C’mon, Camaro owners

All right, Camaro owners and fans -- I can’t take it anymore. If you misspell the name of your car one more time, I am going to internally combust like a 302 running premium, except it won’t sound as pretty. And then I am going to take your keys away until you respect your car enough to spell its name correctly.

With the new Camaro getting ready to hit the streets, it’s a problem we need to nip in the bud now: There is no “e” in Camaro. Not one. Not two. None. In fact, the name is written in several places on the car to help you spell it correctly: on the door panels, on the front fenders, on the header panel, on the instrument panel and on the deck lid, depending on the year. In fact, the common misspelling of Camaro is not even a word, and if it weren’t for the Chevrolet pony car, Camaro would not even be a word at all.

I won’t give you the satisfaction of misspelling “Camaro” here, but you know the spelling I am talking about. The one with that “e” where the second “a” should go. And it’s a widespread problem. If you type the misspelling of Camaro into “Google,” you’ll get more than 17 million web pages. That’s ridiculous, but that’s not what got my blood boiling most recently. It was when I received a letter from a retired GM employee who worked at the company during the muscle car era and even he misspelled Camaro, finally sending me over the edge.

The pressure has been building for decades, since I started reading auto shopper-type publications as a kid. Frequently, the Camaro name was misspelled, and it always drove me nuts, even though I was ten. And if a ten year old is annoyed, there’s no reason that a 20 year old (or older person) should be misspelling the name of their car.

So, let’s join together and start spelling Camaro correctly. The Camaro is a legend worthy of this small honor, and the new model is poised to continue that legend. It’s the least we can do for a car that brings smiles to so many, including me.