Last Saturday (Oct. 5), just before the NASCAR Xfinity Series took the green flag at Talladega Superspeedway, JR Motorsports revealed up-and-coming phenom Connor Zilisch’s primary paint scheme for his rookie run at next year’s Xfinity title.
The North Carolina native will drive a WeatherTech-sponsored No. 88 Chevrolet Camaro for the team owned by Hall of Famer Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Take a look at the picture below. Something looks off, doesn’t it? No, not what appears to be a new JRM logo under the left headlight. A little to the left.
It says “Chevrolet” on the bumper, where it says “Camaro” on the 2024 Xfinity cars. It’s a minor change, but after 11 years, we’ve come to expect to see that word in that location on an Xfinity car. Why the sudden change? And what does it mean?
Well, at the 1966 launch of the original car, Chevy’s marketing team announced that the word “Camaro” meant “a small, vicious animal that eats Mustangs.”
And while you and I (and most rational people) think of stock car racing as a sport, the truth is that to the people who write the biggest checks, it’s a marketing exercise for the automotive industry. So, when the auto market changes, so does NASCAR.
In mid-2023, General Motors (the parent company of Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, GMC and defunct brands including Pontiac, Saturn and Grant Enfinger’s favorite, Oldsmobile) announced that production of the sixth-generation Camaro would end following the 2025 model year with no immediate replacement.
This isn’t the first time that a C-suite decision has forced a race team rebrand. Ford Motor Company discontinued the Thunderbird in 1997 as sales of personal luxury coupes dropped amidst the first SUV craze, prompting NASCAR to homologate the now-iconic “jellybean” Taurus — although basing a NASCAR body on a four-door car was controversial at the time, as two-doors were traditionally used.
GM axed both Buick and Oldsmobile stock car programs after 1994, switching its teams to other brands in the GM family, and then unceremoniously dropped Pontiac from the roster after 2003. Even the Camaro itself came to NASCAR almost by accident after the discontinuation of the SS, an Australian-derived oddity that’s still the homologated Chevy bodyshell in ARCA.
But this time is different. The Camaro is bidding farewell — at least for now — and there’s no other nameplate to take over. In case you missed it, Chevy is also discontinuing the Malibu midsize sedan. In 2025, not a single car will roll off the production line with the famous bowtie badge. It’ll just be crossovers, SUVs, and trucks.
If you read between the lines here, you’ll note that the Corvette — with its own crossed-flags emblem — survives. But the Corvette is a serious mid-engine supercar now. There’s not going to be a NASCAR Corvette for the same reason GM won’t switch its NASCAR program to Cadillac, and Ford wouldn’t let Mike Kranefuss run a Lincoln in 1996. Stock cars have a blue-collar image to maintain.
As the mainstream automotive market increasingly trends towards crossovers, which have outsold traditional cars every month since September 2017, the effects were going to eventually be felt on motorsports. In some series, they already have: Ford’s World Rally Championship program replaced the Fiesta hatchback with the Puma CUV for the 2023 season. Brazil’s Stock Car Pro Series (not to be confused with NASCAR’s own Brazil Series) will consist of exclusively crossover-based racing vehicles from 2025 onwards.
But it’s not like GM can just put a Trailblazer in the Cup Series. The introductions of racing crossovers to WRC and Stock Car Pro aligned with massive regulations changes in those respective series. At this point (for better or worse) NASCAR can’t afford to throw out the Next Gen and start from scratch. Although the ABB EV prototype unveiled at this summer’s Chicago Street Race hid a lot of Next Gen parts beneath its vaguely-crossover-shaped body, an extensive rules rethink would be necessary to allow Chevy to actually compete in Cup races with one.
Considering Ford’s recent commitment to the two-door Mustang as its flagship for global circuit racing and Toyota’s continued commitment to the concept of four-door sedans in general, the other two manufacturers would likely veto the whole thing anyway.
If Zilisch’s new paint scheme is any indication, Chevy is going to be sticking with its well-loved Camaro bodies for a while longer, and just dropping any Camaro-specific branding, much like how Michael Waltrip spent 2006 under contract to Toyota and only calling his Dodge Charger “the NAPA car.”
So how is GM going to “win on Sunday, sell on Monday” if you can’t walk in the door of your local Chevy dealer and plunk down a deposit on a 2025 Camaro? Well, the equation hasn’t been so simple as that for quite a while. The modern world of motorsports marketing is all about squishier concepts like “brand storytelling” and “activation.”
The vehicles that Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott and Ross Chastain wheel on Sundays are best considered “halo cars,” an industry term for cars that build an automaker’s reputation for performance when money is no object – like the Ford GT or Lexus LFA. Regular people are supposed to take notice of these halo cars and hope and pray that a little bit of that angelic nature trickles down to Earth, and makes its way into the regular cars we can actually buy. It’s the same as IMSA’s stated goal for its prototype class, where specialized racing vehicles are built on shared chassis, but kitted out with recognizable headlight treatments that make you think of the ARX-06 when you walk into an Acura dealer to test-drive an MDX.
We’re a long ways away from the days of Monte Carlos and Grands Prix trading paint with Regals, Cutlasses and Thunderbirds. I’m not sure what’s weirder, the fact that eight-cylinder Toyota Supras race in the Xfinity Series, or the fact that the production GR Supra was co-developed with BMW because Toyota needs to share development costs with rival automakers to have any hope of turning a profit on sports cars in the crossover-crazy modern market. The times, they are a-changin’ — even the Supra is rumored to be leaving production in 2026.
All this without mentioning the effect that the electrification of the auto industry will have on the next Chevy Cup car, because — hot take — I don’t think there will be one.
Toyota’s 2025 Camry XSE is already only available as a hybrid; its Tundra TRD Pro has been a six-cylinder turbo-hybrid since 2022, but Denny Hamlin and Corey Heim’s racing vehicles are still the same old-school V8s. If, as GM has hinted, the next-generation production Camaro gains two doors and a hefty battery in the floorwell, the NASCAR program can just squash and stretch that body, drape it over the Next Gen chassis and drivetrain, and call it a day. It’s the same grand tradition that gave rise to 2007’s Fusion, Camry, Impala SS and Dodge Avenger racers. Ain’t nothing stock about a stock car — and there hasn’t been since 1949.
The Year Without a Camaro could become an interesting footnote in NASCAR history, the way that Dodge competed with the fictional “R/T” nameplate in 2004. It could be a grim portent of a world to come, where stock cars become like IMSA prototypes, with only the most tenuous links to a stock car you can actually buy.
Of course, none of this really matters. Under the skin, Chevy’s 2017 and 2018 Cup cars were mechanically identical, even though one looked like an SS and the other a Camaro. It’s all just a branding exercise.
But we care when sponsors leave teams and sign for other ones. We’re excited when an automaker (Dodge? Honda? Volkswagen?) drops hints that it’s thinking of joining the stock car world. You and I (and most rational people) consider stock car racing a sport, but we still know the whole thing is a branding exercise. It only exists because it’s a branding exercise that works.
So, pour one out for the Belvederes and Regals, the Cyclones and Thunderbirds that used to turn laps in anger and are now resigned to the scrap heaps of history. Pour one out for the Chevy Camaro stock car.
The Camaro is dead. Long live the 2025 Chevrolet … nothing.
Jack Swansey primarily covers open-wheel racing for Frontstretch and co-hosts The Pit Straight Podcast,but you can also catch him writing about NASCAR, sports cars, and anything else with four wheels and a motor. Originally from North Carolina and now residing in Los Angeles, he joined the site as Sunday news writer midway through 2022 and is an avid collector (some would say hoarder) of die-cast cars.
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Why can’t Chevrolet badge their Cup car a Corvette? The current crop of Cup cars are nothing more than generic race cars, with front and rear stickers that resemble the street cars they’re named after. Change the stickers and the now defunct Camaro becomes a Corvette.
And so what if the production Corvette has it’s engine in the back. We’ve had four doors turned into imaginary two doors, front drivers turned into rear drive, wheel bases stretched to meet minimum length rules, and tons of other “adjustments” made to make non conforming cars models meet NASCAR’s “stock” rules.
What’s more American, or more of an American icon than Chevrolet’s 71 year old sports car?
If Chevy brought the Corvette to Cup, it would be game over for Ford and Toyota. The Corvette would have a huge aero advantage, especially with Hendrick.
Let me check but I thought I saw news of a Chevy Nova comeback.