Hello, Charger
As Sajeev points out, America’s police forces could well be the savior of large, rear-drive sedans in the American market. Which is hugely convenient for Chrysler, which recently spent big bucks updating its 300/Charger LX platform. Much to the chagrin of Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne, in fact. A devotee of per-platform volume-based “industrial logic,” Marchionne has publicly stated that he would never have spent the money to update a platform with so few “applications,” had he been in charge during the Cerberus era. But winning police fleet business could change all that, and Chrysler is clearly going all out for it.
The 2011 Dodge Charger has not been shown anywhere in civilian guise, but several outlets including the Detroit Free Press have snapped shots of the new sedan testing for police buyers. Given Chrysler’s well– documented struggles with fleet sales addiction, giving police fleet buyers the first look at an “all new” car is an interesting move. Discuss the looks all you want, what I want to know is will consumers go crazy for a cop car? GM obviously doesn’t think so…
More by Edward Niedermeyer
Comments
Join the conversation
The police Charger won't hurt sales of the SRT8 models, but if retail Charger sales lag, Chrysler can always put the Coronet nameplate on it and make believe it's a different mid-size car.
Awesome. This is what they should have done the first time. In any case, I hope it's successful. Yeah, I'd buy that thing.