1970½ — a new car under a continuing name
Generation 2 · F-body · 1970–1981
Second Generation
Twelve years on one body — through the fuel crises, and out the other side a sales record.
An unusually long twelve-model-year run on one basic body, longer and lower with European-influenced styling. It absorbed the full brunt of 1970s America: the fuel crises, unleaded gas and catalytic converters, the SAE gross-to-net rating switch, 5-mph bumper laws, and a UAW strike that nearly killed the model in 1972.
No convertible was offered this generation. The decade closed with 1979 — the best-selling model year in the nameplate's history.
Highlights
- 1970½ late launch (Fisher Body tooling, not a strike)
- 1972 near-cancellation and the last factory big block
- Z28 dropped 1975–76, brought back 1977 by Firebird pressure — first year Camaro outsold Mustang
- Split-bumper RS (1970–73)
- 1979: record 282,571 built; Berlinetta debuts
Model years
Compression falls for unleaded
Compression drops across the range to prepare for the coming unleaded-fuel mandate.
The big-bumper year
Federal 5-mph bumper law reshapes the Camaro's face — the split bumper is gone.
Catalytic converters arrive; the Z28 is gone
Unleaded fuel and catalytic converters become mandatory — and the high-compression Z28 can't survive them.
Still no Z28, while Pontiac cleans up
Camaro sells strongly, but has no answer to Pontiac's Trans Am — the pressure that brings the Z28 back.
T-tops arrive; Type LT bows out on top
T-tops offered on a Camaro for the first time, and the plush Type LT outsells the Z28 in its final year.
The last of the long generation
The twelfth and final year of the second generation, before the all-new 1982 F-body.
Every produced model year in this generation has its own evidence-led record.