Chevrolet's Forgotten Four-Door Muscle Sedan Deserves a Second Look

Chevrolet built its last Camaro in January 2024, insisting the nameplate's story wasn't finished. Two years later, reports suggest the next Chevrolet muscle car will be a four-door sedan on a shared rear-wheel-drive platform, due before the decade ends.

Chevrolet has reportedly approved a Camaro successor, with production scheduled to begin in late 2027 at the Lansing Grand River plant in Michigan, according to GM Authority and corroborated by Automotive News. The car is expected to arrive as a 2028 model on an evolution of GM's rear-wheel-drive Alpha platform, with a four-door layout sharing a footprint with the next Cadillac CT5.

This move away from a coupe follows shrinking demand for two-door muscle. Camaro sales fell from 72,705 cars in 2016 to 21,893 in 2021, then recovered slightly to 24,652 in 2022 before GM ended production. A four-door body would answer practicality complaints that followed the sixth-generation car.

Chevrolet already owns a badge created for exactly this kind of car: the Chevrolet SS, a sedan sold from 2014 through 2017. It was Chevrolet's first rear-wheel-drive performance sedan since 1996, pitched as a four-door Corvette. Under the skin sat GM's Zeta platform, the same architecture as the fifth-generation Camaro.

Holden engineered and built the SS in Elizabeth, South Australia, as a left-hand-drive version of the Holden Commodore SS. Pricing started at $44,470 when US sales began in late 2013, climbing to $46,625 by the final 2017 model year. 5 seconds and a top speed of 160 mph.

GM announced in December 2013 it would end vehicle manufacturing in Australia, weeks after the first SS sedans reached US showrooms. The decision condemned the car before most buyers knew it existed. When the plant shut down in 2017, the SS died with it. Just 12,860 examples were built across four model years.

The SS never failed a real market test because GM never gave it one, and the factory closure settled the question before the car could build an audience. Enthusiasts now pay near-MSRP for a decade-old sedan GM struggled to sell new, with clean manual cars trading at or above original sticker prices.

The argument for reviving the SS badge instead of stretching the Camaro name comes down to what each promises. Camaro promises a coupe; the SS name was created for a four-door muscle sedan and retired with its reputation intact. GM is reportedly preparing to build the same formula again, and the 2028 reveal is the right moment to bring the SS badge back while the Camaro name rests where it belongs: on a coupe.