The festivities at Belle Isle in Detroit this weekend weren’t just for the official debut of the 2016 Chevrolet Camaro or so certain auto journalists could publicly self-shame for on-track mishaps. It was also a gathering of more than 250 Camaros of all vintages, and a pretty fantastic one at that.
Owners came to the Motor City from all over the U.S. and Canada to show off their rides and hang out until the day closed with the big reveal of the new car. While the crowd was overwhelmingly populated by outgoing fifth-generation Camaros, was some really neat vintage stuff there, as well as some really turnt-up new ones, plus a few hot items from the Camaro Museum.
I got some photos while I was there. Bask in the glorious Camaroporn!
It’s the Camaro from Transformers: Age of Extinction! (I don’t remember which one that was, either.) Kinda looks a little bit like the new one.
Awww yeah.
Hell yeah.
Hello, sunshine!
Is that a Z28? I think it’s a Z28.
So much motor.
This yellow Z28 T-Top with the orange stripes was, I think, my favorite car there. It was just so period perfect, so unapologetically disco era and so freaking cool. Admit it, the Camaros and Firebirds of the late 1970s are way more palatable today than other so many other awful-ass American cars from that time. I’d take a late 70s T-Top over a lot of its contemporaries.
This old Z/28 looked sharp too.
Nitrous? No thanks.
Here’s an interesting find. This is one of the concept cars for the fifth-gen Camaro unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show way back in 2006. It would be another three years before that car actually went on sale as a 2010 model, but it’s amazing how close it stuck to the concept. Some of the proportions are a little different, but that’s about it.
Even the inside looked like the production model.
Contact the author at patrick@jalopnik.com.