When automobiles come to the end of their production run it’s normally for sound financial factors on the part of the producer.
When an ordinary utilitarian model gets the slice, just a small band of hardcore fans are most likely to shed a tear, if all.
But when it’s one of the unrecognized heroes of the performance sedan world, the end of the line begins to take on more significance. Which was definitely the case as the last Chevrolet SS came off the assembly line in Australia days ago.
Chevrolet stopped taking orders for the SS back since February, so all of us knew the end was in sight for this efficiency sedan generally enjoyed by fans of that little sector of the marketplace.
It was never ever truly expected that the SS would be a substantial seller for Chevrolet– it was always intended to be a slow-selling, low-volume model. The only real marketing behind it was from NASCAR, and the appeal it acquired was either through word of mouth or from the pages of fan sites and publications.
The Chevrolet SS had just remained in production since 2013 and just 12,953 examples of the SS were sold throughout its life-span, although the Caprice PPV, basically a long-wheelbase police-spec version of the SS, did add an additional 7,305 units to the count. In Australia, the car was developed and offered as the Holden VF Commodore.
Although the SS appeared like a simple four-door family sedan, it was the extraordinary 6.2-liter LS3 V-8 engine from the C6 Corvette that made it special, with power and torque scores of 415 horse power (309 kW) and 415 lb.-ft (563 Nm).
The final automobile was supposedly a black-on-black variation with a manual transmission, and at the client’s request, it was signed by all the employees on the production line.
The last Chevy SS unquestionably represents the end of a period. Sales of this kind of vehicle are slowing throughout the industry, and a replacement for the SS looks not likely as General Motors does not have the time or the resources for such low-volume tasks.
