Camaro Coupe

Make
Chevrolet
Segment
Coupe

The days that made up the Golden Age of muscle cars may be long behind us, but this characteristically American breed of performance vehicle has gone through a mini resurgence as of late. A HEMI turns the Dodge Charger into a decent performance sedan, and the Ford Mustang/Chevrolet Camaro/Dodge Challenger trio is there for those with more traditional tastes. However, it seems like the muscle car may have fewer fans nowadays, as Automotive News has revealed muscle cars sales have dropped by a sizable margin.

As sated in the report, overall sales of the aforementioned three muscle cars between January and July this year have dropped 8.4% in comparison with the same period last year. Initially, it seems like pretty bad news, and especially so for Chevrolet, which saw a drop in like-for-like Camaro sales of 15.4% (the Mustang and Challenger each saw drops of 5.5%), though closer inspection indicates things aren't as poor as they first seem. One such factor is that, as Automotive News reports, the total new car market when you remove the muscle cars from the equation has fallen 8.5%, so the combined average drop of the muscle cars does match industry trends on a national level.

It's also worth pointing out that this drop is being compared to 2015, which saw a huge spike in muscle car sales of over 22.6% via the introduction of the current Chevrolet Camaro and Ford Mustang. Plus, there's still strong demand for performance-oriented cars: On average nearly 200 buyers per day have been found for the Challenger and the Camaro each, with Ford upping the ante by managing to shift a staggering 342 Mustang units every 24 hours in the US That's good for one Mustang sale approximately every four minutes. Long story short, despite the drop, it seems our current crop of muscle cars are doing fine for the time being.