Fashionably Late to the ’60s Revival

NEARLY five million Camaros, produced over 35 years, are bound to produce some stories. This one is mine:

In Detroit around 1980, my friend Donnie and I borrowed his dad’s hopped-up Camaro from the early 1970s. We were about 17, so you can guess the rest. Donnie lost control and bored straight into a parked car on Gratiot Avenue, but I never looked up because I was biting into a Taco Bell Burrito Supreme. My head flew through the windshield, but aside from some decorative glass in my forehead, I was unscathed.

I stumbled from the car, and a woman on the sidewalk screamed in horror. What she assumed were my leaking brains was in fact the exploded burrito — a primitive air bag? — whose refried shrapnel also covered every part of the car’s interior.

That’s the kind of story you won’t hear from Prius owners. And it captures the Camaro’s bad-boy attitude without cheap references to mullets, 7-Eleven parking lots and Def Leppard.

The Camaro, a working-class hero of the 1967-2002 model years — a run that included forgettable cars as well — is back. Its arrival completes a blessed baby boomer trinity of so-called pony cars, after reintroductions of the retro Ford Mustang and Dodge Challenger.

With the old pony-car wars suddenly revived, even people who love fast cars can reasonably ask why. Those who dial 911 at the sound of screeching tires are even more upset: how, they ask, can Detroit be turning out fluff when its survival is at stake? The answer is that sports cars and sexy coupes still have a role to play, no matter the price of gas or the blood on Detroit’s balance sheets.

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