#Challenger

The sixth of seven Last Call editions crafted by the speed freaks at Dodge has been unveiled, showing up for duty as one which makes reference to a muscle car that haunted Woodward Avenue in the 1970s. And, yes, it even has a vinyl roof – kind of.

The speed freaks at Dodge pulled a two-fer yesterday with what are technically the third and fourth of seven Dodge special-edition "Last Call" models. Called the Swinger, they’re based on the R/T Scat Pack trim and are both Widebody models – but no word if there’s a pineapple included to display in the windshield when parked.

You may have heard that this is the last model year for the Charger and Challenger as we know them today. As a send-off, Dodge is creating a yaffle of special editions based on past packages or trims – along with allocating the entire year’s run at once. The latter is surely causing dealer principals to talk into their morning hit of cocaine caffeine. 

Here’s the first – a Dodge Challenger Shakedown.

Dodge recently announced that the iconic Charger and Challenger models would be sacrificed in the name of electrification next year — releasing the battery-powered, two-door Dodge Charger Daytona SRT Concept to show the public what might be on offer in the near future. But the language used felt somewhat noncommittal, as if the company was really just testing the waters to see what V8-obsessed Mopar fans were willing to tolerate. Meanwhile, Stellantis has opted to eliminate the brand’s high-performance SRT (Street and Racing Technology) division. 

Executives have attempted to spin this as good for the company, suggesting that integrating Dodge’s performance-focused engineering team into the broader pool will mean better cars across the board. But I’m worried about my favorite American brand and am wondering if anyone else on the road feels similarly. 

In the face of an inevitable EV onslaught, Dodge is determined not to go quietly into that good night. Yesterday, they showed plans for a half-dozen Charger/Challenger special editions for its final model year in 2023, tag-teamed a shop in Florida to make Chally convertibles, and heralded the return of the Durango Hellcat.

Dodge decided to nix the six-speed manual for Challenger Hellcat models last November, indicating that it would be a temporary issue. The automaker allegedly planned to deliver an updated version and said it was actively calibrating the powertrain to see what worked ahead of pulling the old version from the assembly line. It was minor news and everyone following the industry promptly forgot about it, assuming three-pedal Challengers would be back in action before anyone noticed.

It’s now four months later and the option is still nowhere in sight.

For the first time since American muscle returned to the assembly line in earnest, Dodge’s Challenger has managed to outsell both the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro inside the United States. Though Mopar fans might point out that Dodge would win every year if we bothered to include Charger sales in the headcount or were more precise when making determinations about what constitutes a muscle vs pony car.

Regardless of semantics, the Big Three have their performance icons and the Challenger has taken the two-door sales crown for the first time in modern history. Sadly, it was less about Dodge making inroads with new customers than it was about the other brands flubbing things. Performance vehicles aimed at the middle class are presently experiencing a rough patch, with the Challenger having lost the least amount of ground in the last decade.

Pop quiz, hotshot: What job combines a Challenger Hellcat, wrestling champ Bill Goldberg, and a $150,000 paycheck? If you answered with something along the lines of Vince McMahon’s assistant or slightly-above-board import/export professional, we totally understand.

In reality, that’s the job description for Chief Donut Maker at Dodge. Yep – you read that correctly.

Few car companies on this planet do special editions with the vigor (and frequency) of the American brands at Stellantis. Dodge, Jeep, Ram, and – to a lesser extent – Chrysler all return to their respective wells in search of a way to quench their thirst for profits.

This time, the retro-inspired Charger and Challenger brothers have once again been enrolled in Special Ed(itions) class. Specifically called the Jailbreak models, these Hellcat Redeye Widebody machines will permit customers to unlock color combination ordering restrictions while layering on new factory-custom options.

Following the PSA-FCA merger that resulted in Stellantis, Dodge has been promising that it would reinvent muscle cars to become all-electric vehicles. This rattled many Mopar fans, with the hardest day being when the automaker teased what was undoubtedly an EV concept inspired by the original Dodge Charger in July. In an act of true sacrilege, it even carried the Fratzog logo worn by many Chrysler products from the era.

This week, Dodge CEO Tim Kuniskis provided a loose timeline for the company’s planned EV offensive and what we might expect. He also acknowledged that the company knows that some fans of the brand are filled to the brim with trepidation at the prospect of an electric muscle car.

We don’t normally pay too much attention to pony-car pissing contests or quarter-to-quarter sales battles because, well, they aren’t always interesting and/or newsworthy.

What happened this past quarter caught our eye, however.

Long-time readers of this site (thanks, both of you) will recall the Ace of Base series of posts, natterings in which we ruminated on the state of a particular model and its entry-level trim. Thanks to a myriad of reasons, we’re morphing this concept into a new product for your eyeballs called The Right Spec. This time around, we’ll be teasing out what we think is the best spec of a given vehicle – we hope it generates some comments. Knowing you, the BnB, it surely will.

Stellantis leadership is going to have some tough decisions to make in regard to Chrysler and Dodge. While both brands are a shadow of their former selves, Fiat Chrysler viewed their rightsizing as more of a distillation process. Despite lacking the full complement of vehicles necessary to occupy every segment, the two have the oversized American sedan segment almost entirely to themselves. In fact, their more-is-more ethos is becoming increasingly rare within the overall industry and (allegedly) at odds with the coming age. We’ve been told the only way to continue playing is through powertrain downsizing and electrification. The V8 is becoming taboo, reserved for the incognito browser.

What will your neighbors think when they learned you bought a Hemi? The jokes about the size of your member for needing such a big car with such a big motor will perpetually have you on edge and peering over a shoulder. You’ll be a fugitive inside your own mind, forever teetering on the brink. What if your alarmingly massive penis is actually as demure as your bother’s wife suggested when you brought the car to the last family dinner? Wouldn’t it be easier if we all just drove bland crossovers with modestly sized motors? Why do you have to be so different?

These are the kinds of harrowing questions we wouldn’t need to ask ourselves in the aftermath of a midnight screaming fit if Dodge and Chrysler stopped existing. Stellantis has that power … and it may even be considering that possibility right now. But is that really what’s best?

The next Dodge Challenger will have a bit more junk in the trunk, at least in terms of available wide-body options.

Despite being an Italian-American company that will soon align itself with France’s PSA Group, Fiat Chrysler can still be unabashedly American whenever it lets Dodge off the leash. By adhering to the tenets of what (once) made domestic vehicles great, Dodge has bet the farm on providing quality family transportation that can be outfitted with more horsepower than any sane person could want at a price they couldn’t possibly ignore.

Dodge is putting its best on full display for Independence Day, letting the world know its priorities have not changed one iota. Yet there exists a sense — a gnawing feeling — that this could be the final round of truly mental V8 monsters to come out of America. Global emissions regulations and a new corporate structure could mean that SRT’s best may not be seen again for some time.

If that’s to be the case, Dodge has honorably decided to go down singing with some of the gnarliest machines yet to leave its stable.