- Chevy Hardcore - https://www.chevyhardcore.com -

Camaro ZL1 Delays Could Mean a Limited Run of 2012 Models

[1]

Will we continue to see production of the 2012 ZL1 model or will the GM delay push into the 2013 model year? Images: General Motors [2]

The 2012 Camaro ZL1 has been highly anticipated for years. Even before the confirmation that the most potent factory Camaro ever built would be hitting dealerships, Chevy and Camaro fans had their hopes up for the future model. Unfortunately, while the ZL1 was set to be delivered this spring, a disappointing delivery and production delay by General Motors for “quality assessment” issues has put a damper on the ZL1’s official arrival. But there is a potential upside to the postponement, as we found out from Autoblog [3]. The stall in the Camaro’s delivery and continued production could mean that those of you who ordered a 2012 model may have quite the collectors item on your hands.

As we told you a few weeks ago, the expected delivery of the ‘12 ZL1 models has been delayed by GM due to quality concerns [4]. While we reached out to Chevrolet Communication Director Monte Doran, we were unable to get a straight answer about what exactly the problem may be. A second attempt at obtaining answers from Doran by Autoblog proved to be just about as unsuccessful.

[5] However, Doran did tell Autoblog that around a couple hundred ZL1s have already been built and that all of the production models are currently at the Oshawa, Ontario Canada plant waiting to be fixed. This includes the few ZL1s that had already been delivered to dealerships and the one model that was accidentally delivered to a customer due to a dealership error.

While details of what the “fix” is have yet to be released, Doran estimates that deliveries and continued production of the ZL1 model will recommence within weeks rather than months.

With an already short model year run, with the Camaro being released in the spring of its model year rather than the previous fall, the continued delay will create an even shorter model year.

While the restart of production of the ZL1 is expected to continue with the 2012 model year, a significant delay could result in Oshawa starting back up with 2013 models. As of the initial announcement of the delay, GM dealerships have been instructed to not accept any more orders for 2012 models, which shows GM may be preparing for the worst.

If Oshawa does start back up with the 2013 models instead of continuing with the 2012s, those models already built could be very collectable due to their extremely short model year. Although there have been rumors that the recall of sorts would result in the cars already built being delivered as 2013 models, the limited production run cars will maintain their 2012 status. And if history shows us anything, that is that short production runs result in cars that are hot commodities down the road.

We’ll just have to wait and see how long this delay is really going to last and if the 2012 ZL1 will be making an even bigger splash than expected in the future.

[6]