factory-standard 3.08:1 rear axle, and it's safe to say no one has driven this little pony very quickly over the last 46 years and 66,000 miles. 

So, what to do with this thing? Sky's the limit. Do we drop a junkyard-truck 351 Windsor in her? A fuel-injected "HO" 5.0? How 'bout we go nuts and go Coyote, leaving the body as-is? A pure, modern-day-ish rat rod. I find that oddly appealing. We can gussy up the suspension, so it doesn't ride like a truck with square wooden wheels too. 

There's a network of Fox-body aftermarket parts out there to rival any Camaro, Firebird or even Corvette. It's a $2,900 asking price, low enough that I'd like to think you could probably take this off their hands for closer to $2,000, if not less than that.