Good Question, Dodge

Millennials find themselves at a societal crossroads. Wage growth isn’t ideal, living (and certainly education) costs are rising faster than their paychecks, and technological advancements are rendering swaths of middle-class jobs obsolete.

Which is why, in this author’s opinion, it’s time for Aries.

Yes, it’s time to sign off Twitter and get into a sensible compact sedan, one that will serve this generational cohort well for several years to come. Interest rates aren’t even in the same ballpark as what car buyers suffered through in the ’80s, gasoline prices are still relatively low, and dreams of canyon-carving all day in a supercar paid for by the confiscated wealth of the CEO down the block should have been dislodged from their brains somewhere around the second year of college, not when they’re entering their 30s.

It’s time to face reality. It’s time for Dodge to step up and say, “We’ve heard your cries and ignored most of them. Take this instead and live within your means.”

Is yours truly dipping into the sauce a little too early in the day? Not today, I’m not. I’m merely responding to a tweet by Dodge from earlier this morning.

https://twitter.com/Dodge/status/1179387160320991232

No, we’re not inclined to take this tweet from an anxiety-ridden social media account operator all that seriously. Is Dodge really crowdsourcing ideas for its future product lineup online? The brand wishes it could. No, Dodge will get whatever common-platform crossover Fiat Chrysler decides it can have, plus the Charger and Challenger, both available in a ridiculous array of variants designed to keep this biblically old platform rolling out of Brampton.

Resurrected nameplates have been tried before, with little success. Dart, anyone? Aspen? Magnum? Well, we’ll give them that last one. If Dodge did bring back the Aries, the same people screaming for moar affordable cars would avoid it like the plague, demanding in its place a taut, European-style RWD sports sedan with cockles-warming performance characteristics, sky-high fuel economy, and a government-subsidized four-figure sticker price. We can all dream.

Better to go the specialty edition route, like Dodge did with the limited-edition Daytona 50th Anniversary Edition, itself a variant of the 2020 Charger SRT Hellcat Widebody. But what’s left to dredge up from the Charger/Challenger’s storied past?

This exercise has gone on too long. Dodge’s question doesn’t jibe with the brand’s reality as a afterthought division sitting in the shadows of FCA’s real money makers — Ram and Jeep. It can be thankful for one thing, however.

It’s not Chrysler.

[Image: Murilee Martin/TTAC, Steph Willems/TTAC]