Dodge Challenger Finally Takes Sales Crown

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.

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Rare Rides: The 1996 Saleen S-281 Mustang, Plastic Fantastic

Rare Rides has featured three of Saleen’s sporty creations in past: A one-off Thunderbird styling exercise, a hot hatchback, and the company’s full-on supercar. Today’s Rare Ride is probably more familiar than those other three, as it’s Saleen’s most basic take on the SN-95 Mustang.

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Junkyard Find: 1986 Ford Mustang LX Hatchback
Because the 1979-1993 Fox Mustang remains so popular with enthusiasts, I don’t find so many non– crashed examples in the big self-service car graveyards I frequent. In fact, these days I see more 1974–1978 Mustang IIs than I do Fox Mustangs (unless you consider the 1994-2004 SN95 Mustang to be a true Fox). Last week, I found this very solid ’86 Mustang LX hatchback in a Denver yard, and my camera was ready for it.
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Dodge Challenger Outpaces Ford Mustang, Chevrolet Camaro in Q2 Sales

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.

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2020 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 Review - Baddest Mustang

When is a Mustang a reptile? When it’s a Shelby, of course.

And when the car has Shelby badging on it, you’re in for a treat.

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Rare Rides: The 1990 Ford Mustang 7UP Edition, Get You a Cold Pop

Today’s Rare Ride hails from the last bit of the Fox-body Mustang era. And while there were only supposed to be a handful of these 7UPs ever made, the special edition ended up with a production figure in the low five digits.

Only one car is lemon, lime, Mustang, and forgotten. Let’s go.

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Take a Chance on Me? GM Incentivizes Mustang-to-Camaro Conversions

Not happy with sales thus far this year, General Motors wants Ford Mustang owners to know there’ll be cash waiting for them should they wander into a dealer in search of a Chevrolet Camaro.

As 2019 draws to a close, GM’s pony car sits in third place in the niche segment’s sales standings. This, despite a 2019 model year refresh and a greater availability of four-cylinder offerings. Maybe a few grand will compel rival owners to make the switch?

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Price Wars: Ford Pits Brawnier Four-cylinder Mustang Against Chevrolet's Bargain V8 Camaro

A new addition to the Ford Mustang lineup arrives this fall, just in time to do battle with a new addition to Chevrolet’s Camaro stable. As sales falter, the pony car wars are heating up. However, while these two steeds do not differ greatly in price, their means of motivation are quite dissimilar.

Now that pricing has been revealed for the 2020 Mustang High Performance Package, we can contrast it with the equally new Camaro LT1 — a bargain V8 model slotted below the SS. It’s four cylinders versus eight.

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Buy/Drive/Burn: 2019 American Sports Cars, Ace of Base Edition

Buy/Drive/Burn returns this week with three American sports cars in their most basic, purest form. The Big Three are represented here, and they don’t get any cheaper than this. No options or fripperies are allowed, and one must receive the Buy.

Start your (small) engines — it’s sports car time.

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Junkyard Find: 1995 Ford Mustang GT
After writing about junkyard cars since early 2007, I just realized that the newest discarded Mustang I’d documented was a 1984 model. As you’d imagine, Mustangs from the late Fox and SN95 eras are easy to find in North American wrecking yards, so I resolved to shoot the next interesting one I found… which turned out to be this much-abused ’95 GT I spotted in a Silicon Valley self-service yard.
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Pony Car Check-up: If Only Our Lives Were As Stable As the Dodge Challenger's Sales

What’s something that’s really, really old, yet continues to attract a steady flow of buyers year after year? You could say the Colt 1911 and its knock-offs, and you’d be right — in fact, an old American pistol that packs a punch and never really saw the need to improve in a major way seems like an apt comparison to what we’re actually talking about.

When it first appeared on sales charts in May of 2008, the Dodge Challenger was pure throwback. A cherry to place on top of the brash, retro sundae Chrysler had constructed out of its 300 and Charger sedans. In case you missed it, last month was the 10-year anniversary of the reborn Challenger’s first full month of American sales; the TTAC crew deferred its celebrations until July 4th.

Taking a look at the sales performance of its domestic, um, challengers, it seems like the two-door Dodge might outlive us all. Will the last American passenger car on the market ride into the sunset with a supercharged roar and two smoking rear tires?

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Buy/Drive/Burn: Affordable Convertibles From 2005

This edition of Buy/Drive/Burn was inspired by the comments some of you left on the recent QOTD Crapwagon Garage post on coupes. Though roadsters and convertibles were off limits there, the conversation turned to them wistfully. Don’t worry, convertible week is coming.

In the meantime, we’ve got a ragtop from 2005 to burn. Which one will it be?

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Ford Provides Mustang Mugshot for 2020 Shelby GT500

Kudos to Ford for doing the shadowy teaser image correctly this week. While the auto industry has decided darkened teasers are compulsory for all upcoming models, some automakers provide photographs resembling Spın̈al Tap’s Smell the Glove album — so comedicaly dark, they become unintentional parodies of the now popular trend.

But Ford’s photo makes us feel like we’ve seen more of the 2020 Shelby GT500 than we actually have without giving up the goods, allowing us to feel simultaneously satiated and hungry.

It’s the clearest look yet of the forthcoming Mustang model, and our first impression is that it seems really angry about something. The grille is expansive, seemingly occupying frontal real estate from the vehicle’s nose all the way down to the aggressive frontal lip.

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QOTD: How Do You Rank the Six Generations of Mustang?

Yesterday, the B&B collectively lit up the Buy/Drive/Burn article regarding $45,000 coupes in praise of the V8-powered 2018 Mustang GT. While munching on all the delicious clicks, I thought about the QOTD published back in December 2017. In that post, I asked you, our dear readers, to rank all seven generations of the Chevrolet Corvette. See where this is going?

Today we want to know where you rank all six generations of the Ford Mustang. Line up your ponies!

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GM Wants (Needs?) to Figure Out How to Sell More Chevrolet Camaros

There’s more than one reason the sixth-generation Chevrolet Camaro has failed to live up to the fifth-gen Camaro’s U.S. marketplace success.

First, the drama of the (quite possibly) superior sixth-gen Camaro’s styling is diminished by the fact that it looks so very much like the fifth-gen car. To the casual muscle car buyer — of which there have to be tens of thousands of it’s going to be the high-volume sports car it was — it’s certainly not obvious that this is even an all-new car.

Then there’s the fact that the sixth-gen Camaro also continues the fifth-gen’s visibility trend: there is none. Added to that, GM always intended to sell fewer Camaros to daily rental fleets when the sixth-gen car arrived for the 2016 model year.

In the end, however, it’s always down to money. Not only is the Chevrolet Camaro a costly ticket, but Camaros are also packaged in a way that shrinks appeal at the affordable end of the spectrum.

According to GM’s North American boss Mark Reuss, the company wants to fix that, though it’s not yet clear what the remedy is.

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  • Ronin It's one thing to stay tried and true to loyal past customers; you'll ensure a stream of revenue from your installed base- maybe every several years or so.It's another to attract net-new customers, who are dazzled by so many other attractive offerings that have more cargo capacity than that high-floored 4-Runner bed, and are not so scrunched in scrunchy front seats.Like with the FJ Cruiser: don't bother to update it, thereby saving money while explaining customers like it that way, all the way into oblivion. Not recognizing some customers like to actually have right rear visibility in their SUVs.
  • MaintenanceCosts It's not a Benz or a Jag / it's a 5-0 with a rag /And I don't wanna brag / but I could never be stag
  • 3-On-The-Tree Son has a 2016 Mustang GT 5.0 and I have a 2009 C6 Corvette LS3 6spd. And on paper they are pretty close.
  • 3-On-The-Tree Same as the Land Cruiser, emissions. I have a 1985 FJ60 Land Cruiser and it’s a beast off-roading.
  • CanadaCraig I would like for this anniversary special to be a bare-bones Plain-Jane model offered in Dynasty Green and Vintage Burgundy.