The iconic Chevy Camaro is not only a popular sports car nameplate fresh out of the showroom, but is very good at retaining its value over time as a used car, a new study shows.
The research by iSeeCars puts the Chevy Camaro in seventh place among the top 25 vehicles with the smallest 5-year average depreciation, and well below the average depreciation across all passenger vehicles.
A typical Chevy Camaro lost 24.2 percent of its value, or $10,161, during five years of depreciation, the study found. This put it close to the top of the list of vehicles that retained the most value, with Porsche 911 in first place with 9.3-percent 5-year depreciation and the Porsche 718 Cayman, Toyota Tacoma, Jeep Wrangler, Honda Civic and Subaru BRZ in the second through sixth places.
An executive analyst at iSeeCars, Karl Brauer, noted that “sports cars are among the top vehicles at holding their value, including four of the top 10 models.” He went on to point out that the market showed a “spike in demand for ‘fun’ cars during the pandemic lockdowns,” a trend he says continues as “demand for them remains strong in the post-pandemic world.”
Another contributing factor in the success of the typical Chevy Camaro in retaining around 75 percent of its value over half a decade, though this is not mentioned in the study, is the relative rarity of the Bow Tie muscle cars. Since the current-generation Camaro launched in 2016, production was at its highest in 2016 and 2017, with approximately 90,000 to 100,000 vehicles rolling off the assembly line annually.
Production then dropped to 50,000 units yearly during 2018 and 2019. The numbers bottomed out in the pandemic year of 2021 at about 20,000 Camaros produced. Even through 2023 production levels remained below 30,000 units annually.
The 24.2-percent 5-year depreciation of the Chevy Camaro puts it well ahead of the average U.S. vehicle, which loses 38.8 percent of its value over the same time. Luxury cars depreciate even more at 48.1 percent and EVs lose a whopping 49.1 percent, though this is a marked improvement from their 67.1-percent depreciation in 2019.
The conclusions are based on 1.1 million used vehicle sales that took place in the 12-month period ending in October 2023. Analyst Karl Brauer remarked that “all used cars hold their value better than they did five years ago,” but that “not all used cars retain value equally.”
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Comments
Unfortunately that number includes the incredibly high resale value of the Chevrolet SS, as they lumped that number in because of those two letters, because it simply has to be something besides just an SS, said every Chevrolet dealership for about four years.
“An executive analyst at iSeeCars, Karl Brauer, noted that “sports cars are among the top vehicles at holding their value, including four of the top 10 models.” He went on to point out that the market showed a “spike in demand for ‘fun’ cars during the pandemic lockdowns,” a trend he says continues as “demand for them remains strong in the post-pandemic world.””
Good thing they’re killing it off.