The 2019 Camaro for the rest of us

What’s that you say? You want a sports car, but you don’t want to pay crazy-high insurance or fill the tank with high-octane every day or two? Chevy heard you (okay, so did Dodge, Mazda, Ford, Fiat, and almost everyone else) and, as always, there’s a Camaro that handles well, gives you muscle-car looks, and is relatively easy on the wallet. It might not run against Porsches on the track, but it does pretty well on the street.

As you can see, the tri-color Camaro badge is on the fender, and the body looks pretty much the same as the more potent Camaros; but the natty lighting effects of the RS 1LE, as one example, are missing, with plain ol’ ordinary headlights instead. Maybe you can even get it with a stick-shift (you can with the current 1LS). The current Camaro start at around $26,000, with a two-liter turbo four-cylinder boasting a V6-like 275 horsepower.

The blue car shown here is a 1LT. The 2018 version costs $27,700 or so, and comes with an eight-speed paddle-shift automatic, the four-cylinder, 18-inch aluminum wheels, and cloth seats — with 8-way driver and 6-way passenger power adjustments. You also get a rear camera, a/c, remote starter, express windows, power mirrors, LED daytime running lights, and other goodies, and all of that gear will probably stay in the 2019s you’re looking at.

Incidentally, if you want a manual transmission, you can get one with the 2LT as well, with either the four cylinder or the V6. That looks might tempting, with heated, ventilated leather seats, dual-zone climate control, behavior selection, and other goodies. You can even get rear cross path and blind spot detection to keep those insurance rates down.

Here’s one of the more potent cars, the 2019 Camaro RS, for comparison: