Lovers of azure 5th Gens will be “singing the blues” for 2012 as Imperial Blue Metallic is discontinued, leaving the Camaro without any hue of blue as an option on new models. The discontinuation of Imperial Blue Metallic was announced in a posting on Camaro5.com, and the information reportedly comes from a reliable source from GM.
Camaro5 member “Fbodfather” says, “Because Camaro shares a common body and paint shop with several other vehicle lines at Oshawa, we must abide by decisions that affect more than just Camaro – and thus Imperial Blue Metallic will be discontinued very shortly. Offering it for only a week or so on the ZL1 is not practical as it would require paint re-validation for ZL1-unique components such as bumper fascias. Crystal Red Tintcoat will be available to order shortly. We will have further information as to order cut-off dates for LS, LT, and SS models in Imperial Blue Metallic very shortly.”
The interesting thing about this all is that there still will be no blue of any kind for at least an entire model year. It’s pretty unlikely that this oversight will go on too long, and new blues should be right around the corner. (As a personal opinion plug, when GM finally does roll out new blues for the 5th Gen, it would be nice to see something close to the short lived Aqua Blue Metallic; a darker navy blue, and a true blue should just be staples of any car line up…)